U too?

SuzyMosh has a very fun challenge, That's New To Me, where we are challenged to find patterns that we are not familiar with or haven't used before. This week it is the letter U. I had a lot of fun with it, and ended up with this:

an ancient bridge, a weeping tree

I found Uni and Unyun on Tanglepatterns.com. I love how they lend themselves to a drifty, leafy, weeping willow effect. It needed N'zeppel, which I thought would look like a walkway or floor, but it looks like a bridge. Then printemps came along naturally.

I had finished putting the tipple and shading and perfs (?) and was clicking around online, when I serendipitously found Uncorked on Adele Bruno's site Tickled to Tangle (where It's a String Thing is housed) It was just too much: a U pattern not in tanglepatterns.com, that just happened along when I was looking for U patterns for a challenge!

So I threw them in, like shiny aloe vera plants on the edge of the bridge.

Also used a little bit of flux and cabu (not sure of the name) as embellishments on the top left corner. It is a pleasing piece that I liked making, and fun to look at.

give me a hand

What a cool challenge from Joey...using a hand outline as a string, tangle away! Which is just exactly what i did, enjoying every minute of it. So. Much. Fun! thanks, joey.

I would like to list as many patterns as I can, starting with the pinky and working my way over to the thumb, ending in the palm.

Flux, nipa, fescu, and mooka on the pinky.
The ring finger is full of growth (which I found in The Joy of Zentangle book).
Meer on the middle finger, and my own Concert on the tip.
The pointer finger has queen's crown radiating from the tip, printemps, poke leaf, and there is a pozer on the knuckle.
Between the pointer and thumb, I put three oolo (a new favorite that I just love!)
Thumb: the tip has thumbprint and another oolo on the knuckle.
In the palm/back of my hand area are flord, henna drum, leaflet, tagh variation, knight's bridge.
The wrist has some orbs, a couple lines of something isochor-ish, and a shiny ribbony thing.

This was a lot of fun, because of all the room for so much variety! Can hardly wait to see what others have done.

For fun, I Googled "the space between forefinger and thumb" and found that it is called the purlicue. Isn't that a cute word! I want to use it in a sentence. There is a medical/anatomical term for it too: the thenar space. But purlicue is MUCH better.

Which is readily evident when used in sentences:
I filled my purlicue with  lacy stars.  or...
I filled my thenar space with lacy stars.

wait...stars and thenar space actually go together really well! ha! Purlicue is a quaint word. Thenar space sounds so techno and scientific. They are both good.

and that's that! Told you I had fun with this one.

Duo Tangle: Diva's Challenge 202 chepucto and copada

What a cool challenge from the Diva. Two patterns that I've never heard of or seen before...together!

so, I added both Chepucto and Copada to my informal list at the back of my sketchbook, and then played around some with both of them. I ended up with this, using a pretty traditional border and string, and came up with an idea

I did a curve of copada, and added a single element of that pattern in the top left corner. Then, doing similar with chebucto, I added a single element of that pattern...and filled it in with copada. I LOVED how that looked, and a plan for a tile solidified.

This is from my sketchbook, but i plan on making something like it onto a tile, so I can put it in my three ring binder.

Going around the corners with Copada is a little bit tricky, but I like how it arranges itself so there is one "petal" to each side, on the ends of the chepucto. Wouldn't this make a great border!

I played with chepucto a good deal more than Copada, so I'm going to spend some time with copada tomorrow. Two very fun patterns!

That's New to Me:Vee!

What a fun piece to make this was! SuzyMosh has a very interesting weekly challenge, to use patterns that we haven't used before, and this week we are to use V patterns.

 I chose five patterns that I've never used before, and one that I love and use a lot. I simply had to. For a string, i drew a curvy line snaking all over the page.

From the top left, going clockwise: vortex, viaduct, via, verve, voxter. I've seen several of these patterns around, and I practiced via one time but never used it in a tile or anything.

and Verdigoh is a favorite of mine. I love how organic it is, and how well it fills a corner space. I filled the bottom left corner with tipple, and added lots of tipple to the verdigoh...

