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. 

 

Brusho Magic

"Life is art. Live yours in color."     Unknown

Have you ever heard of Brusho paints? Maybe you already have some, but if you never heard of them you should check them out on Pinterest or Youtube. They are watercolor ink crystals (meaning they're powders) that can create some very unique effects. Some time ago I bought a pack of 12, but have done very little with them. I had a free afternoon recently and pulled them out to play. 

It was a good chance to use some of the pile of odd sized papers that I have sitting around, leftover pieces from other projects. There was some cold pressed watercolor paper, hot pressed, mixed media, bristol vellum, and even some yupo. By the time I was finished I wasn't sure what paper was what... I should have documented them in some way. I laid a wash of water on some and then sprinkled the brusho crystals on. Others were spritzed with water after the crystals were put down. On some the crystals were just left alone to do their magic, some were manipulated with a brush or sponge, and other papers were tilted to let the paint run around the surface. Again, by the time I was done, I couldn't tell you which method was used on which paper! 

Most papers were larger than tile size. Once they were dry I looked for the sections that I liked most and cut them into tiles, discarding the parts I wasn't too fond of. Here's the first one. 

The color reminded me of fire or the sun, which led me to tangle it like this (using black Micron, white Uniball Signo pen, and just a touch of pastel pencil for shading)...

Patterns used: Squid, Tipple, and Maryhill

On the next one I achieved a very different look.

I decided to run the tangling around most of the color. Then I added some shading with pastel pencils. I LOVE using them for shading on tiles with color. There is a color to match pretty much anything, and they smudge and spread so easily with a tortillion.

Pattern used: Huggins

And the last one I have to share with you today, with another different look...

When I began this one it was going to be stacked with rows of tangles, but as you can see, that's not exactly what happened! I used no shading on this one other than what was provided by the paint.

 Patterns used: Sand Swirl, Gewurtz, and Arukas

I have several more tiles prepared, waiting to be tangled another time. Have I inspired you to get some Brushos of your own to try... or to pull out the ones you may already have?

Me and My Shadow

"Measure your mind's height by the shade it casts."    Robert Browning

As you all probably know by now, I love my pastel pencils. I decided to do a little (very little) experiment to see how they would work for adding shading over my Tombow brush markers. First I tangled on an official Zentangle tile (3 1/2 inches square). I added color where I wanted it, using the markers. Now I could have shaded with the markers also, either by adding more layers of the same color, or using a darker color, but I have never had great luck with having those layers blend nicely into each other. So I tried my pastel pencils. Wherever you detect shading, that's the pencils. Unfortunately, as I blended them with my smudger (tortillon), the paper had some shredding and pilling going on. And I did not need to rub hard at all to do the blending. So I wasn't too happy with that, but I actually think it turned out pretty good, and you can't really notice the shredding. Since the Tombows are water based, I did wait a couple of hours before shading....maybe I should have waited even longer.

I decided to try another one, this time on watercolor paper to see if that would work any better. I cut a square, this one 4 inches, from 90 lb. Canson watercolor paper. I should have rounded the corners before taking my photo, but forgot...the squares I cut on my own always look classier with rounded corners. In the same manner as before, I colored my tangled design with Tombows, gave it a while to dry, and added the shading with the pencils. This time there was no pilling or shredding. Maybe I waited longer before shading? But I think it was because this paper is better meant to handle the watercolor.

Would I use my pastel pencils to shade over Tombows again? Definitely! But I will remember to do it on watercolor paper.

Colors of the Wind

"We need to sing with all the voices of the mountains. We need to paint with all the colors of the wind."
"Colors of the Wind" (Pocahontas) by Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz

I've mentioned here a couple of times that I was going to a Zentangle retreat for CZTs in Santa Fe this month. Well, I just got back from Santa Fe and it was wonderful! But more about that in my next post. 

I had a vendor table there to sell my hand-colored tiles. In preparation for this I spent a lot of time mass producing the tiles so I'd have enough stock to take with me. Since I wanted to show the various ways to tangle on these tiles, I also spent some time tangling samples to bring. Here is some of what I brought with me.

The first one is a pink water-colored tile tangled with a rose-colored Micron pen and shaded with a matching pink Prismacolor pencil. I added a few subtle white highlights also. 

The next one is a blue/turquoise water-colored tile tangled with black Micron. I added some blue Prismacolor pencil shading and white highlighting in all those antidots in the center.

This one was tangled on a purple double-sided tile colored with alcohol ink. The tiles colored with alcohol ink end up with a very organic kind of look to them, and since they are colored on both sides, you can choose to tangle both, or just have a tile with a very pretty colored back to it. I used purple Micron on this one and purple Prismacolor pencil for shading.

Another alcohol ink tile, this one was colored with subtle blue and gray tones.  I decided to use black pen to tangle it, and then added shading with both a graphite pencil and blue Prismacolor. 

This yellow tile called out to me to use a brown pen, and I love the way it looks on the yellow. Brown colored pencil was used to shade.

This last tile was done with watercolor and turned out a little darker than many of my other tiles. I tangled this one using my white Signo Uniball  pen to show how nice the white works on the darker tiles. This is not my favorite tile, but at least it illustrates my point well.

There are so many options for working on colored tiles and they're a lot of fun to do when you want to take a break from the traditional black on white. If you'd like to try some, please check out my Etsy shop for these tiles. Round Zendala tiles are available also. What's really fun is that no two tiles are exactly alike!

