Diva Challenge: Tipple Away!

This week, we are presented with a monotangle challenge over at The Diva's Place 
Tipple is the star, and it was a really fun tile to make.

The starfish chills on a pebble beach

It is on a tan cardstock tile, and I used micron .05 pens in tan and blue black. Shaded with prismacolor Tuscan red and Derwent indigo. Some white charcoal pencil and gelly roller highlights.

Joey's ABC Challenge: Cornerz

The ongoing challenge over at Joey's blog is a series of monotangles, each one a tangle starting with the next letter of the alphabet. This week it is Cornerz.

I had a tough time with Cornerz, finding it not easy to get nicely rounded, even corners and the shapes I came up with weren't pleasing. There was something uneven about it that I couldn't seem to correct and I wasn't having fun.

BUT...once I put a grid on a full sheet of sketchbook paper and started playing with it, I did start having fun. The best was making a series of en pointe squares (diamonds?) with even spaces between them, then I aura'ed the cornerz before filling with radiating lines.

I "hooked" each line "around" the aura'ed curves and just loved it!

And I decided to do a few with arcs instead of radiating lines...and darned if they didn't look like wedges of watermelon once they were colored.









So I decided to do a set of watermelon slices, and fiddled around with more variations.

There is a long section of something a bit flowery and red, and a square one with ribbony things.

On that one, I made radiating lines on the outside of the curves, not from the corner out to the curve. Interesting I suppose, but not my favorite.

The ribbons stream out from where the cornerz curves meet the edges

In the end, I did have fun with Cornerz. Seems you can play with it very nicely.

In my Umble Opinion

For some reason the formatting tool on this blog is being stubborn today, and I finally gave up trying to get the text and pictures to coordinate. Even the captions aren't working...So I have for you here a length of text, with pictures following, and at the bottom, the end result of my Diva Challenge Tangling for this week. Long caption on that last pic.

This week The Diva aka Laura Harms, Runner Extraordinaire, challenges us to use the newly published (though long extant) pattern Umble, which was introduced officially at zentangle.com this past week.

Fun pattern! It has lots of scope for play, with depth and interest as the eye is drawn in.

So I started by playing with it, and made a lot of bijou monotangles.

In the first one, the shiny black ribbon in the corner dominated too much. The eye couldn't wander away from it. 

I enjoy how pliable this pattern is. It can be like a pile of ribbons, or it can be tubular. You can fill each one with a pattern itself (I enjoyed going all ononmato on it)...and my favorite is the white one with the stippling for shading. LOVE that effect!

But then I decided to make a piece using umble as PART of it, and made a sketchbook page full.

And when I saw all the white space on the right, I thought of putting some of my umble bijous there, but they were not in proportion so....I sketched some smaller-than-bijou tiles along that right margin, and filled with my favorites.

The first one.

similar to the first, but less shiny black satin

  

I started with Hybrid along the top, and a border of prestwood on the edges. Added some facets and made them drip down in JeJewbees (?) Leaflet and Euca fluttering down in the center, and umble with hollibaugh in a couple of places. Then I put my littler-than-bijous in and umble in those.

Colors of the Rainbow

 

This is what I have been doing the last couple of days. I have colored tiles on my cubicle wall, one tile for each color of the rainbow. They've been displayed for quite a while, and it was time for a change. So I made that my project the past few days.

I figure it will be a last minute, second entry on the Diva challenge.

The whole spectrum, blurred.

I actually started with the purple tile and worked my way up. Red was last, and for some reason it is on the arm of my couch, while the rest of the tiles I snapped on the floor in my front room.


Cirquital isn't a pattern I've used a lot. I think it looks like monster teeth coming up out of a hole in the ground, or blades. Danger! Danger!
But the roundness of it needed some straight line squares to balance it. And I tossed some good old fashioned boxes in there for good measure.


Cirquital on a bed of All Boxed up (and some boxes)

           

For my orange tile, I wanted something daisy-like, and Loop de Loop

turned out to be just right. It's whimsical. A little garden corner full of Kurrajong flowers, poke root, and poke leaf. River divides it nicely.

 



 

Yellow is an energetic color, and I wanted energetic
patterns so I decided to make a storm: trio, static,
bunzo, msst, and some printemp along the bottom.

 

I used violet for the shading.

 
 


DoubleD border, Undiala and Concert sun, lokomotiv, mooka

Wintertime!