The piece as a whole reminds me of a walk in the woods. There's some aspen, some pine, an eddy or two in the creek along the way. Even the viaduct sorta looks like a pine cone or something.

This was quite a fun challenge, very enjoyable!

It's a String Thing 75

i must say, these various challenges are CHALLENGING! The combination in this week's String Thing challenge, of an angular, architectural string, plus a loopy lacy pattern and two high contrast more blocky patterns was quite interesting to do.

The string really wants to be sky scrapers, seen from above, but I haven't got the drawing chops for perspective, so I decided to soften up the edges with trumpit.

Filled in some with fjord, and little sparks of oolo here and there. I like the contrast.

an uninhabited city, becoming overgrown

Joey's Challenge to Joy

This was a good challenge for me. I woke up in a blue funk, and spent an hour or so writing in my journal and crying. The details are not for this blog, but it was an emotional morning, and I still have a lot of thinking to do.

But, one other thing I woke up with was a pattern in my mind. i wanted to sketch it, but the journal took over, so I didn't get to it. Then I checked Joey's blog for the challenge this week...lo! and behold! the pattern "Joy" was SO similar to the little bit of pattern I saw in my mind as I woke up.

Pretty cool.

String 10 is angular and curvy, and joy is a sort of random, free hand pattern. A challenging combination, to be sure.

and this is what I ended up with:

it is disjointed and unfinished, yet there is joy...like my life.

At first I didn't like it. It has no flow and paradox seems out of place and i couldn't think of what to put in the blank spaces within the main triangle...and then as I looked at the string where it is penciled, it occurred to me: this is unfinished. My life is unfinished. My life is disjointed and full of some things that aren't that pretty to contemplate, at times.

But look at this...there is joy, right at the foundation, and joy breaking out of the strangeness, and joy above it all. And in the corner, a speck of that flow, a little seedling of fescu reaches up from flux leaves.

I put that in, on purpose, and counted myself done with this tile.

Oh. That starburst of joy, where I colored it in gold...the tips there? THAT is the shape that I woke up with this morning! cool, eh?

Tangling Mobius

The Diva has challenged us this week, to focus on Moebius Syndrome, which her darling little boy Artoo has. In honor of National Moebius Syndrome day, which is this coming Saturday, the 24th, she asks us to tangle using the Mobius Syndrome Association logo OR tangle on a paper mobius strip.

The Mobius strip is an item with only one side, which is easy to demonstrate, as you draw a line down the center (in this case, along the edges). You draw on one side, and one side only, without turning the strip over. You just start a line, and go. You end up where you started, but both sides have the line.

I found this to be fascinating, and tried to capture some of the "mystery" in photos.

And this is what I did:

I cut and taped the strip

                                                     

I decided a border was needed, as a zentangle practice, so I drew one on the edge, then decided to include an arrow for the second border, to make it easier to see what was happening.

                                                       

an arrow, to show the way. See the tape

where is my starting arrow?

the arrows meet. Hmmm.

I decided a simple pattern would work best, and since the mobius strip was looking like a bracelet, and a string of Hitched has always reminded me of jewelry, I went to work putting Hitched on my strip.                                             

making a bracelet, using Hitched

I purpled it!

I wore it!

Then, copying from a youtube video, I thought I'd cut it right down the middle, just to see what might happen.

cutting down the center

now it has two loop-de-loops instead of just one

And there you have it. This was really fun to do. I think Meer would be a VERY COOL pattern to draw on a mobius strip. I'm going to do another mobius strip and double loop it.
Complicate things, eh?

Joey's challenge

This will be a brief post, because of computer issues but I wanted to enter the challenge that is offered at Made by Joey.  It is a tile, that could be used as a tile. That is, make a zia that looks like a ceramic tile, which, when it is put together with other tiles, the pattern carries to other tiles, creating new patterns between the tiles.

