Time for 9 and 10

"Creativity is intelligence having fun."     Albert Einstein

Another two Zenduos finished! 

The first one, my #9, combined the two patterns Baldosa and two variations of Bales. Baldosa is one of my own tangles which was introduced in my e-book Step Out in Style, which I published in 2014. If you haven't seen it yet, it contains 40 new tangle patterns not published anywhere else, and you can take a peek here.

I created this one on a tile that I colored using Dylusions paints. I scanned the tile to show it before tangling, but... I didn't save it immediately, and while I went ahead and did the tangling my laptop decided on its own to restart, and in so doing, the scan was lost. Frustrating! But here is the final tile, which includes some tangling and accents with a white gelly roll pen.

For the next one, #10, I used one of the colored tiles that I make using alcohol ink (also available in my Etsy shop). This time I was sure to save it right after scanning it!

Then I tangled using the next two patterns in my collection, Basketweave from Suzanne McNeill, and Baton from Carole Ohl (one of my favorite patterns). I added a little shading with pastel pencils.

Hmmm...looking ahead to what the patterns will be for my next Zenduo... it will be an interesting combination. Hope to see you back here once I've completed that one.

Maryhill

"The shortest distance between two points is a straight line."    Archimedes

I love the tangle pattern Maryhill. It's all lines, so what's not to love about it? The pattern comes from CZT Betsy Wilson, and if you're not familiar with it you can see her step-outs for it here. I decided to focus on Maryhill this week, and created several tiles/drawings with it, varying each one a little (or a lot).

Just to show you a very straightforward version, here is a Bijou tile I made a while ago. I think it's amazing what movement you get with a pattern made up of just lots of lines.

Next is another one I did in my Tangle It! Journal. This time I added a center filled with Printemps. I really like the way this turned out.

Since Maryhill is most often completed in the round, I wanted to create one on a Zendala tile. Choosing a tan Renaissance tile, I used brown and red Micron pens, brown and red pastel pencils for shading, and a white pastel pencil for highlights. I like the way the pop of red worked with the brown.

Rather than making them all round, I decided to complete this one in a square. I used white pen on black, even though I'm not usually such a big fan of that. Not that I don't like the look of white on black, because I do, but working with white pens can be a little challenging. I have never been a fan of the white Sakura gelly roll pens, because they always seem to soak into the tiles and not look bright white. So I generally prefer the Uniball Signo UM 153 white pen for its brighter white look, but it's harder to get really thin lines. I used my Bee Paper Aquabee sketchbook with black paper. The paper is thinner than the tiles, but works better with the white gel pens. I decided to try my Sakura gelly roll pen again since it can draw finer lines than the Signo, and lo and behold, the pen worked really well on this paper, to my surprise! 

Notice I drew a mini Maryhill in the center, with a larger version surrounding it. I used the Sakura pen for the lines and filling in the white spaces in the border, but when it came to filling the larger white areas, I used a Sharpie water based paint marker. And added a hint of bright pink with a moonlight gelly roll pen.

Next is another Maryhill in the round, on one of my hand-colored tiles. I used a black Micron to draw, graphite for shading, and white pastel pencil for highlights. 

Oh...almost forgot. Did you notice something looks a bit different on the above tile? I alternated the direction of each section of the Maryhill, which gives it a totally unique look.

Then, for something VERY different, I started the next tile with a bunch of triangles, and then filled each triangle with a "segment" of Maryhill. I didn't really pay much attention to which direction each segment was facing. 

To give it a bolder look, I added some extra black in each section of the tile.

That's it folks! Experimenting with this great tangle, Maryhill, was an awful lot of fun. Even after so many tiles/drawings, I didn't tire of the repetitive lines of this pattern.

Here, There and Everywhere

"Well, as you can plainly see, the possibilities are endless like meandering paths in a great big beautiful garden."    William S. Burroughs

The Diva's challenge this week is to use the newly released tangle pattern called Molygon. I had a lot of fun with this pattern and just kept wanting to try something different, so I'm sharing a number of my experiments here.

On this first one I just let my Molygon wander around, and instead of filling the segments with anything, I only shaded. Using graphite on the top section, I followed the design down with a few different colored pastel pencils for the shading. The blue part was really a little more towards the color teal, but this is the best I could get when scanning it.

Next I used a piece of Stonehenge paper that has a slightly grey tone. I added some striping to Molygon and then some Flux. Shading and white highlights finished it off.

