More Tipple

The idea hit me, that I had done some cool stuff with Tipple in an old sketchbook, where I filled in all the spaces darkly, and colored the tipples with highly saturated colors. I based that older idea on a pattern I saw behind a speaker on a TED talk, and really liked it.

So I decided to do something along those lines for a second entry in this challenge! I like it as much as my first entry.

A Spectrum Spiral

Some thoughts on Tipple. Even though it is almost the simplest tangle out there (stippling is simpler, being "just" dots) and is a very repetitive pattern, this tangle looks much better with precision. Because I am drawing one little circle after another, it's possible...and likely...that I will end up with a bunch of fast circles that have ends that don't quite meet...and there are probably some of those in this one, and my first entry. But I think it compromises the look of the piece if there are too many that are drawn carelessly. As I worked on this piece I found it more relaxing to really go slow and careful forming my circles. I breathed more evenly as I focused, and enjoyed the process a lot.

This was also true when I was playing with Umble for last week's  Diva challenge. Because we are drawing "under", the placement of lines is really important. The pieces where I was sloppy with it were less enjoyable to me, and looking through my sketchbooks, this is true of any work that I finish. If I was careful and relaxed in the process, placing lines carefully and taking my time, I enjoy the finished work quite a bit better. But here's the cool thing: weighting lines makes a huge difference in how finished a piece looks AND it hides those little careless boo boos.

And that's why I weighted my lines in tipple to begin with (back before this challenge, the TED talk background)...because I was being sloppy and wanted to hide my uneven circle joinings.

Zentangle has given me a lot of confidence in my ability to make some pretty cool looking things with randomly selected patterns...what could happen if I thought out what I wanted to achieve, and used care and meditative energy in something that I am aiming to sketch, to look like something, to look realistic? Hm. Now I have some ideas about my large sketchbook that has been sitting aside for many weeks. 


EDIT: I just had to share this...Found on pinterest

Someone gathers plastic bottle caps on the beach, and created this amazing spectrum of colored circles! hmmm