My Zenduo Adventure... or... It Takes 2 to Tangle

"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?

Maryhill

"The shortest distance between two points is a straight line."    Archimedes

I love the tangle pattern Maryhill. It's all lines, so what's not to love about it? The pattern comes from CZT Betsy Wilson, and if you're not familiar with it you can see her step-outs for it here. I decided to focus on Maryhill this week, and created several tiles/drawings with it, varying each one a little (or a lot).

Just to show you a very straightforward version, here is a Bijou tile I made a while ago. I think it's amazing what movement you get with a pattern made up of just lots of lines.

Next is another one I did in my Tangle It! Journal. This time I added a center filled with Printemps. I really like the way this turned out.

Since Maryhill is most often completed in the round, I wanted to create one on a Zendala tile. Choosing a tan Renaissance tile, I used brown and red Micron pens, brown and red pastel pencils for shading, and a white pastel pencil for highlights. I like the way the pop of red worked with the brown.

Rather than making them all round, I decided to complete this one in a square. I used white pen on black, even though I'm not usually such a big fan of that. Not that I don't like the look of white on black, because I do, but working with white pens can be a little challenging. I have never been a fan of the white Sakura gelly roll pens, because they always seem to soak into the tiles and not look bright white. So I generally prefer the Uniball Signo UM 153 white pen for its brighter white look, but it's harder to get really thin lines. I used my Bee Paper Aquabee sketchbook with black paper. The paper is thinner than the tiles, but works better with the white gel pens. I decided to try my Sakura gelly roll pen again since it can draw finer lines than the Signo, and lo and behold, the pen worked really well on this paper, to my surprise! 

Notice I drew a mini Maryhill in the center, with a larger version surrounding it. I used the Sakura pen for the lines and filling in the white spaces in the border, but when it came to filling the larger white areas, I used a Sharpie water based paint marker. And added a hint of bright pink with a moonlight gelly roll pen.

Next is another Maryhill in the round, on one of my hand-colored tiles. I used a black Micron to draw, graphite for shading, and white pastel pencil for highlights. 

Oh...almost forgot. Did you notice something looks a bit different on the above tile? I alternated the direction of each section of the Maryhill, which gives it a totally unique look.

Then, for something VERY different, I started the next tile with a bunch of triangles, and then filled each triangle with a "segment" of Maryhill. I didn't really pay much attention to which direction each segment was facing. 

To give it a bolder look, I added some extra black in each section of the tile.

That's it folks! Experimenting with this great tangle, Maryhill, was an awful lot of fun. Even after so many tiles/drawings, I didn't tire of the repetitive lines of this pattern.

More Lines

"A drawing is simply a line going for a walk."   Paul Klee

I promised you I'd be back with some more of my line drawing (like it or not), so here I am. I absolutely LOVE this first piece I'm showing you here. Drawn on Strathmore tan-toned paper, I used a black micron pen, graphite for shading, and white pastel pencil for highlights. This did not start out to be a flower. It was just random lines, but as it progressed it started looking more like a flower, so the stem was added. My daughter, who was visiting from Scotland, loved this, and believe me, she's very honest and tells me when she doesn't. 

For the next one I used a stencil of a heart on black Artagain paper and filled it with a Signo Uniball white gel pen. I don't love it as much as my flower, but it's not bad.

I did some shading with my white pastel pencil. This may be one of those very rare occasions when I like it better unshaded than shaded. What do you think?

Now that I've had some good practice with this type of drawing, I'll try incorporating it along with other tangle patterns. Stay tuned for more!

Fade to Black

"In the beginning it was all black and white."  Maureen O'Hara

The Diva's challenge this week is to work in white on black. It's been a while since I actually participated in her challenge, and also a while since I've worked on black. So I decided to accept this challenge. 

I am not a fan of how the white pen (Uniball Signo - the only one I use) performs on the black Zentangle tiles, because I think the tile sucks up too much of the ink. My preference is to use black paper instead, when working with white pen. Either Strathmore Artagain paper, or my Big White Bee sketchbook, which is what I used this time. 

I decided to keep it fairly simple, using just Mooka and Mak-rah-mee. The shading was done using my white pastel pencil which felt like butter on this paper.

Although the challenge was white on black, and said nothing about color, I couldn't resist adding just a tiny drop of color - with Moonlight Gelly Roll pens. The color is a little brighter in person than in this picture, but I really like the pop that it adds.

Now back to the larger project I'm working on for next time. Thanks for stopping by!