Paint With all the Colors of the Wind

"Colors are the smiles of nature."     Leigh Hunt

Back in April when I attended Tangle U in Maine, I bought some hand-colored tiles from fellow CZT Sue Jacobs. This first one, a blue Zendala tile, was completed using a stencil from Acadia Laser Creations, along with blue pen and colored pencil for shading.

I was very happy with the way it turned out, so I went on to do another one, this time in pink. It's okay, but I think my tangle choices could have been better. However, I was loving the whole colored pen and pencil thing.

Then I decided to try making some of my own tiles. I used several methods, including watercolor paint, Ranger distress ink pads, alcohol inks, and Tombow markers. So much fun, and the results were so interesting! Here's one I did where I tangled the green parts of the tile and left the pink parts as open space.

 

This next one in pink and purple, I decided to tangle using black pen, along with colored pencils and graphite pencil for shading. This reminds me a little bit of the trees that I've recently seen Margaret Bremner post. I like the combination of colors here.

Next is another tile that I made. I decided to try a red pen on this tile colored with orange and yellow. I love the way these colors look together.

I thought I'd share some of the other tiles I created, just waiting to be tangled.

This last picture is a group of leftover pieces of paper that I colored using various methods. They're smaller than tile size. I was just fooling around with the scraps rather than throwing them away (recycling).

Who knew working with color in this way could be so much fun!

Wild and Wacky

"Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration of victory."   George S Patton

This week I joined a new Facebook group called Wacky Zentangle Weekly Challenges. Not that I don't already have enough (too many) groups that I belong to. But I like the idea of having another challenge to do each week, or choose not to do as I see fit, especially since the Zendala Dare has been put on hold for a while. The challenge for this week is to make a Zentangle with ribbons, stripes and/or bands. Here's my take on the challenge.

Starting with a Hollibaugh string to form my bands, I filled each one with a different tangle. I added shading to the edges of each band in an effort to make them look rounded. I think it worked better on some of the bands than others. Once shaded, I felt like it needed something else but didn't want to add more tangles. Deciding to keep the "less is more" look, I added some color to the background using watercolor pencils. I was very happy with the finished look.

Then I decided to try another one. This time I thought I'd draw ribbons. Recently I purchased Helen Williams' (a little lime) e-book, Flips, folds, ribbon and strings, so I went through it reading her directions and watching her videos on how to draw ribbons. I will never be as good as Helen, but I'm not totally unhappy with what I did.

I think I need some more practice, but I had fun doing it.

Can't wait to see what the wacky challenge is for next week!

Blowin' in the Wind

"Art is not what you see, but what you make others see."     Edgar Degas

I decided to play around with something new this week. I've seen this technique demonstrated in various books, blogs, etc., and have been meaning to try it for a while. You may be wondering what I'm talking about. I'm calling it a blown ink design. Blowing ink around a paper through a straw. Here's how I started.

Well, that's not exactly how I started. First I went through many trial runs. The idea is to drop some acrylic ink on a piece of paper and then use a combination of tilting the paper and blowing through a straw to push the ink around the paper in random designs. I tested several different kinds of paper before deciding on the one that worked best. I tried 90 lb.watercolor paper, 140 lb. watercolor paper, bristol paper, mixed media paper, and canvas. The only one that seemed to work for me was the 90 lb. paper. On all the others I found the ink immediately sunk into the paper and did not move around much. So after several tries, the above design is what I ended up with. 

The next step was to add color using some watercolor medium. My choices were several different paints, watercolor pencils, liquid watercolors, and Caran d'Ache water soluble crayons. I decided on the crayons, and the result is shown below. It reminds me of stained glass, which is what I used to do in a past lifetime, so I think it's kind of pretty.

Of course the final step was to tangle. When coloring I made the decision to leave a few spaces white, and when tangling I decided to leave a few spaces untangled. It was during the tangling that I realized maybe the water soluble crayons were not the best choice for adding color. I had some problems with the Micron 01 and 02 tips getting clogged up, I assume from the wax in the crayons. When I used the Apprentice pen with an 05 plastic type nib, the results were much better. Lesson learned for next time.

I turned the paper round and round deciding which way is up, and settled on the above when I saw what looked like a boot in it. My husband says he sees a face. Anyone see something else?

Takin' Care of Business

“The best way to predict your future is to create it”

Peter F. Drucker  

Last week I attended a marketing retreat in Dallas for CZTs, led by CZT Angie Vangalis. It was an amazing three days filled with information and inspiration for moving my Zentangle business forward. In addition to the business information shared, we worked on several fun projects, some of which will turn into new classes that I'll be offering in the near future. I'm sharing photos of a few of those projects here. 

This first one is an illuminated letter that I tangled on the front cover of a journal. The glimmer in the letter "C" is not clearly visible in the picture, but was the result of using Fine Tec paints in one of the golds found in the pearl colors set. A white charcoal pencil was used to create the white highlights.

Here is a picture showing an interesting way to use a tangle pattern as the string for other tangles. To begin, I drew W² and then used a few other tangles (Hypnotic, Printemps, Dex, and Jalousie) to fill the spaces formed by W². I also used one misplaced Hybrid which doesn't belong there, but there are no mistakes in Zentangle so I just went with it!

This last picture shows some tangling on a background made with random watercolor paint strokes. It's such a fun, simple way to add a little color to your designs.

I was happy with the way all three of these projects turned out. And happy with my whole experience in Dallas. I hope to get to see my new CZT friends, who came from all over the country, again soon.