Duo Tangle Week

The Diva this week challenged us with a duo tangle. And the two patterns are Meer and Auraknot. It's been a while since I played with auraknot, so this was fun.

I played around with a star shape a little bit then hit upon a square and decided to do two squares perpendicular to each other, and fill it with meer.

meer came out kinda twisty, because the connecty side lines/ribs were so long, and they ended up not all pointing up in that inverted V, so I adjusted here and there and it doesn't look much like Meer after all, but I think it looks SO cool! And I like the piece as a whole. It was extra fun, because I used a new pen, in my Canson multimedia book...98 lb. paper is SO NICE.

It reminds me of a basket full of silky fabric.

Knightstar Fun!

What a fun tangle to play with, Knightstar! By drawing straight lines, you end up with curves...it is a lot like mathematics! ha! It reminds me of an art project my mom taught to her cubscout troop, using cardstock and red yarn. Cool!

It wasn't easy to grasp right off the bat, so I played with it some

I penciled some, and did some individual motifs. 

That piece on the bottom, I tried making it with the squares...it doesn't work as well, does it.

Well, I put it aside for the time being and started just tangling on a blank page in my sketchbook making a sort of Linq type thing and bubbles and flux and stuff...then there was a corner where a grid would fit and I went for it :) Fun!

I kinda like this...not sure what it reminds me of...there's a city and some burgeoning energetic land around it, and a sparkling sky over it....

Diva Circle Challenge

Circles seem to be in the air these days, with Joey challenging us in circle strings the past several weeks, and now the Diva is asking us to use circles in whatever way we want, as a string, and then tangle in them.

Well, I opened the challenge at work and searched for things on my desk that I could trace:

Largest to smallest: a tub of desk wipes, the lid from my water jug, hand lotion, eyeglass spritzer bottom, eyeglass spritzer lid.


I used these to trace a string into a new sketchbook (which I do NOT like. The paper is thin, yet super "toothy" so it soaks up ink. My niece or granddaughter might like it, but I won't be using this sketchbook after all)

But here is the traced string in progress:

This was my "between calls" project at work, where we were only  moderately busy, so I was able to get some things done with minimal interruptions from my job. hahahaha!

The first pattern I thought of was Yew-Dee, and from there, the rest sort of fell into place, ending up looking like a basket.

Yew-dee, Narwhal, Carpet Daisy, Tipple, Crazy Poky String

That yewdee really makes it baskety, doesn't it. I do like it, though the paper is disappointing......even the shading is muddy and meh... 

After I got done with this I looked up. There, tacked to my cubicle wall, is a piece I created a while back...Circles! So I took a pic with my iPhone and here it is

Niuroda was entirely the inspiration for this, and I just went with it from there. I believe I traced circular items for this one, too. Niuroda, Purk, Bales, Mumsy, Arukas, Hollibaugh (looking like a ball of tape in the center, really small) and a Jettie ball there on the bottom.The top sunshiney looking thing is my own Concert, and there is a circle of circles there, dunno what that is called. For a finishing touch, I added little black perls here and there.

I agree with Laura: circles are relaxing to draw. I can fill a page with tipple, scruffle, go4th, jetties, or whatever circular patterns in a JIFF.

B'Twined, Served on a Bed of X

Joey has us circling still. :) and it has been a lot of fun. I haven't entered a piece every time, but I have been following along.

This week, our string is a circle with an X thru it, and the pattern is B'twined. I love these patterns that take on an over-under effect as you go. B'twined and Navaho are both faves of mine, related but very different to look at, in the end.

Well, anyway, I played around with it some. Finished up this one yesterday afternoon

I like it a lot, but as I was shading along the edge of the "disc" it occurred to me that wrapping all of the ends "around" (Aquafleur style) would look pretty cool











So I started over and ended up with this:

When I drew the first one, I had already lined the circle with my 1 micron pen. With the second, I left the circle in pencil and then tried to make the ends "wrap", and I put shading "under" all the b'twined.  I like them both! I prefer the big X in the first sample, the smoothness of it pleases me.







This was a fun challenge, and a really fun tangle! I'm all set to play with it some, and get more of an Over-Under effect by alternating the lines.

Peace Like a River

The Diva has a guest this week: Suzanne Fluhr whose boomer blog is always fun to read.

Her challenge to us was to tangle something peaceful. We have had such horrible news in the past week...honestly though, all of 2016 has been uneasy and ugly in the public square, in the States.

So, time to bring some peace, and that is what I did. There is a park nearby, one of my favorite places in the world. I have been taking myself there this past week, every day going to sit on the bank of the creek and ground myself.