Stella! I just learned this one

 






Grape Jellybeans!

Onomato, Discolea, Inventione, Mi2, some tipple and pearls
 



 

It's almost impossible to make something unattractive on a colored tile, because the highlights make it so neat. When I started this purple one I didn't like the onomato at all and let it sit for a day...then I thought what the hey, and put more patterns in there. When I added the lavender for highlights, and the indigo blue for shadows, it got better. The white gel pen glints are just icing on the cake, and that's how it is with all of these tiles.

 

All of these were fun to do, and I am pleased with how all of them look.



 

Suzy Mosh New to Me challenge: Lily Popcheff and R patterns

I have entered three challenges this week: Diva, Joey, and SuzyMosh, and I must say Suzy Mosh this week has been my favorite. We were to go with R tangles, and use Popcheff patterns, as well. And that made it so much  fun to research and practice...not only a lot of R patterns, but Lily has a LOT of tangles.

One of the things I love about Lily's inventions is how many spaces there are to put patterns into. Every single one seems to have triangles, squares, curves, ellipticals, and many other shapes to play with. Browsing her patterns, it's easy to see her African roots.

The Lily Popcheff patterns I chose are Glace and Pines. Glace is the string, so to speak, and I put patterns inside the spaces. I provide a link to it, so you can see what it is like as a basic pattern.

The new to me R patterns I used are rouche, rosewood, and reticulated. Rain is in there, in a tangleation. Rain is one of my favorites, so I've used it a lot, but it does start with R and it just put itself in there. Like it was meant to be.

I used sepia sakura microns in 05 and 01, and shading/coloring were done with prismacolor Tuscan Red and Henna. Somehow, the rays on the reticulated, coming out from the half circles, ended up like footlights...but I like it.

This isn't my usual style at all, but it ends up being my favorite challenge entry for the week. Lots of fun!

Joey's Bunzo Challenge

Fun stuff! Bunzo has been the star lately, in a couple of challenges. It is my very first tangle I ever learned, and it is one of my online names, short for bunsofaluminum, which I've used for years. Because bunsofsteel was too much work.

So, bunzo. I enjoyed doing this monotangle that was presented in Joey's Challenge this week. I put it in a string, number 148 because that string has a built in overlap look to it. I wanted my bunzos to have some depth a layering.

Carnival for Barnacles

This is what I created. I used a tile sized piece of tan card stock, put the string on there, and started doodling. The finer ones, in black, went down first, and I put the big shiny ones in there, sort of under the smaller bunch, in burgundy micron. The last large one I did was the blue, and I put it in the bottommost layer. I did the stripes just a bit different, using lines instead of solidly coloring it in.

There were a few blank places along the edges of the big bunzo's, for a few smaller clumps, and I finished it off by highlighting in white charcoal pencil. Shading in graphite 3B.

The small, finer version of Bunzo reminds me of barnacles, and that shiny stripey version is like the Big Tent...so now to name it (drumroll please) and with a little alliteration: Carnival for Barnacles. Ta Da!

Colors Galore! Diva Challenge 222

Isn't it just wonderful when things in life collude, coming together like they were meant to be? It just so happens, this past week or so, I've had my prismacolor pencils out, playing with them, layering, learning what they feel like at different saturations, and how they look when applied with pressure, or lightly on the paper.

burnishing blends colors

 I got out ALL the pencils! I scribbled, made lines, blended, laid it on thick, lightly brushed the tips on the paper, layered primary colors over each other to get secondary colors, and thoroughly enjoyed myself.

 There's a whole spectrum of color, and I delighted in it. Prismacolor pencils go onto the paper like cream. They are wonderful to work with.

the shadow is the complementary color

In a tutorial, I learned that the shadow of a colored item should be the complementary color. So if you have a yellow item (like the little cup in the picture to the right) you make the shadow/shading purple. which I did, and liked it.




The blue is all burnished with powder blue.

It practically glows!

This is a little drawing I did of a pot of flowers in the backyard at Wylie's place. I loved the color of the petunias so much, I wanted to draw them and color them. Now...while the petunias still need a little something, I must say, the pot makes me very happy to look at. I LOVE how it turned out. I want to do it again, only with better flowers.







Not bad, for a first try at really going for the colors and shapes I was seeing. Well, first time in a long time, anyway.







