There's No Place Like Home

"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!

 

Arukas

"Life is the art of drawing without an eraser."   John W. Gardner

The Diva is back to her blogging this week, and the new challenge is to use the tangle Arukas. About a month ago, when this tangle was newly released, I tried it out on a couple of tiles. The first one I did back then was on a Zendala tile. I loved the way this turned out, enough so that I included it when I recently changed the headers on  this blog and my website, tanglemania.com. I really like tangling on the round tiles even if they are not your typical Zendalas.

Since I enjoyed this pattern so much, I was happy to see this week's challenge. I picked one of my hand-colored tiles to use and completed it in a similar fashion to the round one, but blackened and shaded different areas, as well as adding 'Nzeppel in the background. Not bad, but I don't like it as much as my first tile. 

Then something interesting happened. I was looking through a pile of completed tiles I had sitting on my shelf. Lo and behold, I found another Arukas tile I did last month and had completely forgotten about.

Well, would you look at that! I used 'Nzeppel in that background also! I guess I have a one track mind. They are a little different... the turquoise one has 'Nzeppel in a grid, and the pink one has it laid out randomly. And of course the rest of the pattern was done very differently, with curving arms. This is not my favorite tile.... probably why I had forgotten about it!

I did like the idea of curvy arms, however, so I decided to do another tile, trying to make it very different. I think I achieved my objective.

It's on an apprentice tile, which is a little bigger and a little whiter than the regular Zentangle tiles. I had decided to make the arms wavy, but of course was not thinking as I began, and drew the first lines straight. There are no mistakes in Zentangle, so I just continued. It was a happy 'mistake', as I love the way it looks with one straight side and the others wavy! This is definitely a pattern that has been added to my list of favorites.

I've Got the World on a String

"Creativity itself doesn't care at all about results - the only thing it craves is the process. Learn to love the process and let whatever happens next happen, without fussing too much about it."
Elizabeth Gilbert

This past week's "It's a String Thing" posed the challenge to use string #044 from tanglepatterns.com, along with any or all of four tangle patterns beginning with the letter N. Those tangles are N'zeppel, Nipa, Neuron, and ... Navaho. That's my pattern! How could I not participate? 

I chose to use another one of my hand-colored tiles like the ones I was playing around with in my last post. I intended to take a picture of the tile before tangling on it, but, as is par for the course, I forgot to take the picture. Not too far into the tangling I remembered that I had forgotten (if that makes sense), so here's the picture.

Continuing with my tangling, I decided to keep it to two patterns. I have recently come to the realization that often, when I am not happy with my completed work, it's because it looks too busy. So, I'm trying to simplify my pieces by cutting down on the number of patterns I include. For this tile I stuck to only two, my pattern Navaho (in three variations), along with one of my all time favorites, N'Zeppel.

I like the empty space in the center (another thing I often forget to include), and I'm happy with the not too cluttered look. And of course I love the colors.