I sit on the stones, and take off my shoes, and breathe. Listen. Be. 

The river has dozens of voices, all repeating the same lullaby, and it is very calming to sit here. I am determined to get out into this space every day, away from all else and seat myself on the earth and simply be there. 

Today, I brought my tangle supplies and did the Diva Challenge while immersed in the cool morning light and flowing song of the river. 

For the string, I traced the shadows of some grasses that fell across my tile.















Then I chose some organic patterns: Pokeleaf, Pokeroot, and Printemps.

Auraing things lent a calm creek feel to the piece.















Then I shaded using color, to bring in the lovely green/brown of the river. It really is the prettiest shade of green, and I love it when the runoff comes.

The river is calm and deep jade green. There are willow and cottonwood trees on the banks, and there are many places where it runs rapidly, along with placid level flow beneath the blue shade of the trees. Yes. Sitting on the banks is a tranquil experience.

And look! A perfect place to raise a family

Mama and seven little droplets

stars and stripey

Because Monday was Independence Day in the US, the Diva's challenge was to create a piece with our country's flag in mind. Patriotism, don't you know.

I confess, I stole the idea from hungrycorgistudio, where there is a very clever and interesting piece using two tangles and color to create a...flag!

Well, arukas was on my mind, and ribbons, and this is what I came up with.

It was fun playing with a shading technique I recently learned for prismacolor pencils, and I like the riff on color here: turquoise and magenta rather than the primary red and blue. I posted this on my cubicle...I am on an intersection, the first cubicle on the floor when you come in the entrance near the conference room. I wonder if people will recognize it as an American flag.

Circling Around

Greetings to all.

First of all YAY it's my day off! and very welcome it is. Nothing like being a drone bee, a cog in the machine, a wage slave. Thank you Lord for a job. I pay my bills, I live in not my car...I own a car that has new tires on it as of last Thursday. So yes, a job is a good thing and I am GLAD TO BE AWAY FROM THAT PLACE FOR TWO DAYS!

 And my cat, and Wylie's cat, and Wylie love me. And others do, too.

Joey gave us a very cool circle string this week to play with, and a fun tangle: Gnarly. But we'll come back to that.

I wanted to display a few pages from my sketchbook. I found a terrific tangle pattern website called
pattern collections I think the Shading Zentangle page on FB is where I first linked into pattern collections.com but when I did I really liked it. One of the features there is a tutorial series called Grid Journey, packed with ideas on playing with grid patterns.

 The first "lesson" is similar to the seed grid idea that Maria and Rick talk about at their website:  Take the elements of a grid, whatever lines and curves are inside ONE square of the grid, and playing with that. Turn the page, put them all in the same corner for a new type of pattern, or reverse/mirror them.

This is the  pattern Blooming Petal which I played around with, using those ideas. Isn't it something, how different the same pattern can look, depending on how you put them together?

The second lesson is about making a grid pattern into a ribbon...thusly:

 Backsplash, Clem, Egyp, and 3-D Room, as ribbons. Neat, eh?











Okay so that fun website. today I plan on getting into lesson 3 in the Grid Journey.

Other sketchbook stuff, just random lines and forms.

 Got my Eni Oken shading book out and played around with it.
See that section of Skye? and I love the little flower bud I doodled. Shading does amazing things to a piece of art.

Inspired by a Vivian Maier photo

Playing with Loopy Blossom. This has turned out to be a fun pattern for me. There is plenty of scope for creativity here. I wonder if I can do that grid seed thing with it. It' is kind of a grid based pattern, but not rigid...hmmm.








Now, without further adieu...ado?...ehem. without further ado,

Joey's Challenge

A large circle, with a narrow circle inside of it, and the pattern Gnarly.

Because I had my pencils out for another piece to color...oh! wait. this is funny. A co worker stopped by my cubicle, saw the myriad works displayed and said "oh, you're into that coloring craze" and I said...Well, yeah But I made those and THEN colored them. hahaha. He was duly impressed...

Anyway, I had been busy coloring in a page that I didn't like, just plain AND with shading on my mind, it was easy to choose the way I should go with this challenge. Gnarly is shaded subtly with cool grays and the center is hollibaugh, also minimally enhanced with shading and each section colored in boldly with jewel tones. Gee wiz, I ended up liking this. very satisfying to do, and I think it's fun to look at. The only thing I haven't decided yet is, do I do anything with the background behind gnarly. There is not so much as a cast shadow there. But this way it looks airy and light, doesn't it. Hmm.