So imagine my delight when this week's Diva Challenge turns out to be a focus on color!
I had been doing spheres, shadowing them with their complementary colors, when I found what the Diva wants from us this week...and when I looked at the page, it just cried out for Nipa, which I did in various blue micron .05 pens. A little bit of shading around the wavy lines, and some thickening here and there, for interest. The one drawback to prisma pencils is they don't just blend with a stump, but there is a blending pencil by prisma, and evidently a pen with some substance that works well. Maybe that will be my next little treat for myself.

Pattern used: Nipa. Prismacolor pencils, sakura micron pens.

 
This complementary shading thing...I am definitely going to be exploring that a lot. In my opinion, the spheres with the lighter or brighter color as the main color, and the darker, or maybe cooler color as shadow, work best. So the shadowing on the green and orange balls is the most natural looking, while the yellow isn't *quite* as good. The purple is too abrupt, I think. I might choose a more blue-violet for shading yellow, and apply it with a subtler touch.

Now, looking at the red and blue spheres...I think as natural shading, the complementary colors of green (for the red) and orange (for the blue) don't work, but there's something eye catching about them. The shadows right on those spheres sort of glow, don't they? It's odd looking, and I'd want to explore it some more, but it's interesting enough, I think. Their shadows seem to glow, as if the spheres were uplit. Especially the blue one...that orange shadow makes it look like it's got glowing coals under it. Very cool, though not REALLY shadowy.

It's not so scary anymore, this thing called color.

Beads of Hope

This is my entry for the Diva challenge this week. Every time her little guy Artoo has a hospital trip (which is pretty often, as he has Moebius Syndrome that causes ailments more frequently) he adds a Bead of Courage to his collection.

And this is my entry. I had a lot more written, but it fell prey to the chief hazard of using a laptop (you will brush the touch pad, and it will highlight all your work and when you hit the next key, everything highlighted, which in this case was a paragraph or so, will go away)

so with that, I present my Beads of Courage entry.  It is string #153 and I used Jujubeedze in a monotangle. I used shading to try and give it some dimension, but for some reason what I was trying to do eluded me.

I used a gold sparkle gel pen and a purpley metallic gel pen on the diamonds in between the jujubeedze. Some fringes or tassles on the ends.

t

the sparkle shows a little bit here, though the pic is blurry

And that's that. I'll spend some time clicking around in the challenge and see what others have done. Beads of Courage is one of the absolute most wonderful things I've ever heard of and I wish I could have done it justice.

The Challenge of Arukas

Yes, Joey. I think Arukas is a very challenging tangle. It isn't my favorite, mostly because I run out of room, so to speak. The spokes get too crowded, too soon or something. However, I had a tan cardstock tile at hand and a sepia 01 Sakura pen and decided to play around some.

. And when I was done filling the tile with Arukas, I couldn't help myself...I filled every  blank spot with tipple. And then colored some in! In the end, I really like it.

It kind of does look like starfish washed up on the beach

This is a shot using some kind of filter in my camera. Takes all the yellow out.















This one is taken with no filters. It shows the true color of the tile.

I like the first one better because you can see the colored tipples better.

This is the first Arukas I've ever drawn that I liked, and I really do like it.

I used tan card stock, sepia 01 micron pen, and a variety of prismacolor pencils.

Inventione

This pattern came along as I played with  Quandary a while back, for a challenge somewhere.

When building Quandary, you start with three rice shapes in a triangle, and add to them with more and more rice shapes, building in sets of six over whatever area you are drawing in. I played with Quandary a lot, because it is sort of challenging to get the rice shapes lined up properly. As I fiddled around with it, at one point I drew a circle around the initial three rice shapes and voila!

I *think* I created something new.


Inventione:

this is a fun one to embellish. Shading, scalloping, perls, sparkle, drawing lines over or under. you can make it look like a steering wheel or a donut. And it frankly looks like a sad spooky face all on its own.

Flysh

The name of this tangle is Flysh, a combination of Flying and Fish...because they look like flying fish. I developed this pattern while playing with Sue Jacob's pattern, Ditto

The tangle adds a lot of motion and energy wherever it is added. It's a good pattern as a background, too.

1) draw a curved lined
2) connect a lazy S to create a paisley shape
3) put little droplets along the sides
4) fill in, or leave empty


Draw a bunch of these, large, and fill with different tangles.

Starsket

 1) make a "ray" pattern of five short lines
2) connect the lines with curves
3) embellish with twisty things or dots or nothing

This tangle makes a good fill for areas where you'd like some white space or sparkly stuff. You can stop at any step, with just the rays, or after you've added the curved connectors.

