"Life is a circle of happiness, sadness, hard times and good times." Unknown
This week's Diva challenge is to use the pattern Tipple as a monotangle, meaning you use Tipple and ONLY Tipple. The pattern is just circles. They could all be the same size if you want, but I think it's much more interesting to vary the size. Circles are not my favorite thing to draw... I find straight lines much more relaxing. So up until now I've only used Tipple in small areas, sometimes as a filler.
I decided to use the words zen and tangle, put together into one word, which I got from Jenny Perruzzi (Acadia Laser Creations) when I was at Tangle U in 2014. I traced around the words to use as my string and then started filling with Tipple. That was quite a LOT of Tipple. Not as meditative as I would have liked, but once I started I had to finish. Luckily, when you look at the finished piece you don't notice how "not great" the circles are!
I thought this would look pretty colored in rainbow colors. I used my Tombow brush markers to color them using the indirect method. That means I didn't use the markers directly on my work, but instead scribbled with the markers on a non-porous surface, then used a special blender marker to pick up that color and put it onto my letters. I like doing that when I want the color to be a little less intense than when I use the markers directly. After I finished coloring them, I added a little shading around the edges of each letter using a coordinating Prismacolor colored pencil. I could have used the Tombows to add shading, but my experience in doing that is that it doesn't blend smoothly for me.
I love the way this looks. I may use it as a sign at my classes... or in other places where a sign is called for. However, I don't think I will attempt using that much Tipple at one time again. Think I need to go draw some straight lines now!
"If you really want to catch your dream you have to chase it." Unknown
There was so much I learned and so much inspiration at TangleU in Santa Fe that I am back with more. One of the classes that I was most looking forward to was a class with Kate Lamontagne. And she didn't disappoint. Kate does stunning work with Prismacolor pencils and she taught a class in making (on paper) a dream catcher. If you ever have a chance to take a class with her...DO IT! She's from Holliston, MA. I actually lived there 20 years ago, but I believe that was before Kate was there.
Here's the dream catcher I created during the class. Not too bad for my first one.
I learned several things from this process that I should/would have done differently. Probably the most important one was to create larger spaces in the top zendala-like portion. It was very hard to color and blend in those small spaces in the one above (at least it was difficult for a novice like me!) So here's the one I created after returning home - the before coloring picture (yay for remembering to take the picture!)
This dream catcher was drawn on Strathmore tan toned paper which is smoother than the paper used in class, and I found that I like working with the colored pencils on the smoother paper better.
Here's how it turned out.
This was no quick process. There are many layers of color in each space, worked until the color and blending was just as I wanted it. For the most part I'm very happy with it. I'm just not sure if I should have gone a little lighter on the colors in the feathers.
There will definitely be more experimentation with the Prismacolors in my future. I'll be trying them out in some of my other Zentangle work, not just dream catchers. If I can get them to look half as good as Kate's work I will feel very accomplished!
"We need to sing with all the voices of the mountains. We need to paint with all the colors of the wind."
"Colors of the Wind" (Pocahontas) by Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz
I've mentioned here a couple of times that I was going to a Zentangle retreat for CZTs in Santa Fe this month. Well, I just got back from Santa Fe and it was wonderful! But more about that in my next post.
I had a vendor table there to sell my hand-colored tiles. In preparation for this I spent a lot of time mass producing the tiles so I'd have enough stock to take with me. Since I wanted to show the various ways to tangle on these tiles, I also spent some time tangling samples to bring. Here is some of what I brought with me.
The first one is a pink water-colored tile tangled with a rose-colored Micron pen and shaded with a matching pink Prismacolor pencil. I added a few subtle white highlights also.
The next one is a blue/turquoise water-colored tile tangled with black Micron. I added some blue Prismacolor pencil shading and white highlighting in all those antidots in the center.
This one was tangled on a purple double-sided tile colored with alcohol ink. The tiles colored with alcohol ink end up with a very organic kind of look to them, and since they are colored on both sides, you can choose to tangle both, or just have a tile with a very pretty colored back to it. I used purple Micron on this one and purple Prismacolor pencil for shading.
Another alcohol ink tile, this one was colored with subtle blue and gray tones. I decided to use black pen to tangle it, and then added shading with both a graphite pencil and blue Prismacolor.
This yellow tile called out to me to use a brown pen, and I love the way it looks on the yellow. Brown colored pencil was used to shade.
This last tile was done with watercolor and turned out a little darker than many of my other tiles. I tangled this one using my white Signo Uniball pen to show how nice the white works on the darker tiles. This is not my favorite tile, but at least it illustrates my point well.
There are so many options for working on colored tiles and they're a lot of fun to do when you want to take a break from the traditional black on white. If you'd like to try some, please check out my Etsy shop for these tiles. Round Zendala tiles are available also. What's really fun is that no two tiles are exactly alike!
