Zenduo # 13

"If you get stuck, draw with a different pen. Change your tools; it may free your thinking."     Paul Arden

It's been a while since I've worked on my Zenduo project, but I'm finally back with another one. If you didn't catch the beginning of my project, and have no idea what I'm talking about, you can read about it here.

This one is lucky #13. The two patterns used were Bloom from Helen Williams and Borbz from Rita N. These two did not suggest an easy way of combining them, and I wasn't all that happy with this, but it did look better with some shading, white pastel pencil highlights, and a little bit of gold metallic gelly roll pen. I used some new paper I recently bought... a pad of Strathmore Artagain paper in several different colors. I've used, and like, their black drawing paper, but had not seen these colors before. This one is a light brown and shows the white highlights nicely.

I really liked the metallic gold so thought I'd add a little more. I outlined the blooms to make them pop a bit.

The paper worked very well with the pens and pencils I used, and I'm looking forward to trying out some of the other colors in the pad.

Fade to Black

"In the beginning it was all black and white."  Maureen O'Hara

The Diva's challenge this week is to work in white on black. It's been a while since I actually participated in her challenge, and also a while since I've worked on black. So I decided to accept this challenge. 

I am not a fan of how the white pen (Uniball Signo - the only one I use) performs on the black Zentangle tiles, because I think the tile sucks up too much of the ink. My preference is to use black paper instead, when working with white pen. Either Strathmore Artagain paper, or my Big White Bee sketchbook, which is what I used this time. 

I decided to keep it fairly simple, using just Mooka and Mak-rah-mee. The shading was done using my white pastel pencil which felt like butter on this paper.

Although the challenge was white on black, and said nothing about color, I couldn't resist adding just a tiny drop of color - with Moonlight Gelly Roll pens. The color is a little brighter in person than in this picture, but I really like the pop that it adds.

Now back to the larger project I'm working on for next time. Thanks for stopping by!