Zen Photos

"Flowers are like friends; they bring color to your world."    Unknown
 
I decided it was time again to combine my two favorite things to do, Zentangle and photography. I've blogged about this before, once in 2016, which you can see here, and once in 2015, which you can see here. I again chose a photo of flowers to tangle since that's one of my favorite subjects for photography. 

Here is the photo before any tangling. 

I printed the photo on mixed media paper so that I could tangle using my Microns. In the past I've printed them on glossy photo paper which meant that I had to tangle using a Microperm pen because of the slick surface. Not my favorite surface to tangle on. 

First I tangled the petals of the two flowers using Angel Fish on one and Maryhill on the other. For the bottom layer of petals I tangled Dyon.

Then I used a gray pen to add some Printemps to the Dyon.

I wanted to add color and shading using some other medium besides pastel pencils which is my usual go to method. Watercolor pencils is what I decided on. I could have used a water brush to blend, but I never feel like I have the control I'd like with a water brush. So I tried a Copic colorless blender pen. I didn't really think it was going to work since Copics are alcohol based, but to my surprise it worked great. With the pointed tip of the blender pen I could control it easily and get into tight spaces.

After adding color, a few shades of pinks and purples on the upper petals, I decided to use some green on the bottom petals to transform them into leaves instead of petals. Some graphite shading was also added to those leaves. And some white gelly roll pen accents in the centers of the flowers.

As one last finishing touch, I added some white pastel pencil (couldn't resist!) highlights on the leaves... can you see the difference?

It was a fun little project. Using photos to tangle is an easy way to have instant color and a ready made string. 

 

Phototangles

"Passion is one great force that unleashes creativity, because if you're passionate about something, then you're more willing to take risks."     Yo-Yo Ma

Besides Zentangle, one of my other creative passions is photography. What could be better than combining two of your passions to create something new? I recently ordered 5x7 prints of some of my photos that I thought would lend themselves nicely to being tangled. 

Here is the original photo of a feather that was floating in the water.

I used my Sakura Microperm pens to tangle this because of the glossy surface. The Microns that I normally use to tangle on paper don't work on these.
 

Patterns used: Diva Dance and Bask-it

One of my favorite things to photograph is flowers, using macro (close-up) photography. Here is one of my flowers. It's not 5x7 because I thought it would look better as a square.

 

For this one I decided to outline the petals in white, using a gel pen. The tangles were, again, completed with the Microperm pen.

Patterns used: Florz and Printemps

Another close-up of the center of a flower...
 

  
And the tangled version...

Patterns used: Shattuck, Indyrella, 'Nzeppel, Sand Swirl, Printemps, Diva Dance, and Munchin

It's wonderful how well Zentangle can be combined with so many other creative endeavors. If you enjoy photography, take a look at your pictures and see if you might have some that would look great with tangles. 

Just in case you'd like to try this with some of your own photos, I've been printing my photos through an online service called iprintfromhome.com. I find their prices to be very reasonable and their quality to be excellent. (My local CVS did not do an acceptable job with my prints.) If you decide to give them a try, you can get a $10 credit when you create a new account by entering "TWEET-Caren Mlot" in the "referred by" box.

Fun With Photos

"Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing is a meditation."   
Henri Cartier-Bresson

One of my hobbies is photography. I decided to print some of my photos to add tangling and make unique ZIAs (Zentangle inspired art). The first one I chose to do was a photo of the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, Scotland, taken last August when I was visiting my daughter who moved there last year. Here is the photo I took (actually one of thousands).

You will notice that it was a nice sunny day and the sky was very blue. Well, that is not so commonplace over there, where it often seems to be gray and rainy. So I thought I would tangle the sun's rays on the picture and send it to my daughter so she could look at it and brighten her days when it was not so nice outside.

I used the Sakura Microperm pens on these photos, as the regular Microns would smear right off the glossy surface. What I learned after completing that photo is that the 01 pen worked great, smoothly gliding over the surface as I drew lines. But when it came to blackening in those little spaces in the middle (in the tangle Baton), neither the 01 nor the 05 worked so well. I had to touch the pen SO lightly to the paper to get the ink to fill in.

Fast forward a month or so to when I took out the next photo to tangle. The story behind this one was that I had gone out for a day of photography with a friend of mine. On our return trip trouble brewed. There was an accident on the bridge we had gone over, so the bridge was closed and we had to go all the way around and home a different way and over a different bridge. Traffic was just a disaster all over the place, and what should have been a half hour ride home turned into 2 1/2 hours! This VERY slow trip took us across the Ravenel Bridge which connects Charleston to Mt. Pleasant where I live. As we sat in traffic on the bridge, we were in a great position to take pictures of the top of the bridge, which is nearly impossible to get any other way. So, trying to look on the positive side, I pulled out my camera and snapped a few pictures right through the dirty car window. To my surprise I got a very good photo where you can't even tell it was taken through a dirty window. So, now that you know the whole story, here is my original photo.

When I tangled, it came out a little too dark to see when I scanned it, so I tweaked the color in Lightroom so the tangling is more obvious. Unfortunately, since some time had passed since tangling the Royal Mile, I forgot that filling in spaces was difficult, and I ran into the same problem on this one.

And then, just for fun, I decided I would make this one into a black and white image to see how it would look.

The last photo I tangled is my favorite one. I recently bought a new camera (a Panasonic Lumix FZ70 for those of you who care), and on the first day that I had it I went outside on my deck and took some pictures, just to get familiar with the camera. This is a photo of a dying magnolia flower on a shrub we have. I love the way it came out with the water drops. 

I (my husband) lightened the background a little in Photoshop before printing it, to make the tangles stand out better. This time I remembered not to use any tangles that had spaces that needed to be blackened. First I tangled the white border that was on the print I got from CVS, and then brought the pattern into the photo some more on one side. Wasn't sure exactly where to stop, but here it is.

This was fun - something a little different. If you're not into photography yourself but would like to give this a try, a fellow CZT, Sindy Levine, has published a book called "Real Life Strings", which is a book full of her own photos ready for your tangling pleasure. You can see the book here.