Zenduos # 7 and 8

"If you're not being challenged, you're not getting any better."     Bart Brooks

As promised, I'm back with another segment of my Zenduo adventure. For #7 I grabbed a colored tile that has been sitting in my pile for a LONG time. It was colored using Dylusions paints, some pink and some purple. The next two tangles in my collection were Atorm (by Mate Mavromat... sp?) and Auraknot from Zentangle.com. They are two very different tangles, so I chose to focus on Auraknot and make a border for it with Atorm. I like the off-center Auraknot and was very happy with my tile.

Here it is with some shading on Auraknot. I used my purple pastel pencil to help pull out some more of the purple in the background.

I also completed Zenduo #8. Talk about two very different tangles... here's a grid, B'Twined (by Pegi Schargel), and a very organic pattern, B'Dylan (by Mary Beth Schoonover). It was tough figuring out how to put these two together, but I managed to come up with something...

One thing I am loving about my Zenduo adventure (besides it forcing me to use a lot of my seldom used tangles), is that it makes me come up with creative combinations. Many of the pairings I will be doing are not tangles that I would normally put together. The challenge is good for me!

In case you are new to my blog and have no idea what my Zenduo adventure is all about, you can get informed here. 

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!

Back to Square One

"I go wherever my creativity takes me."   Lil Wayne

Another week and another focus in the Square One Facebook group. Pendrills. I've only used this tangle a couple of times before but remember enjoying it when I did, so I decided to give it another try. I wound the Pendrills around and around (not quite sure when to stop) and then added some B'Dylan, a fairly new (I think) pattern from Mary Beth Schoonover. I love the light, feathery feel of B'Dylan.

This tile was inspired, in part, by a tile posted by Cherryl Moote, where she used "powder puffs," as she called them, in the background. Although she didn't seem too happy with the way hers turned out, I loved the look, and that's what led me to this.

Although the Pendrills are all tangled up (no pun intended), the tile still has a simple, uncluttered look to it. At least that's the way I see it. And I love it!