Drip, Drop

"Color! What a deep and mysterious language, the language of dreams."   Paul Gauguin

The Diva's challenge this week is to use color. Looking back, I realized that most of my recent blogs  have been about using color in some form. So here is another one.

Almost exactly a year ago I wrote a blog about using alcohol inks on glossy paper as a background for tangling. You can see that post here. It's interesting to see how much my tangling style has changed and evolved since then. During the last year I have used my alcohol inks to make lots of colored tiles on watercolor paper, but have not used them again on glossy paper. I've been inspired by seeing other people post about using the inks, so I decided it was time to play with them again. Actually, a while ago I bought Yupo paper (you can read about it by clicking on the link), and a new book about creating with alcohol inks, Pigments of Your Imagination. And they've been sitting around waiting for me for some time now. The time finally came last week.

I cut up the Yupo into pieces about 3 1/2 x 5 inches, and following the book and other information I've collected, I squirted, and blew, and splattered, and tilted, and pushed, and pulled. It was so much fun to play, not ever really knowing what to expect. I used both Ranger inks and Spectrum Noir inks, along with 91% alcohol. I used straws, and credit cards, and coffee stirrers, and q-tips. The result was many, many, beautiful, bright, inky little pieces of art. Some of them are so pretty on their own that I almost didn't want to tangle on them.

Here's a picture of one of the first ones I used. This was created by dropping ink on the paper, letting it spread, dropping more ink, dripping alcohol, and repeating those steps until I was happy with the results. Adding alcohol helps the ink spread, and can also lighten the colors. This is the before...

And this is the after (using Sakura Microperm pens)...

I started by tangling the obvious circular shapes, and then filled in behind, leaving a few sections of color untouched. 

The next one is one of my favorite "tiles" that I made. I love the color combination. It was created by laying down lines of ink, then spreading with a straw or coffee stirrer (I don't remember which), and tilting, and spritzing alcohol on it.

I wasn't worried about that green spot that somehow found it's way onto the paper, because I knew that once I tangled it would disappear...

Due to the process of spreading the inks around, it is inevitable that some of the ink seeps to the underside of the paper. Most of the time it just looks like a mess, and I don't really care what the back looks like. But every once in a while the back side turns out to look really nice and artistic, purely by accident. Like on the pink and yellow piece above. Here's what it looked like.

Some of that was from ink seeping under the edges, and the different colors you see were leftover on the craft sheet I was working on. I thought it could look really nice if I tangled on all that white space in between the beautiful inky edges. So that's what I did.

I'm not sure that I really like the combination of tangles that I chose, but did like the effect of tangling down the middle. A big stack of more of these "tiles" awaits my pen, and I'll share some of them another time. If any of you are interested in learning how to use these inks, I would highly recommend the book I linked to above. 

Happy inking and tangling!

Paint With all the Colors of the Wind

"Colors are the smiles of nature."     Leigh Hunt

Back in April when I attended Tangle U in Maine, I bought some hand-colored tiles from fellow CZT Sue Jacobs. This first one, a blue Zendala tile, was completed using a stencil from Acadia Laser Creations, along with blue pen and colored pencil for shading.

I was very happy with the way it turned out, so I went on to do another one, this time in pink. It's okay, but I think my tangle choices could have been better. However, I was loving the whole colored pen and pencil thing.

Then I decided to try making some of my own tiles. I used several methods, including watercolor paint, Ranger distress ink pads, alcohol inks, and Tombow markers. So much fun, and the results were so interesting! Here's one I did where I tangled the green parts of the tile and left the pink parts as open space.

 

This next one in pink and purple, I decided to tangle using black pen, along with colored pencils and graphite pencil for shading. This reminds me a little bit of the trees that I've recently seen Margaret Bremner post. I like the combination of colors here.

Next is another tile that I made. I decided to try a red pen on this tile colored with orange and yellow. I love the way these colors look together.

I thought I'd share some of the other tiles I created, just waiting to be tangled.

This last picture is a group of leftover pieces of paper that I colored using various methods. They're smaller than tile size. I was just fooling around with the scraps rather than throwing them away (recycling).

Who knew working with color in this way could be so much fun!

The Power of Gold

"Make new friends but keep the old. One is silver and the other is gold."  Author unknown.

I'm in the process of publishing an e-book of all new tangles that I have designed, along with some from guest contributors. It has been taking up a LOT of my time, but I'm really enjoying the process. My goal is to have it ready for my Etsy shop sometime next month. With all my time and energy being spent on that, I haven't been doing a lot of tangling just for relaxation. So I stepped away from my pattern sketchbook this morning to simply tangle.

I had been wanting to test out some new "pens" I got recently, so I figured this was my opportunity. I'm talking about the Sakura pen-touch metallic ink markers. I was told that they work great on black tiles/paper, so that's what I wanted to see. The picture below was my first try, on an official Zentangle tile. I used the gold, silver, and copper markers in the extra fine point. While not as fine a point as the Microns I usually use, they were thin enough to draw nice detailed lines. I love how all three colors look on the black. For shading just a touch, I used the zenstone, recently introduced by Zentangle.com, but I wasn't too excited by the way it looked with the metallic markers.

Next I decided to try one more, so I pulled out a black "tag" from Ranger. I stuck to just one color on this design - the gold. It has a very rich look on the black. The paper is smoother than the Zentangle tiles, and again the markers worked beautifully. For this one, I used Derwent metallic watercolor pencils (without the water), to do the shading. I think it was a much better match than the zenstone.

 

I also have a couple of the markers in a fine tip, which are great for filling in larger areas, but I didn't use them for anything on these pieces. Although I'm not totally satisfied with either of my designs, my objective was to try out the markers, so that I did, and I'm very happy with the way they look. I will definitely be using them again.

Now back to my sketchbook...