The African Artist Challenge

Last week, jewels began appearing in people's zentangle art here and there. How ASTOUNDINGLY beautiful! Of course I followed a link and found the tutorial here at TangleFan.  It is amazing how simple it is, and yet the results are stunning

 can you believe, this is the VERY FIRST piece I did. Rather mind boggling, isn't it? And I haven't even shaded it.

Then I spent some time at work between calls, making little jewels on bijou tiles. And...there are some gold balls there, too. I want to work on that technique some more.

In fact, today is my day off and once the domestic stuff is done, I plan on following through with the tear drop earring I had in my mind when I woke up this morning. Will it be silver, or pearl? Or gold!

Okay, on to the Diva Challenge: UMT African Artist by Tina of Akua Art. Tina is a creative genius with new tangle patterns. Two of my very favorites EVER are her Niuroda and Hamail. Tina has a pattern gallery at her blog with lots of other lovely patterns.

anyway, African Artist is a fun one, so fabricky :) which was Tina's inspiration, fabric from Africa. I played with it in a couple of pieces, then decided to use a string. String 186...that'll do.

This is what I ended up with:

There's purk, ta-da, rashell, onomato, and of course African Artist...and lots of random little squiggly spirals.

I like this quite a bit as is...but then the jewel bug bit, and I finished it...





...like this:

Isn't that something!

Well, I got to clicking around and found some more inspiration at Coffee and Creativity where Michelle Wynne put jewels in EVERYTHING! which gave me the idea of maybe some African Artist with jewels nestled among the folds...

Again I chose a string, #185 and started tangling

Meh. It didn't turn out as I had pictured, though I did a few variations on African Artist, which is the main feature in this one, and gem stones ARE peeking out from the folds.It would have been better if I'd stuck with one color scheme, I think. Flord in the background finished it. Now notice the one piece of African Artist at the bottom there, with a single strip rather than lots of lines. It is important, because...well you'll see...

For a third piece, I made up my own string and simply started filling spaces with patterns. African Artist, of course, and also Tortuca, Umble, Flux, and one I created called Ripl

 

This time I put a gemstone in the narrow places of African Artist, and I stuck with one color palette in each section. So the gemstones in the upper African Artist are green/yellow, and this tangleation of AA, with the single curved strip...which is a pretty way to do it, isn't it...has purples. Scattered throughout the Ripl are amber gems. I rather like this one. 

Good times with zentangle!