"A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it." George A. Moore
The Diva's challenge this week is to create a tile that reflects your home in some way. We recently purchased a summer home in the mountains of NC and this is my first summer here. So I chose to use this home as my inspiration.
First I drew a string to represent the mountains. I used bristol vellum paper, a green micron, and 3 different shades of green pastel pencils for shading. As a finishing touch I added some Msst (with gray pen) to show all the rain we've had here, which is why everything is SO green. I wish I had remembered to take a picture before I shaded. Besides the Msst, the tangles used are N'zeppel, Sea Wave, Leeter, Fallen Leaves, and Shattuck.
Hope you are all enjoying your summer (or winter, depending where you are.) I'm loving the cool mountain air!
"I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear." Nelson Mandela
A while back a good friend of mine gave me this (African?) drum as a gift. Here's a side view.
And here it is from the top. As soon as I saw it, it screamed out to me to be tangled. But I'm always nervous about tangling on these kinds of things where, if I mess up, I've ruined it. Unlike a piece of paper that I can toss in the garbage and start over if I want.
So it remained untangled... until recently when I brought it up to my new summer place in the mountains. It fits in so nicely with my more rustic decor up here. But it was still screaming out to be tangled. So I gathered up all my courage and decided to go ahead... so hard!
Because it's round, a Zendala just seemed like the natural thing to do. I didn't want anything too intricate... that would only give me more opportunity to mess up and regret my decision... so I chose a fairly simple design. I wasn't sure if it would work to transfer it onto the drum skin with graphite, but I gave it a try. It worked but was very light and hard to see, so the first thing I did was darken it a bit by going over all the lines with pencil.
Notice that the drum is sitting in a box that fit very tightly around it. That was to hold the drum still since the bottom is narrow and not totally flat. The box worked really well to keep it steady.
The next uncertainty was how the pen would perform on the slightly textured/rough surface of the drum. I used an Identipen, and to my surprise it drew very nicely, even on the roughest of the spots.
Some line work and some Paradox. So far so good! I really wanted to stop there, before it went wrong, but I knew I couldn't. I continued with some patterns that I felt confident about, first adding a border of Gewurtz.
Then I wanted to add something in those last sections, but it needed to be kind of light and airy, so I decided on Florz.
I didn't add any shading on this, partly because I had no idea what would work for shading, but also because I like the stark contrast and boldness of it just the way it is.
Here it is in what I thought was going to be it's resting place, but after some rearranging of my decor, it is now sitting on a different wooden shelf.
I really love the way this turned out and am so glad I gathered the courage to finally do this project.
"People don't notice whether it's winter or summer when they're happy." Anton Chekhov
Happy summer to those of you in my neck of the woods, and happy winter to the rest of you. Summer is a time full of flowers and color, so this is going to be a colorful post.
The first tile I'm sharing with you is one of my alcohol ink background zendala tiles.
Just because it's a round tile doesn't mean it needs to be tangled with a zendala. I love the swirl in the tile, so I decided to tangle along with the flow. This is the first time I've used the pattern Floral Waves. I think it goes well with the swirl in the tile. Then I added some Mooka and Tipple to finish it off.
But (almost) no tile is complete, in my mind, without shading. So out came my trusty pastel pencils, and blues and pinks were used to add the finishing touches.
Then it was onto another zendala tile, this time one of my "pre-strung" alcohol ink backgrounds. The designs formed by the inks can be used as a string to tangle inside or outside, or just tangle right over them.
That big shape going right up the center of the tile reminded me of a tree trunk, so after tangling that with Sand Swirl, I added Pokeleaf "foliage" to the tree. And once again, pastel pencils were my choice for shading.
In case you're interested, these colored tiles are available, along with many more, in my Etsy shop here.
Until next time, happy tangling!
"Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous." Bill Moyers
I love Zendalas. Sometimes when I'm feeling really creative I start from scratch and design my own using various methods: compass and ruler, stencils, freehand... But this time I didn't want to have to think too much, so I chose to start with a mandala pattern from a coloring book I have called Mandala Designs, which you can see here.
This is what the page looked like before I put my hands (or should I say my pens) on it.
I transferred the design onto a piece of off-white Stonehenge paper, one of my favorite surfaces for tangling and shading on. Cadent was used for the border, Fassett for the triangular area, and Coil for the...other sections... not sure what to call them. I love the way Coil looks, but boy did it take a lot of concentration. That was certainly not the most relaxing part of this Zendala for me! So much for not wanting to think too hard.
I'm really happy with the way this one looks and like the contrast of the dark parts. About half of the book I mentioned has designs great for tangling (the other half would be for coloring), so I have lots more to use when I'm having another lazy Zendala kind of day.
"No matter what the colour of your skin is, we all bleed RED."
HH Younus AlGohar
It's been a long time since I last blogged. I've been really busy with lots of other things (family visiting, vacations, selling a house and building a house), and I haven't tangled nearly as much as I usually do. But I'm taking time to share what I did for the Diva's challenge this week, which was to use the pattern Molygon.
For the first one I chose a Zendala tile, drew some Molygon in the center, and added Pokeleaf (and a few Pokeroots) around the outside. I used my red stardust gelly roll pen to add some color.
For the next one I used a 4 inch tile I cut from Bristol vellum paper, one of my favorite surfaces for tangling and shading. I couldn't decide if it needed something more around the outside, but I left it as is.
I added some red to both of these tiles because in the FB group that I manage, Zentangle: Adventures in Color, I just issued a challenge to add only red to a traditional black and white piece. If you're not already a member of that group, enjoy adding color to your work, and would like to join, click here to get to that page. If you do, please be sure to read the group guidelines!
