Paradox

"The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change."    Carl Rogers


A couple of weeks ago, the Square One Facebook group had the tangle pattern Paradox as the focus for the week. I don't always have the time (or the desire, depending what the focus tangle is) to create and post anything, but Paradox is one of my favorite patterns so I knew I'd be participating that week. I'll save the two tiles I did for that group until later. But first I wanted to show you a couple of pieces I created that didn't follow the guidelines for the group (3 1/2 inch square tiles in black and white.)

For this one I chose one of my hand-colored zendala tiles, even though I wouldn't really call this a zendala. Sometimes I just love working on the round tiles. I drew some lines to form a string, and where you see black I had expected to leave blank so it would be pink. But sometimes I can't leave well enough alone, and in one spot I brought the Paradox out into the pink space....and was not at all happy with it. I tried a couple of things to make it better, but in the end all I could think to do was fill in all those spaces with black. Well... a happy accident... I really like the way this looks! Just Paradox and black (filled in with the fat end of an Identi Pen.)

The next one was drawn on a pre-strung Rennaisance zendala tile. I'm really happy with this one also. I always love bringing the tan tiles to life with white highlights. A brown pastel pencil and a graphite pencil were used for shading.

Patterns used: Paradox, Static, Munchin, and Maryhill

The following two tiles were the ones I posted on the Square One Facebook page, so if you're a member of that group you may have already seen these.

Patterns used: Paradox, Petales de Fleurs inspired Munchin

Patterns used: Paradox and Tipple

I just want to leave you with this last piece of pure Paradox, laid out totally randomly, and then colored digitally with some green.

I love, love, love Paradox!

Evolution of a Zendala

"Creativity is just connecting things.When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something."   Steve Jobs

A couple of weeks ago the prompt for the journal group I belong to was to do something that shows our strength, something we are good at, something we love to do. Since one of my favorite things to do with Zentangle is Zendalas, that's the direction I headed in.

I began with a stencil from Genevieve Crabe (Tangle Harmony) which you can check out here. Her stencils are made from sturdy plastic with lots of holes in them. You draw a dot in each hole and then connect those dots in whatever way you want to create a template for a Zendala. Very simple method, but some trial and error until you get the design you want. Usually I do a bit of erasing and changing my lines; however, this time I hardly did any of that. I took a picture of the template before tangling (yay for remembering to do that), but somehow that picture seems to have gotten lost in cyberspace (have I mentioned how frustrating I find computers?), so I have no pre-picture to show you.

However, I do have photos of the steps during my tangling process. Where you see the 'x' marks, that is a note to myself not to tangle there, since I decided those sections would be my white space. I began with the tangle Fassett by Lynn Mead.

In the next picture you will see that I changed my mind and rounded those outside spaces rather than leaving them pointed. I think that was a good decision. I added a pattern called Petales de Fleurs but unfortunately don't know who to credit for that pattern.

This is the point where I got very nervous. I really liked what I had so far and was scared to death of messing up as I continued. Some of you can probably relate to that feeling! But I forged ahead, after much debating what the next pattern would be, and added my own tangleation of Paizel, by Angie Vangalis. 

Between the Paizel sections I wanted something with a lighter, simpler look, so I did this variation of Florz, using circles at the intersections rather than diamonds. This may be a pattern with a different name, but I'm not sure.

Finally I drew Diva Dance (Rock 'n Roll) in the center. I began in the outer ring of the center and was planning to leave the small circle in the middle open, but changed my mind as I drew.

There you have it. My completed Zendala with no disasters along the way. But of course, in my mind, almost no Zentangle, or ZIA, or Zendala would be complete without shading to really bring it to life. So here is the final Zendala shaded. 

Did I say that was the final Zendala? I lied. I had to try adding some color. Here was the first part.

And then with some more color.

That's the really final Zendala. I might like the black and white one better. What do you think?