Illusions

"Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live."     Mark Twain

According to Wikipedia, Op art, or optical art, is "a style of visual art that uses optical illusions." The style is abstract, typically done in black and white, and often gives the illusion of some kind of movement. Black and white... just like Zentangle art. Abstract... just like Zentangle art. Striking contrast that I love. After all, isn't it really just a form of the tangle pattern Knightsbridge? No wonder I'm so drawn to Op art.

So I decided to try making some of my own pieces. First I studied photos in books I own as well as on Pinterest, analyzing them to figure out the method behind the madness, as the saying goes.

Here's the first one I created, on a Zendala tile (I love using the round tiles for all kinds of Zentangle art, not just Zendalas.)

Those tiny spaces in the center were tough, as they began to run together. Not bad for my first one, but I'm not sure I'm loving the zig zags on the sides. I tried several more, all of these on the square Zentangle tiles.

I'm not sure that I got "movement" on any of them, but they're interesting nonetheless, and I'm happy with the results. It was relaxing filling in all those spaces with the pen (using the graphic Micron for most of it.) In case you didn't know, I love contrast, and these sure do fill the bill for that!

FYI... no rulers or compasses were used for these. They were all created freehand. Not perfect like a digital drawing would be, but not too bad. Hand-made art is not supposed to be perfect.

I definitely want to experiment some more with Op art, but have other things I'm off to do now. Hope to see you back here soon.

Glow Little Glow-Worm, Glow and Glimmer

"The sun's glow had given way to a brilliant twilight that colored the great mountains with violet and orange rivers."   
Michael R. Hicks

Finally....I'm ready to show you what I learned at Tangle University, which I can't believe was a month ago already. Sandy Steen Bartholomew, famous (at least in the Zentangle world) tangler and author extraordinaire, presented a workshop she called "Glowing Prints." We used  scratch-foam, stencils, white ink pads, and various tools and pens, to make prints on black cardstock. 

Here is the one I made during Tangle U...the only one I made there that I like enough to share.

I knew that I needed to go home and practice some more, so I ordered my scratch-foam and ink pad and waited for them to arrive. Then I pulled out my microns, white Uniball Signo gel pen, white charcoal pencil, black glaze pen, black colored pencil and began to play. I have to admit that some of my attempts were discarded along the way. But this elephant made the cut, and is kind of an epilogue to my post from a couple of weeks ago.

 

 Here's my first dragonfly...

...and my second one, created using a little different method than the first.

The second one actually incorporates a touch of color with Moonlight gelly roll pens. The color did not scan well at all, and although you can see the green a little bit, you can't see the orange at all. You'll have to take my word for it...it's really there. It's very frustrating when the color doesn't show up the way it should.

Next is my cat, with some gold accents, which, thankfully, show well in the picture.

Last, is possibly my favorite one.  And to think I almost threw it out. I used a laser cut stencil from Acadia Laser Creations (fellow CZT Jenny Perruzzi). Without going into all the details, I "scratched" it reversed on the foam from the way I wanted it. Was ready to toss it when I realized I could still use it, in a different way than I originally had planned. The dots you see in this one are really pink, but they don't look much like it in this picture.

I really enjoyed playing and experimenting with this technique. Thank you Sandy Steen Bartholomew. Now to decide if I want to teach this in a class. 

Black and White

"There's something really appealing about the simplicity of black - and - white images."  
Joseph Gordon - Levitt

I'm sure I've said it here before, but I'll say it again. I'm a big fan of contrast. Most of my Zentangle work has at least some black areas. You won't find a lot of pieces in my portfolio that are light and airy. There may be some sections that are light and airy, but almost always there will be dark areas to balance it. I see plenty of work by others that are light and airy and beautiful, but it's just not my style of tangling. That's one of the things that drew me to Zentangle - the stark contrast between black and white. 

So this week I decided to play around with lots of contrast by creating a Zentangle made solely from variations on a theme - that theme being the tangle pattern Knightsbridge. There are endless ways to vary the pattern to give it very different looks. Here I began by drawing the two diagonals in my square, and then used a different variation in each of the four triangular spaces. I will admit (but don't tell anyone) that I used a ruler to draw some of the lines, mostly in that bottom triangle. This is what I ended up with, and I must say that I love its boldness.

Now I am a big fan of shading, and shade everything I make, but my inclination was not to do any shading on here so that it would retain its stark simplicity. But after thinking on it a little, I decided to go ahead and add some after first taking a picture. Below is what it looks like after shading. I really like it both ways.

What do you think? Better with or without shading? I'd love to hear what your thoughts are!