The Moshier U Challenge

This week SuzyMosh's challenge is to use tangles beginning with U, as well as those of guest artist Elena Hadzijaneva.

For this challenge, I picked up a piece I had already started. 

I went down the left margin with heart rope, made shiny. In the upper right corner, Croscro, and across the top, Ciceron. Then I put some hollibaugh in and a ruffle of Meringue.

And then I set it aside for a few. 



When the Mosh challenge came along, I picked it up again and started putting some relevant patterns in, under the meringue

Hypnotic by Elena is a favorite from my very first days doing zentangle. Undling DOES start with U, but I've used it before...but it just fit with the repeated fine lines of the hypnotic. Then Up and Across behind, repeated the stripe running down from heartrope into meringue. The hypnotic reminded me of bunso which was my VERY first tangle pattern, so I put some there. 


We needed some more U patterns, so I put an arch of Ups and Downs along my Hollibaugh arch

and notice the Join in there, under the Hollibaugh...and when I was halfway through filling that in, I caught it: Join is a repeat of the shape from heartrope!

This turned into a real exploration. Starting with patterns, repeating their shapes or their sparkles, drawing out the feel of each tangle, making new interactions and really running with the elements of patterns.

This is the piece in its entirety. Some of the details I added were perfs and ribbons; the shading in hollibaugh just makes it rise from the page. A few ribbons on the bottom sort of carry the theme of shiny stripes. Another croscro and some wavy ripple thing I invented finished it off. 

The only thing I would change would be to make the bottom left patterns bolder. I used 05 for a lot of this piece, but the fineness of lines for hypnotic and undling sort of need 01 IMO.

What does it remind me of.  It is quite structural, but with lots of motion. Maybe a Medieval city square with a fountain, and some merchants. Some stone, some water, some cloth.