Zenduo # 13

"If you get stuck, draw with a different pen. Change your tools; it may free your thinking."     Paul Arden

It's been a while since I've worked on my Zenduo project, but I'm finally back with another one. If you didn't catch the beginning of my project, and have no idea what I'm talking about, you can read about it here.

This one is lucky #13. The two patterns used were Bloom from Helen Williams and Borbz from Rita N. These two did not suggest an easy way of combining them, and I wasn't all that happy with this, but it did look better with some shading, white pastel pencil highlights, and a little bit of gold metallic gelly roll pen. I used some new paper I recently bought... a pad of Strathmore Artagain paper in several different colors. I've used, and like, their black drawing paper, but had not seen these colors before. This one is a light brown and shows the white highlights nicely.

I really liked the metallic gold so thought I'd add a little more. I outlined the blooms to make them pop a bit.

The paper worked very well with the pens and pencils I used, and I'm looking forward to trying out some of the other colors in the pad.

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.  

Gray Magic

"You just do the best you can with what you've got... and sometimes magic strikes."     Sally Field

Just stopping by with a quick post to show you what I worked on today. Time for some gray-toned Strathmore paper. And of course with gray paper comes a black Micron, white pastel pencil for highlights, white uni-ball Signo UM 153 pen for accents, and graphite for shading.

 Patterns used: Porky, Flux, Phicops, Printemps, and Tipple

I'm happy with the flow in this, and love the magic of the highlighting and shading on gray. That's it for now. Told you it would be quick. Hope to see you back here next time!

Diva Circles

"Life is a circle. The end of one journey is the beginning of the next."     
Joseph M. Marshall

Just stopping by with a quick post. I saw that the Diva's challenge for this week is to make a string out of circles and tangle it. Well, it so happens that last week I did just that, so I decided to post it now. 

I've been doing a lot with alcohol inks lately, and that's where the vibrant colors in this piece come from. Alcohol inks were spread all around on a piece of Yupo to make the background, and then alcohol was dropped in random places to form all the circles. 

Using a Microperm pen, I tangled the circles and added some white highlights. First I used my Uniball Signo white pen to do the highlights, but after a short time they faded  and were not very bright. So I tried my white Souffle pen and went over the same spots. This time they stayed bright and are puffed up a little from the paper, hence the name Souffle.

Patterns used: Munchin tangleation, Kuke, Marasu, and Purk

I had a lot of fun making this one. Hope you like it!

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.

Here, There and Everywhere

"Well, as you can plainly see, the possibilities are endless like meandering paths in a great big beautiful garden."    William S. Burroughs

The Diva's challenge this week is to use the newly released tangle pattern called Molygon. I had a lot of fun with this pattern and just kept wanting to try something different, so I'm sharing a number of my experiments here.

On this first one I just let my Molygon wander around, and instead of filling the segments with anything, I only shaded. Using graphite on the top section, I followed the design down with a few different colored pastel pencils for the shading. The blue part was really a little more towards the color teal, but this is the best I could get when scanning it.

Next I used a piece of Stonehenge paper that has a slightly grey tone. I added some striping to Molygon and then some Flux. Shading and white highlights finished it off.

I've seen some tanglers who tangle tiny, but that's not me. I can't work tiny -- it bothers my eyes. So I knew there wouldn't be any fill inside the following one. I just shaded and added some darker outlining to some of them to give it a little more contrast.

I drew my next Molygon larger so I'd have space to add fill.

Then I wanted to try adding some color, so using my Tombow brush markers, here is what I did. Again, the colors didn't translate as well as I would have liked, and what looks pink here is really more coral colored. Something about the colors in this one makes me happy... minus the stray marker line.

Then I said to myself, "Just one more!" In all of the above drawings my Molygon segments have a bit of space between them. I wanted to try one where they were spaced closer together. And I wanted it to be really different, so I did this one with white pen on black, and added some Printemps and Zinger. The segments are closer, but I had to concentrate on each one... for some reason my hand just wanted to leave more space. This one may be my favorite one of all. 

Molygon was such a fun tangle to play with. It's really easy to draw, and you can let it meander here and there and all over the place. Leave it empty and just shade, add tangles within, add tangles among the segments.... whatever you do, it looks great!

 

Tangle in a Tangle

"Originality is the best form of rebellion."   Mike Sasso

Just stopping by for a quick post to share my entries for the Diva's challenge this week. The challenge was to use a tangle for your string, make it big, and then tangle inside the tangle. 

For my first one, I worked on Strathmore Toned Grey paper. I used my own tangle, Ringle, for my string. You can find Ringle in my e-book, Step Out in Style. This is what it looked like before filling it.

After tangling inside and adding shading and highlights, this is the finished piece.

 Patterns used inside: Static, Hypnotic, Printemps, Emingle, Keeko, Tipple, Meer

I did another one, this time on a traditional Zentangle tile. Mooka was the tangle I used as my string, adding Knightsbridge and Aquafleur.

