I Dare You!

"To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself."    Soren Kierkegaard

I was so happy to see the Zendala Dare return last week after Erin Koetz Olson, CZT had taken a hiatus from creating the dare for a while. But time got away from me and I didn't get a chance to do the dare last week. This week I did. I decided to do something a little different... moonlight gelly roll pens on black paper. It was a pleasure to use the new moonlight pens (06) which make thinner lines than the originals. I've had them for a while but had not done much with them. The finer tip made it much easier to draw lines without them blobbing (that's the technical word) together. I did use the fatter pen to fill in the pink triangles in the center. I love the contrast between the bright colors and the black background.

I couldn't decide what to do for shading. If I used colored pencils that match the pens, I knew that they would muddy up the pen lines. And the same thing would happen with the white charcoal pencil. So I decided to try the Zenstone (available from zentangle.com or a CZT.) It adds very subtle shading, with a smoky look. As a matter of fact, it's so subtle that I don't know if you can really distinguish it in the following picture, but I thought I'd share the final piece here anyway. I enjoyed using the Zenstone and liked that it didn't cover up any of the pen lines. 

So happy to see you back with the dare, Erin!