Life is Full of Surprises

"One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn't do."    Henry Ford

When I saw the focus tangle for this week on the Facebook group Square One, I thought to myself,  "I won't be doing this week's tile!" You see, I am not a fan of the pattern Fengle, which is this week's focus. My problem with Fengle is that it just doesn't seem to go with anything, meaning I never know what other patterns to use with it. But after a few days of watching the pictures that everyone in the group was posting, I got inspired to give it a try.

I decided to keep it simple (that's my new mantra) and tangle the Fengle itself, but not add anything in the background to distract from it. Here it is...

I actually had fun with that tile and chose to do another one, this time including multiple Fengles. This one deserved a background, but hearing that little voice in my head saying, "Keep it simple, keep it simple," I just added some lines, not a real tangle at all.

Now call me crazy (that's what I'm thinking anyway)...I did another one! This one is drawn on a hand-colored tile I made. Colored first, then tangled, then shaded with colored pencils.

At this point I was unstoppable! I had two Fengle tiles in the traditional black on white, and a colored tile, so why not do just one more on a black tile? But I didn't do the normal white on black, instead I did black on black. That's right, a black glaze pen drawn on black results in a very elegant look. The photo didn't come out great, and it really looks better in person. Zenstone shading around the outside gave it a kind of glowing look, and white charcoal pencil was used to add some highlights. The funny looking thing at the bottom of the picture is a clip that held the tile up for taking the photo.

Wow! Last week when I saw the focus on Fengle who would have thought that a few short days later I would have 4 tiles? Certainly not me. Life is full of surprises...but I think it will probably be a long time before you find me using Fengle again.

Glow Little Glow-Worm, Glow and Glimmer

"The sun's glow had given way to a brilliant twilight that colored the great mountains with violet and orange rivers."   
Michael R. Hicks

Finally....I'm ready to show you what I learned at Tangle University, which I can't believe was a month ago already. Sandy Steen Bartholomew, famous (at least in the Zentangle world) tangler and author extraordinaire, presented a workshop she called "Glowing Prints." We used  scratch-foam, stencils, white ink pads, and various tools and pens, to make prints on black cardstock. 

Here is the one I made during Tangle U...the only one I made there that I like enough to share.

I knew that I needed to go home and practice some more, so I ordered my scratch-foam and ink pad and waited for them to arrive. Then I pulled out my microns, white Uniball Signo gel pen, white charcoal pencil, black glaze pen, black colored pencil and began to play. I have to admit that some of my attempts were discarded along the way. But this elephant made the cut, and is kind of an epilogue to my post from a couple of weeks ago.

 

 Here's my first dragonfly...

...and my second one, created using a little different method than the first.

The second one actually incorporates a touch of color with Moonlight gelly roll pens. The color did not scan well at all, and although you can see the green a little bit, you can't see the orange at all. You'll have to take my word for it...it's really there. It's very frustrating when the color doesn't show up the way it should.

Next is my cat, with some gold accents, which, thankfully, show well in the picture.

Last, is possibly my favorite one.  And to think I almost threw it out. I used a laser cut stencil from Acadia Laser Creations (fellow CZT Jenny Perruzzi). Without going into all the details, I "scratched" it reversed on the foam from the way I wanted it. Was ready to toss it when I realized I could still use it, in a different way than I originally had planned. The dots you see in this one are really pink, but they don't look much like it in this picture.

I really enjoyed playing and experimenting with this technique. Thank you Sandy Steen Bartholomew. Now to decide if I want to teach this in a class.