A Little Piece of Tangle U

"Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow."    Anthony J. D'Angelo

Another Tangle U goes down in the history books. I had a week long vacation in Santa Fe before TU even began. Unfortunately I caught a cold on the plane and was sick the whole time. There's nowhere to escape when everyone around you on the plane is coughing and sneezing, and I knew the outcome wouldn't be good. I still managed to enjoy my time out west, but it could have been better. Tangle U was an amazing event, thanks to Elaine Huffman, as it was the last two years, with lots to do. It would have been totally exhausting even if I hadn't been sick!

Now that I'm home from Santa Fe (still coughing) and have slowly found a place for all the goodies (pens, pencils, paper, markers, etc.) that we received, I fit in some time to start working on/completing some of the projects and ideas brought home with me. 

One of the classes was a mandala class given by Ann Grasso. We used her 4 N 1 Mandala Stencil and created strings for 4 different Zendalas. I have to say that the stencil itself is quite weird looking, and when I first saw it I had no idea how it would be used to draw a Zendala string. But it works, as Ann taught us. After learning to use the stencil and drawing the 4 strings, we had some time to begin working on one. Here is the one I began in class, on an official Zendala tile, and finished after I got home this week.

Then I took out another string I had drawn on a piece of light gray cardstock. You can't really tell from this picture that it's gray, and as I found, it's not a dark enough gray to use white highlights on as I do when I use Strathmore gray toned paper. So just graphite shading on this one, no highlights.

Whenever I work on something in a class I find that I'm not as happy with it as something created at home when I'm more relaxed, in familiar surroundings, with all my supplies accessible to me. This was the case on these Zendalas as well....I like the second one better than the first. But now I have another fun method in my Zendala making arsenal. And I still have two more strings I drew in Santa Fe to work on. Maybe I'll be back with those another day. But before then I will be working on some of the other projects from Tangle U to share with you soon.