Zenduos #3, 4 and 5

"The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls."     
Pablo Picasso

I've been working on a few more of my Zenduo pieces and have three to share with you today. If you missed my post about my challenge to myself, you can read it here to understand what I'm talking about. 

My third Zenduo incorporates the tangle patterns Amalea by Chrissie Frampton and Angel Fish by Marizaan. I chose to do this one on gray-toned paper by Strathmore.

It looked kind of unfinished, but not after adding some graphite shading along with white pastel pencil and gelly roll highlighting. I love the way this glows.

My next two patterns are Ansu from Lori Manoogian and Antidots from Anita Roby-Lavery. They are similar patterns so they were easy to combine. A little blackening and a little graying the background with pencil and voila!

The last one for today was done on one of my colored tiles. Sorry, but I don't have a picture of the tile before the tangling. The two patterns here are Aquafleur from Rick and Maria, and Arc Flower by JJ LaBarbera.

They were all fun pieces to create and I'm pretty happy with the way they turned out. I'm a little more worried about the next combination I have to do, but you'll have to come back for that another time.  

Dingbatz Unleashed

"Unsuccessful people are busy being busy. Successful people are busy being productive."     Kevin Abdulrahman

 I'm back after a very long and busy month. In that time we packed, moved out of our house and into storage, traveled to Fl, back to NC for a couple of weeks, back to SC to move out of storage into our new home, unpacked and organized... and I'm exhausted! Needless to say there wasn't much time for tangling in all that, and I didn't always have access to my Zentangle supplies. But I'm finally back to a little bit of normalcy, which means finally some tangling time.

A while ago dingbatz were introduced in the world of Zentangle. I hope you've heard about/seen them, because I can't explain them well as I don't know that I fully understand them. Here is the first one that I attempted... a small frame-like thing divided into sections by a tangle pattern that extends outside the frame. For my first try it wasn't too bad, but I felt something didn't look right. Then I figured it out... my Mooka that creates the sections all goes under the frame, and I think some should go above and some below.  Oh well.

Next I tried one on a colored tile (which I sell in my Etsy shop, although the tiles won't be available for about 2 more weeks until everything gets settled in here). Here's the tile before tangling.

And here is my dingbatz. Unfortunately it wasn't until after I did this one that the over/under bit occurred to me.
 

Then I added some shading.

It's okay, but still not exciting me. So on to another one. This time I used Hollibaugh to divide it into sections, and remembered to make some of it go under the frame and some of it over. I added lots of auras which are always fun.

 Then I shaded, added a little more black, and an outside border.

I like this one better than the others, although I think the style kind of got further away from the "traditional" dingbatz that I've seen everyone creating. But that's okay, because I should have my own style, right?

So, back to the drawing board! Here I used some large Flux to create the sections. Definitely my own style again!

 

  
Added shading to some of it with graphite.

And added color to the rest of it with pastel pencils.

This one is definitely my favorite. Whether or not it embodies the original intent of dingbatz... I just don't know!

 

Off the Beaten Path

"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."    Ralph Waldo Emerson

I'm back... with more Zendala pre-strung colored tiles. I had such a great response to the square pre-strung tiles I made, that I decided to create the same tiles as Zendalas. Just very briefly, in case you haven't seen them yet, these are created with alcohol inks on yupo paper and then printed on Bristol vellum, a great surface for tangling. If you missed it, you can read more about the process in my blog from a few months ago.

I will warn you that this is going to be a long post, with lots of photos. Please stick with me to the end.... I don't think you'll be disappointed. I am so excited today to include art work here by my friend, CZT Sonya Yencer. Her tangled pieces are always beautiful, so I asked if she would tangle some of my new Zendala tiles to give you a different perspective on what can be done with them. And she said yes! But first, take a look at some of the Zendalas that I just completed (all include before and after photos, but the befores may not all be turned in the same direction as the afters.)

The first is a multi-colored tile tangled using black micron, stardust gelly rolls, and white gelly roll pen. The patterns used are Antidots, D'rua, Verdigogh, and Tipple. I chose, for the most part, to ignore the pathways and just go for it. I love the coloring in this tile.

The next tile was created in a more monochromatic color scheme. I tangled the pathways using Cadent, but didn't fill in all the paths. Less is very often more, and I have to keep telling myself that. Then I filled in some of the background spaces with Printemps using a white gelly roll pen and a touch of stardust gelly rolls. I kept telling myself, "Don't do it all...don't do it all!"

 

 

Next up is a tile with more earthy tones. So I decided to use a brown micron on this one, with touches of stardust and white gelly roll pens again. At first I wasn't sure that I liked the combination of Munchin and Sand Swirl that I used, but by the time I was done I had changed my mind.

