Zen Photos

"Flowers are like friends; they bring color to your world."    Unknown
 
I decided it was time again to combine my two favorite things to do, Zentangle and photography. I've blogged about this before, once in 2016, which you can see here, and once in 2015, which you can see here. I again chose a photo of flowers to tangle since that's one of my favorite subjects for photography. 

Here is the photo before any tangling. 

I printed the photo on mixed media paper so that I could tangle using my Microns. In the past I've printed them on glossy photo paper which meant that I had to tangle using a Microperm pen because of the slick surface. Not my favorite surface to tangle on. 

First I tangled the petals of the two flowers using Angel Fish on one and Maryhill on the other. For the bottom layer of petals I tangled Dyon.

Then I used a gray pen to add some Printemps to the Dyon.

I wanted to add color and shading using some other medium besides pastel pencils which is my usual go to method. Watercolor pencils is what I decided on. I could have used a water brush to blend, but I never feel like I have the control I'd like with a water brush. So I tried a Copic colorless blender pen. I didn't really think it was going to work since Copics are alcohol based, but to my surprise it worked great. With the pointed tip of the blender pen I could control it easily and get into tight spaces.

After adding color, a few shades of pinks and purples on the upper petals, I decided to use some green on the bottom petals to transform them into leaves instead of petals. Some graphite shading was also added to those leaves. And some white gelly roll pen accents in the centers of the flowers.

As one last finishing touch, I added some white pastel pencil (couldn't resist!) highlights on the leaves... can you see the difference?

It was a fun little project. Using photos to tangle is an easy way to have instant color and a ready made string.