Polka Dots

Joey's Challenge this week was to use circles, and fill the circles with tangles, no repeats.

Just so happens, I have a circle template with lots of sizes, so I traced several on a page of my sketchbook. But that template doesn't have anything really small, so I went searching. I fund a round pin in my jewelry box (some kind of an award that a kid won, somewhere) and put a few smaller circles in there.

Then it was time to go to work, so I packed my bags and went. Thankfully, the first half of my shift was slow-ish so I had time to play.
I wanted to shade things so some of the circles were like holes, with depth "under" the page, and some of them should be rounded, so they looked like they were sitting "on" the page.

Pretty cool stuff, if I do say so myself.

Patterns from top left going widdershins:
trentwith
nipa over flord
wabi
mumsy and bula
hollibaugh with ripples and tipple
b'tweed
cruffle
macdee with floatfest
phicops
itsy bitsy
circfleur
and that is dyon in the middle top






I've seen b'tweed done like a dream catcher before, and have tried it. That technique would be a fun one to work on.

This is my second or third try at it. Not *too* bad, but it would be something to perfect, that's for sure.

Nipa is one of my favorite patterns. It can look like a crick in a meadow, or like planets spinning in a solar flow.

Trentwith, dyon, and phicops are "on" the paper

 Here I have it flowing over a bed of flord. I think the "under the paper" effect is really good
here.








This was a fun and simple challenge.
I like what I ended up with. Thanks, joey!

Got my goat...

Oh, has our beloved Diva presented an interesting challenge this week.

Feb 19 is the Chinese New Year, and it will be the Year of the Goat. As soon as I read the challenge, I went to the internet to find out more.

At   Chinese Fortune Calendar  there is more information  than I ever imagined could be found, all about Chinese astrology, and the elements, yin/yang, branches, stems, I Ching...SO. MUCH. INFORMATION.

Turns out, this is the year of the Goat/Sheep and it is green, and it is yin wood.  I started getting ideas: hmmm, curlicue tangles would be good for the wool, hmmm, leafy and twiggy patterns would be good because that's what Goats and Sheep eat (and it's wood). Should use some green in there. Hmm.

Then I clicked on this page where the seed of an idea was planted.  It has to do with the Chinese written symbol for Sheep, which is very interesting, the history of Chinese pictographic writing.

Chinese for Sheep.

 After practicing in my sketchbook with my brush pen (which didn't turn out as cool looking as the character as written with Chinese calligraphy brushes. I love how the lines are weighted naturally, because the Chinese brushes tend to be thick.)

Et Voila! I have my idea.

I started with a string

 Cool, eh?

Now, how to fill it? A tangle in each "arm"? one tangle for the character, with other tangles around it? hmm. Then, thinking about the research I had done, I remembered that this year's Goat is Wood, and it is Green. How to start fell into my mind. The tangle Wud, right?


I also used some Diva Dance along the left lower arm, because I thought the wud needed knots. Ha!

Got out my dark green .05 micron pen for the other tangles I wanted to add. I still wanted curlicue stuff, for the wool, so I did some spirally stuff along the left side, in trios. I aura'ed around them, using Dave Hunter's Linkum tangle, and along the base, and up the right edge, a little bit of fescu. Shading on the character was in  green pencil, and I added the shadow beneath the character in No. 2 pencil, then blended with a stump.


the color doesn't show up well at all in these pictures, but it is very pretty in person. If you click on one of these pictures, it will take you to a place where you can see the string and the finished tile, right next to each other. I REALLY like that. Amazing what shading can do.

I am taking this tile to work with me and putting it up on my cubicle wall. Year of the Goat, 2015.

Thank you Laura, for a fascinating challenge, and the ensuing journey to which you pointed me.

And a hearty thank you to all who comment here. It is very cool to see what people think of the stuff I post.

Wow! Whee! What? Fun!

The challenge that Suzy Mosh presents each week "That's New to Me" is becoming a favorite. She chooses a random letter, and we must choose patterns we have never worked with before in that letter. It's that simple, and I love it!

This week, it's W and I chose Waax, by Esther Piszczek, Whirlee by Lynn Mead, Wabi by Sandy Steen Bartholomew, and Wud by Joni Feddersen.

With this ZIA, I am posting a second entry to this week's Diva Challenge. That challenge was to do whatever we wanted, but make it Valentiney. And that's what I did. Is there anything more valentiney than a box of chocolates!

Whirlee is in the left "lobe" of the heart near the center. I think it looks just like a chocolate bon bon.

life is like....