Jumping from earth tones to much brighter pink, purple and blue... on this one I filled some of the background areas with the light and airy patterns N'zeppel and Frost Flower. I added a touch of white highlights using a white pastel pencil, and I ended up liking this one more than I thought I would when I began it.

The last one of my tiles that I have to share with you... for now... is one of the tiles from my gray collection. Just shades of gray in these, no color. That is, until I started tangling. I tangled all the pathways in this one (with variations of the pattern Emingle), using black and red microns, adding shading with graphite and a red pastel pencil. I have grown to love this bristol vellum paper for shading because the pencil smudges so easily with a tortillion.

I've saved the best for last, so please DON'T GO ANYWHERE YET!!!!  Here are three tiles that the very talented Sonya completed, along with a brief description of each, in her own words.

"I was immediately drawn to this one because warm
analogous colors make me so happy! In this instance, I chose to ignore the background shapes and create my image on top. The fall weather appears to have revealed a sunflower-y shape! Materials: black .01 Micron, white Gellyroll, Silver Slicci, and InkTense watercolor pencils."

 

"Love the blend of warm and cool tones on one Zendala! On this one, I wanted to do something bold so I chose a mix of Striping and Pepper to fill a handful of the larger shapes. Sometimes it's hard to know when to stop to achieve the "right" balance of tangled/untangled space. Materials: black .01 Micron, white Gellyroll, InkTense watercolor pencils."

And for Sonya's last Zendala:
 
"This Zendala's bold colors intimidated me at first because I didn't want to "ruin" the background - it was so striking on its own! So I chose a more classic way to approach it, allowing the shapes to be the strings and working inside. I added in tangles breaking free of the strings to add visual interest. The background is filled with Tipple and Printemps. Materials: white Gellyroll, clear Glaze Gellyroll, InkTense watercolor pencils."

Sonya mentioned the Tipple/Printemps background in this one. It's so subtle that you can barely see it in the photo, so here's a closeup. 

I hope that you've been inspired by some of Sonya's and my tiles. Thank you Sonya for allowing me to share your amazing work in my blog! The good news is that these tiles are now available in my Etsy shop here, just in case you'd like to try some for yourself. If you do, I'd love to see what you create with them, so feel free to send me pictures of your art work.... or post them in a Facebook group.... or post them in your own blog... or just keep them to yourself, if you'd rather. Thanks for taking a peek!

Never Ending Circles

"Creativity never goes out of style."    Unknown


I recently purchased Corel Draw, a graphic design program. The learning curve is pretty steep for me, not being very technologically savvy. So I've been playing with it and drawing strings for tangling, as well as designing Zendala templates. Here is one of my designs that was pretty easy to do... just circles and ovals... from which I then deleted some portions of the lines.

That was the end of the computer assistance. Next I filled it with tangles but did not blacken in any of the little parts I normally would when using these patterns. It looks kind of blah at this point.

Patterns Used: Beelight, Fassett, N'zeppel, Tipple, Baton, Frosty, Sand Swirl, Arukas, Crescent Moon, Knot Rickz, Antidots, Podzles, Maryhill

Then I added the blackened parts. I didn't do that originally because I had decided I was going to try adding color later and didn't want the black spots to interfere with my coloring. It's starting to look better here.

Now with the shading it looks much better!

Next I printed a copy to color. But I decided to start with the drawing that has the parts blackened in, rather than pre-blackened. I used chalk pencils to add the color, which, as usual, blended really nicely. Unfortunately, whenever I scan my work it's hard to capture the colors just the way they look in reality. Some sections here look a little washed out.

I like the color, but the black and white shaded one is my favorite. Black and white is what drew me to Zentangle in the first place, and generally wins out over color in my mind... but not always!

Day After Day

"Yesterday's the past, tomorrow's the future, but today is a gift. That's why it's called the present."   Bil Keane

Another month has come and gone. And believe it or not I am right up to date with my tangle*a*day calendar. I've chosen my three favorite pages from February to share with you. For this first page I played around with a new tangle by Lynn Mead called Phroz. I tried it two ways, one with the triangles in a totally random placement, and one with the triangles laid out in rows. Then I added some Fassett, another tangle by Lynn, as well as Paradox.

For the next one I began with Ozzie in the middle. I had never used this tangle before and thought the calendar would be a good place to try it out. I really like it because of the high contrast. Then I added Printemps and Antidots around it.

I was really happy with the way the following one turned out, except for the numbers. I outlined the numbers with a Moonlight gelly roll pen in orange. Those of you who know the Moonlight pens know that it's a bright neon orange. However, the scanner pretty much washed the color out of it completely. I tried doing everything I could in Lightroom to get the color back, but nothing worked. So you'll just have to imagine the neon orange numbers! The tangles I used were Footlites, Floatfest, Inapod, and Kandysnake.

I expect that I'll be back at the end of March with some of my favorite pages from the month. In the meantime, happy March. Hopefully spring will be here soon!