 This pattern is based on a VERY cool sea creature, called the Basket Starfish

I don't remember how I came across this photo, but it intrigued me greatly. I like the shape of its center, and the curling, twining, crisscrossing arms are fascinating.







I've put this tangle in a lot of my pieces, and have a couple to display here.

 this one is so Christmasy! Starsket here just adds the sparkle.

In this piece, starsket is comingling with another of my patterns, flysh which developed the day I discovered Ditto by Sue Jacobs.

How About a Little Bublz

Oh my! what a fun tile this was to create! Neat string, and delightful tangles to play with. Mine ended up with bublz as the star, but I managed to include everyone.

It is from Adele Bruno's It's a String Thing challenge, one I participate in sporadically. I'm glad I decided to give it a go this time.

N'zeppel along the edges, Onomato on the left...yin cut ended up being Isochor there on the left, so I made some more Yincut along the bottom. But the most fun was playing with Bublz. I liked it from the time Lori posted it on her blog, but this is the first I've played with it extensively.

I think this is my favorite one from the String Thing challenge.

J is for June

This week, I took on another challenge, Joey's J Challenge. She gave us a string, and commanded...er, challenged....us to use only J tangles.

String 006 is a lot of fun, with a couple of loop de loops in it. It was easy to find tangles that are jewelry looking, starting with J...and that's the way I went.

I started with JuJuBeeds, one in each loop. Jeewels along the "chain" on a bed of Jambalee. The upper right corner was a little bare so I put a Jalousie there.

This reminds  me of a valet box you might have on your vanity dresser. I did it in purple micron ink with violet prismacolor shading. I wish it were easier to blend colored pencil, but I like it overall.

Combined Challenges: Diva and SuzyMosh

There are so many cool challenges out there. I found a new one, Daniel's Tangleation Vocation, that I want to start participating in, because of the emphasis on making a tangle pattern your own, by doing a tangleation of it. That just sounds like such a creative endeavor.

However, there are two that I go to week after week: The Diva Challenge, and SuzyMosh's That's New to Me challenge. And this week, I've done a ZIA combining both of these.

Laura Harms, aka The Diva, has presented us with this month's UMT by CZT Alice Hendon. The pattern is called All Boxed Up and as simple as it looks to do it, let me tell you, it is not. The really cool effects of diamonds within the boxes happens best with precision and shading. No matter what I did, it wasn't happening for me. My initial go at it was disappointing, as I added All Boxed Up to a piece I was working on, and a creation I was enjoying became a "meh" to me.

But I do like how the shading effects this pattern, and I made a real quick ATC on gray with gray shading and white highlights.

I added a square of Ambler in the middle, and then Dave Hunter's pattern putki in the lower right. This is fast becoming a favorite of mine. When all is said and done, I really like this one.

When I got home, I knew I wanted to 1) play with All Boxed Up some more and 2) see if I could put some elements of the SuzyMosh challenge into it.

SuzyMosh this week asked us to use A patterns (one rule: they must be new to me) and she added the delightful Margaret Bremner to the mix. The greatest thing about this challenge truly is that it brings new patterns to me, tangles that I've never encountered before, or maybe I've seen and practiced them once but never used them.

So I sat down to tangle and started with Meer. (a fleeting thought, to created a stacked tangle for the FB page came to mind, and quickly left...)

The treasure house of the deeps

The underside of the Meer was perfect to start a line of All Boxed Up, and I decided to play with it...wonky lines. Then it needed some round, so I did an onotmato and then another, and another! And, speaking of wonky, I crisscrossed them...that was fun. More All Boxed Up...then I wanted to find some A patterns which I did.

Antidots and Ansu are two that I've seen here and there. I've practiced Ansu, but never so much as laid pen to paper for Antidots, so I did a little corner of them there. See that? Aura'ed around them. Then Atorm, which is a big favorite of mine.

Now for a Bremner tangle...which I found and delighted in: Ionic.. Those are the curly bits along the bottom of the atorm and allboxedup, the top edge, and along the blue onomato.

Isn't this a charming tangle? Ionic. I added my own circley dots on them.

What a whimsical pattern, truly!

I finished up with beadlines and ribbons, then colored the onomatos in earth tones (and one blue) and did the shading. 

This one, I like a lot. 

The ATC may go to a co worker...maybe just leave it on someone's cubicle randomly.