I really enjoyed this challenge.... I should remember to use this technique more often.

 

Color on Tan

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

I'm experimenting with color on a tan background. For the tiles I'm sharing today, I used Strathmore tan toned paper. And for the color, I used pastel pencils, my favorite way to do color these days. My first piece was drawn with a green Micron pen. Color was added using three shades of green pencils which blended together beautifully. I love the way it turned out.

Patterns used: Mooka and Shattuck

 

For the next one I tangled with a black Micron pen. Then I used a combination of two green pencils and two blue, to add the color. I don't like this one as much as the first, but it's okay. 

Patterns used: Hamail, Pokeleaf, Zinger

I love being able to use white highlights on the tan paper. I'm looking forward to trying out some other colors too.

Wishing everyone a happy, tangled Thanksgiving. Don't eat too much!

 

Images and Leaks

"I just want to make beautiful things even if nobody cares."
Unknown

It's time for some more tangled stock images from GraphicStock. If you missed my first post about them, you can read it here. Some bright colored pencils before I got my hands on them...

And here they are after...

I love bright colors, which is what attracted me to this image in the first place. And I love the contrast against the black tangling. The next one I worked on is a bit different. 

First I tangled inside the bird. I don't know how well you can see it in the picture below, but I added some Printemp swirls above the bird. I thought I was using a white gelly roll pen, but it turns out it was a souffle pen. That means that it puffs out from the page a little, but the color is very subtle. 

I thought it needed something else... something to ground it, if that makes any sense. So I decided to make a border. Unfortunately, based on how the paper had been cut, it either needed to be a really skinny border, or one that went off the page. Since I often like when part of an image is drawn so it's partly off the page, I decided to go with that. 

I wanted it to stand out a little more, so I picked up a Micron 02 to work with instead of my usual 01. I had not gotten too far on the border when I realized that the pen was leaking all over my hand. Luckily, amazingly, it stayed on my hand and didn't get on the paper. More about the pen in a minute.  I guess the border going off the page looks okay. After some shading and white highlights I was finished.

Now, back to that leaky pen. Did you know that the microns can leak if they are shaken up? It sometimes happens during shipping, from the package being thrown around (the mail/UPS people are probably about as gentle as the luggage handlers at an airport!) But they can also start to leak if YOU shake them. If you're the kind of person who talks with your hands, you should make sure you're not holding a Micron when you talk. Here's what my pen looked like.

But did you also know they can be cleaned and almost always be perfectly fine to use again? Wash off all the ink on the pen, then rinse out the inside of the cap. Use a q-tip to wipe around inside the cap, rinse again, and keep doing that until the q-tip comes out clean. If you don't clean out the cap and just put it back on the pen, it will get all inky again. I've saved a few pens by following these steps. 

Here's hoping that you don't have to clean a leaky pen too often!

Narwal

"An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching."                     Mahatma Gandhi

When the tangle pattern Narwal came out several months ago I thought it was interesting. I added it to my list of patterns to try out, but that list can sometimes get pretty long before I actually sit down and play with them. I've been noticing a lot of people posting their work using Narwal, and it has spurred me on to tackle it. As recommended by many, I found the YouTube video by Helen Williams (A Little Lime) to be quite useful in figuring it out.

Here is my first attempt in a journal of mine (after some practice on scrap paper). I probably would like it better if I had left off the little Narwal on the right side. And if it didn't have that stray pen mark on it!

Next it was on to trying to make it look a little better while integrating it with other tangles. Here I used gray-toned Strathmore paper, and added some Henna Drum and Bunzo. I shaded with graphite and added highlights with my trusty white pastel pencil. 

I like that one SO much more than my first, but in an attempt to show how important practice is, I included them both. Don't ever underestimate the importance of repetition for those patterns that may give you more trouble than others!

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!

Playing Catch Up

"The only way to have a life is to commit to it like crazy."   Angelina Jolie

Time has been slipping away from me lately. I've got my hand in so many Zentangle pots that I'm having a hard time keeping up with them all. There's my blog, my FB journal group, Square One FB group, the Diva's challenge, my tangle*a*day calendar, the zendala dare, making a tile to swap at Tangle U (a retreat for CZTs in Santa Fe next month), mass production of my hand-colored tiles that I will be selling at Tangle U, preparing for the classes I teach....did I forget anything? 

Oh yes... I plan to start sending out a newsletter once or twice a month, and I'm trying to get the first one out this week. It will include information about my upcoming classes, links to websites/videos/articles that might be of interest to tanglers, info on Zentangle products, etc., etc., etc. If you are not already on my email list but would like to receive my newsletters, just scroll down the right side of my blog and enter your information where it says "Subscribe to the Tangle Mania Newsletter."

So, with all of that going on I have missed completing the last two zendala dares. So here they are, better late than never. I'll go backwards. Here's the latest template, #99.

And here's my black and white version. 

I would have added shading, but instead of doing that I wanted to add color. I decided to try a watercolor pencil on this, but am not too happy with it. Love my Tombow brush markers more.