Here is my entry for that challenge.

I was going to do a primary color scheme, but then when i put the dark blue in, it just seemed so nice, all blue, on a white background. It would have been VERY cool, doing the negative spaces blue, leaving the shapes white. This'll do, though.

That's New to Me

SuzyMosh has a weekly challenge that I really like: using patterns we are unfamiliar with, starting with a certain letter. It's the That's New to Me challenge. This week the letter is C. I found all my patterns on tanglepatterns.com which is a wonderful resource that I find myself going to every day.

I found a pattern I've never done before: cabana. It's cool because it has a 3-D effect, and can be made in straight lines, or inside of curved lines. I played with it quite a bit:

cabana on a curve

it looks so architectural

When I had played with cabana a while, something just came along under my pen. It has its roots in cabana, to be sure, but making everything curvy puts a very organic look to it.

See, to the right. It looks like a leaf or a rib cage. Organic. Of course, that smoke stack looking thing is pretty cool, too.

Cabana!


















And here is the piece I ended up creating for the challenge. I used Camellia, Chard, Cabana, (cabana split leaf...is that what I'll call it?) and Chainlette.

I like how the split leaf looking thing is over the chainlette. 

Chard is another pattern I'd like to play with. it reminds me of origami, especially once the shading is added. Camellia is such an active pattern, makes the eye move, when you have a lot of it together.

This was a fun challenge. All new patterns, and one variation that might be a new pattern of its own!

Bi-zen-tennial

It is The Diva's 200th Challenge! Way to go, Laura, and thank you for gathering so many creative people together. You da bomb!

This week, we are challenged to create a tile, with no borders, using only our favorite pattern (mine is Flux) and put the number 200 in there, somewhere. I have always loved the pattern flux. It was the subject of one of my first Diva challenges, in the summer last year, and I include it in nearly all of my zentangle art.

So, here is my tile for the Bi-zen-tennial of the Diva Weekly Challenge:

 Flux makes everything nice.

I made the string wind all over the tile, then fluxed along it, on both sides. Shading in the center, and I made my 200 red, with some tipple here and there in red.

If only my picture quality were better. Some time this year, I'll be getting a new laptop, and it will have software for editing photos.

It's new to me

Another challenge, from suzymosh creations The idea is to use tangle patterns we haven't used before, and this week using patterns that begin with T

I found Tesali on tanglepatterns.com and this is what I ended up creating.

looks like clouds in an Asian style, and a mirror

I think it works, though I never did figure out how to make Tesali in a multiple grid.

Joey's Challenge

Thru Lori's site I found another challenge I'll be participating in. It is similar to the Diva: a weekly tangle challenge. I plan on participating whenever it strikes my fancy (that is, maybe not EVERY week, but when it looks like fun) (which could be often, who knows)

This challenge is Joey's Weekly Tangle Challenge and this week is the first week of 2015: Lucky in 15. That is, using string 15 and the tangle pattern Lucky, create a tile.

Lucky was entirely new to me, but lots of fun to do. Like shamrocks, and evidently it was created for St Pat's day, so...

and here is my tile.

The string has arches throughout, which always makes me want Tropicana, so I put that in there and yes, Flux. I want to play with string 15 some more, too.

Looking forward to the challenges Joey presents!

UMT (*MY* tangle) Hitched!

This week, the Diva challenged us to use a tangle. *My* tangle. Yes, my very own Hitched that I developed and entered at her site. :)

I was tickled to see that, believe me. And it has been fun peeking in on people's renditions. Terri Young even used another of my patterns, Concert, in her tile. Soo cool!

Well, this morning first thing, I made a tile using Hitched, and here it is.

Hitched with a little Tropicana thrown in 

I wanted to run with the diamonds and circles, so there's a lot of that in there, connected by lines and strings. The arch of the half hitched, across the top left, reminded me of Tropicana, and of course I put some flux in. Always do!

Now to go check out what people are doing with my tangle!