I've seen some tanglers who tangle tiny, but that's not me. I can't work tiny -- it bothers my eyes. So I knew there wouldn't be any fill inside the following one. I just shaded and added some darker outlining to some of them to give it a little more contrast.

I drew my next Molygon larger so I'd have space to add fill.

Then I wanted to try adding some color, so using my Tombow brush markers, here is what I did. Again, the colors didn't translate as well as I would have liked, and what looks pink here is really more coral colored. Something about the colors in this one makes me happy... minus the stray marker line.

Then I said to myself, "Just one more!" In all of the above drawings my Molygon segments have a bit of space between them. I wanted to try one where they were spaced closer together. And I wanted it to be really different, so I did this one with white pen on black, and added some Printemps and Zinger. The segments are closer, but I had to concentrate on each one... for some reason my hand just wanted to leave more space. This one may be my favorite one of all. 

Molygon was such a fun tangle to play with. It's really easy to draw, and you can let it meander here and there and all over the place. Leave it empty and just shade, add tangles within, add tangles among the segments.... whatever you do, it looks great!

 

I'm Caren and I'm an Alcoholic

"I'm a big fan of the effects of alcohol."    Peter Steele

I'm curious how many of you found your way here to read my blog post because you saw the title of this one. If so, welcome... I'll take readers however I can get them. And yes, I'm an alcoholic. I'm addicted to alcohol... alcohol inks that is! I love working with the inks to make backgrounds for tangling, and I love the way my pen (Sakura Microperm) glides smoothly and effortlessly across the paper. It is so soothing and relaxing!

To start, I will suggest that if you didn't already read my last post about alcohol inks from a few weeks ago, you check it out first. There I explained a bit about my process of working with the inks. Here is a picture of another tile  that I love (I didn't love them all). Again I did some dripping and spreading and blowing to get this look.

Then I added my tangling, using Baton, Bask-It, and Diva Dance. I don't add shading when I tangle over the inks because I let the color form some natural shading. And I also haven't found anything that works well for me to shade on the glossy surface.

Like the one tile on my last post, this one had a very interesting back side created from the inks creeping underneath.

So, like last time, I tangled in the white space. I feel like this one needs some shading, so if any of you know what works to shade on Yupo, please let me know.

Here's another tile in a totally different color scheme.

This is how it looked after tangling. I decided to keep it pretty simple by using only one pattern, Frosty, and tangled in white this time (Signo Uniball UM 153 gel pen). What I have found, but had forgotten since I used white on alcohol ink a year ago, is that the white gel ink soaks up some of the color from the alcohol ink under it. Especially on the orange part where the white ink turned yellowish. It just adds more interest. After drawing Frosty all over I felt like it needed just a little something, so I added auras inside each of the shapes, using my black pen.

I hope you enjoyed seeing some more of my alcohol ink tangling, because I have lots more tiles ready and waiting.  I'll be back!

Black Magic

"Color is a power which directly influences the soul."    
Wassily Kandinsky

I was recently inspired by something that a fellow CZT, Meredith Yuhas, posted on one of the Facebook groups I belong to. She had used colored pencils on black tiles. Her tiles were beautiful, as is all of her work, and I couldn't wait to try her technique.

First I drew N'zeppel in the center of this tile using my white Uniball Signo pen, the only white pen I ever use. Then, using a white Prismacolor pencil, I filled in the "balloons." On top of the white I used two different hues of the same color in each balloon in order to create a shaded look. I found that when I laid down the white first, the colors I placed on top were brighter. The finishing touch was adding a form of Diva Dance on each side, and coloring it in the same manner. I was really, really happy with the way this turned out. 

Next I wanted to do something with Knightsbridge, so I drew the grid you see below.  My idea was to try using Tombow markers for this one, instead of colored pencils. That's what you see in the outer row along the edges of the tile. I was not so happy with the way that worked, so instead of starting over I just continued by using Prismacolors for the rest. They are more vibrant on black than the markers.

My only problem with the black tiles is that they always seem to suck in the white ink (even though the Signo pen works best), and the white lines end up not as white as I'd like. So I often go back over the white lines a second time which works to brighten them up. Because of this, for my last attempt (for now) using this method, I pulled out a little Moleskin book  (3 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches) of black heavyweight paper. The black paper doesn't eat up the ink like the tiles do, so the white lines are more vibrant with only one pass through. Here's my burst of Flux.

Thanks for the inspiration Meredith! These were so much fun to do.