"A dynamic duo who work well together can be worth any three people working in isolation." Larry Constantine
The Diva's challenge this past week was a duotangle. Just like in the challenge I've made for myself that I'm calling Zenduos (see my last blog post), that means you use two and only two patterns. The two patterns to use were Paradox and Bunzo, both on my list of favorites.
The first tile I did in the traditional black and white. I drew in a totally random manor, no thinking. And when it was finished I added the black in the background for some drama.
Then I tangled another one, where I penciled in a box as my string to contain the Paradox. I chose one of my colored tiles for this one, and here you can see the tile before and after tangling.
Watch for another post pretty soon with the next two of my Zenduo tiles!
"Miracles sometimes come in pairs." Unknown
I've decided to undertake a little Zentangle adventure. No, let me restate that... a BIG Zentangle adventure. I'll explain. I use Evernote to catalog all of the pattern step-outs that I like. I find it's a great system where I can search for a particular pattern, I can tag them with descriptive words, I can order them in different ways. Right now I have 343 patterns in my Evernote "notebook." Most of them I have used and love, or at least like enough to want to use again. However, there are a fair number that I've added to my list but haven't tried yet for whatever reason.
So... I've decided to start at the beginning (in alphabetical order) and I'm going to tangle using two at a time. The first pair, then the next, and on and on for all 343 patterns (which is an odd number, but by the time I get through them all I'm sure I will have added some more.) No more than two at a time, but embellishments will be allowed. I enjoy using just two tangles at a time so that it doesn't get too busy looking. The challenge will be somehow making the two work together even when I would never in a million years think of pairing them up. Some will be easy and others not so much.
The other challenge will be seeing this adventure to the end and making it through all 343+ patterns before giving up. That's more than 170 tiles/ZIAs. I'm not going to pressure myself to do one every day, or even every other day, so this could turn into a very l-o-n-g adventure. I've decided to call the pieces I create Zenduos and will refer to this as my Zenduo adventure.
So without further ado, I present to you my first two Zenduos. Here is the first tile before I tangled it, a background I made with Dylusion paints.
The first two patterns in my collection are 4 corners (numbers come before letters in alpha order) and Abeko.
Here's the tile after I added a little pencil shading.
For the next one I chose to work on a black tile, which I don't do very often. The next two patterns were African Artist and All Boxed Up. Lots of lines in this one. And some shading with the zenstone. Not too happy with my African Artist here, as I can never seem to get the squinched parts to look right. One thing this project will do for me is help to weed out the patterns that I don't like enough... or can't do well enough... to keep them in my collection. This may be one of them.
So there you have it, my first two Zenduos. Anyone out there want to challenge themselves to go on a similar adventure with me?
"Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment." Claude Monet
I am so happy to announce that my Etsy shop is fully open once again after a long time of intermittent closures. And except for the week of Thanksgiving, it should stay open consistently. I hope. To celebrate the re-opening, I am offering a discount on all purchases for a short time, but you'll have to read, or at least scroll down, to the end of my post to get the coupon code for your discount.
I'm sharing lots of photos here of work that I've completed on my hand-colored tiles, showing them both before and after tangling. I love the colors in this first one and love doing lots of line work.
The next one has lots more line work, on a totally different type of background.
I also have a collection of what I call geometric tiles, and this one is part of that collection.
Another series I call pathway tiles. These are created with alcohol inks, just like all the tiles are, but using a special method that creates what looks like paths to me. I have them in both gray and colored. This one is an example of one of the grays.
Here's an example of one of the colored Zendala tiles.
This one has some of my favorite colors in a little bit of a swirl.
And another Zendala, this one with a rippled effect.
I completed this last tile a while ago, but it's one of my favorites, both in the colors and the tangling, so here it is again. It's an example of one of the colored pathway tiles, similar to the gray one above.
In addition to colored tiles, gray tiles, Zendalas, and geometric tiles, I've created a line of digital papers using alcohol ink backgrounds. They're available with lines for writing or unlined for an unlimited number of different uses. Please take a look at them while you're over in my Etsy shop perusing the various tiles. Here are just a few examples of the papers that you'll find.
And for those of you who stuck with me all the way to the end of this long post, you can get 10% off any order between now and November 15th. Just enter the coupon code FALL17 when you check out.