Here is the template for the #98 dare.

Using a tan Renaissance tile with black and brown Micron pens, here's what I came up with.

But with the Renaissance tiles the real magic comes with the shading and highlighting. I used a brown colored pencil and graphite pencil for shading, and a white charcoal pencil for highlights. Now it really pops.

Okay - at least I'm caught up in one thing! Ready to tackle something else. Where to begin?

A Little Birdie Told Me

"A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song."    Maya Angelou

On my way home from a recent trip to Florida, I stopped in Savannah. Although Savannah is a great city, one of my main reasons for making a stop there was to go to Dick Blick (as well as Leopold's, a wonderful place serving up delicious ice cream, a couple of blocks from Dick Blick). Those of you who are artists of any kind will understand why I would make a special stop there. And for those of you who don't know Dick Blick, take my word for it, the store is an artist's paradise. 

One of the things I picked up during this stop is a journal called "Avian Friends Activity Journal." It has some pages for writing, some for coloring, and some with pretty borders or cute pictures in the corner, for tangling on. Well, they're not necessarily for tangling, but that's how I choose to use them. Here's what I created on the first page I did. It started with that cute bird, mushroom, and flower in the bottom corner, and I added the rest.

I had a lot of fun doing this and love the way it turned out. The paper is tan toned, so I was planning to add white highlights like I have done on the tan toned paper from Strathmore, but for some reason the white doesn't really show up well on this paper. You can see it's very faint on my drawing. I tried both white charcoal pencil and white Prismacolor pencil, but neither really stands out. Maybe it's because the paper is a little smoother than the other papers I've worked with. Oh well... I'm still happy with it. (The white going up the right side of the page is just the way it scanned...it didn't lay perfectly flat on the scanner because of the binding.)

Here's a picture of my journal. I don't know if all Dick Blick stores carry it, and I couldn't find it on dickblick.com, but I did see it on Amazon in case any of you are interested.

Gray Matter

"Life is about the gray areas. Things are seldom black and white, even when we wish they were and think they should be..."   
Emily Giffin

It's been a long while since I tangled in my toned paper sketchbooks, so I decided to pull out the gray paper. I always love the way the black pen looks on the paper with white highlights. For my first ZIA I decided to go organic. If anyone knows the name and creator of the main leafy tangle here, please let me know. I have the pattern in my collection, but never knew who to credit. I added some Printemps and B'Dylan to the unnamed pattern, then drew highlights with a combination of white charcoal pencil and white Prismacolor pencil. A little bit of graphite shading and voila! I was VERY happy with the completed piece.

I started this second one with some Tripoli. I could never get the hang of Tripoli until we did an exercise with it at Tangle U last spring. Now I'm okay with it as long as I don't get stressed over the fact that they don't all come out perfectly even and lined up. As a matter of fact, I made a "mistake" in my Tripoli, so I repeated the "mistake" so it wouldn't be the only one. Since Tripoli is all triangles, I decided to stay with the triangle theme, adding some Fassett by Lynn Mead, and Z-Trik by Yamit Fridman, both of which are based on triangles. Again I used the white pencils for highlights and graphite for shading to finish it off.

The white makes the patterns really pop on the toned papers. I must remember to pull out these sketchbooks more often!

An Elephant of a Different Color

"Possessing a healthy imagination is a necessary ingredient for creativity."  Steve Vai

A couple of weeks ago when I was at Tangle University, I bought a few Dreamweaver stencils. They're heavy-duty stencils made from metal and I suspect that they will survive any abuse I send their way. One of the techniques we learned from Sandy Bartholomew was how to make prints on black paper, using these stencils and scratch-foam. I hope to share more about that in a later post once I receive the foam that I ordered from Dick Blick. In the meantime, I played around with a couple of my new stencils, just tangling them in the traditional way. 

One of the stencils I got was a very cute elephant. I traced the stencil, tangled it, and shaded it, and here is what I got.

Part of him (or her?) was shaded using a graphite pencil, and part using Tombow dual brush markers. Can you tell the difference? I love my elephant, so I decided to try some variations. Next came a colored version, but first I scanned it after tangling and before coloring.

Then I went ahead and created a fantasy elephant, more like something you'd find at Disney, very unrealistic, but nevertheless cute.

I used Tombow markers to add the color. It looks a little better in person, but clearly I need some help and practice with using these markers proficiently, and that's why I registered for Marie Browning's Time to Tangle in Color online class. Haven't had time to begin the class yet, obviously.

For my final elephant in the series, I decided to use gray toned paper from Strathmore. After all, elephants really are gray, unlike the previous one. 

I love how this guy turned out, and always love the look of the shading along with white charcoal pencil highlighting on the toned papers. But I decided to try one more thing. I took my original elephant and played with it in Lightroom to come up with this.

Remember that horse of a different color that Dorothy met in the Emerald City? I guess this is an elephant of a different color!

I had a lot of fun playing with my elephant and can't wait to use him for printing when my new supplies arrive.