 The Wabi is down and to the left, a piece near the  left edge of the heart. It's circular, with concentric circles and tear drop edging. The Waax is in the right lower side, right under the big isochor heart. And Wud is the frame of the whole "box of Chocolates"

Notice the string of Hitched along the lower right edge? I think they look like peppermints.

Other tangles I used (I'll try to list them all!)

starting at the top left, as best I can remember:

orbs, striping, paradox, thumbprint, yincut, wabi, mooka, show girl (blue background), a heart, a dark chocolate and orange flower, bumps, more orbs, isochor, printemps, truffle (in the corner of the heart).
Up from truffle, concentric hearts in a bed of purple, undling, flux, sannibelle next to a knightsbridge variation, something spirally, kandyribnz, BB, whirlee, down from whirlee is a pile of circfleur, more isochor, waax next to knightsbridge, hitched, a big heart of isochor, and in the upper right of the heart, a big diva dance! There is flux here and there, and lots of little pink hearts scattered around.

This was so much fun to dream up, design, and do! (BTW, does anyone know the actual name of that knightsbridge variation? it's one of my favorites)

Drawn on 11x8.5 sketch paper from a pecon sketchpad, with sepia micron pens, one "chocolate" pen by Recollections, several chocolate-ish colored micron pens, colored pencils by Koh-i-noor, their Progresso line of woodless colored pencils. A few varieties of pink gel pens from a set my son gave me for Xmas...Staples brand.

which also brings up the topic of what to use. I do love the idea of having high quality art supplies, but it must be said, if you have the back of an envelope and a BIC pen, you can do art. Don't let NOT having wonderful, high end pens and pencils stop you from creating. My interest in doing art  started three years ago in earnest, with a yellow No 2 pencil with an eraser on the tip, some Artist Loft watercolor pencils, and a few pieces of watercolor paper, which were supplied by the teacher at a one day seminar.
When I bought my own, I started with very inexpensive stuff, and have added to my stock with mostly medium quality stuff since then, and the occasional really terrific high quality piece. Prismacolor is a brand that has lots of praise from every quarter, and the one Prismacolor pencil i own IS luscious..some day I hope to have a full set by Prismacolor. Until then, i will use my Artist's Loft, Crayola, and YES! my new Derwent pencils. And of course, the sakura microns and the tiepolo paper tiles...best of the best!

Valentine-y

I liked this challenge a lot, mostly because I kinda burned out on hearts and valentine colors, and the diva told us to do what we wanted, that seemed Valentine-y to us. Yay!

This is the first one I did. The pattern is Erbluehen by Simone Bischoff, and it makes such a graceful frond of buds.
When I colored the edges with the micron pink pen, it was much darker than I anticipated, and it looked funky. Coloring in with softer tones of pink and shading with fuschia and purple made a difference. Then, this was cute I thought...making fescu hearts...so I used hearts. Could I do otherwise? And a border of beadline. Kinda valentiney, eh?
 



One of the many cool things that Dave Hunter did for us at this month's Intermountain Tangler Gathering, was to bring heart templates and stencils. As I was getting ready for bed last night, this idea came to me.

It is the largest heart stencil, filled with undling (a new favorite tangle) and to finish it off, outlined with red.

So, for someone who was kind of burning out on heart shapes and pink and valentine-ish stuff, I sure made some pink, flowery, heartish stuff. And it was fun.

This is a page of heart tangles that I practiced over the last two weeks...I didn't like them when i did them, but looking at them after a few days...hm. Not bad.

from top right: heart line, oolo, minline, heart rope

playing with depth and shading using circles

I have another valentiney thing I'm working on, maybe I'll post it later in the week!

A word about my moleskine notebook.
I mentioned it here a few posts ago, about using the good stuff. I assumed that Moleskine was going to be "my good stuff" because the notebook ran me about $20.00 Twenty bucks, for a medium sized blank notebook? And moleskine has such a reputation for quality.
Regrettably, I must say in this case, moleskine has been a let down. The paper is so thin, even pencil lines can be seen from the back of the page, and ink, or even crayon? You can see that stuff from behind the facing page! The paper is almost as thin as what you would find in a Bible. It is NOT "good stuff" and I have permanently put it aside. It won't be useful for any use that I can think of.

So...thankfully i do have "good stuff" in my Tiepolo tiles, micron pens, Koh-i-noor and Derwent colored pencils, and I am LOVING using all of it! (I am currently considering a set of prismacolor pencils  to add to my art supplies. Next big Blick coupon! woot!

hearts galore!

Joey's challenge this week is to create a tile using patterns that being with the word heart. Playing around with this one, I learned a new pattern to me: Heartline, by Helen Williams. I just love it, and practiced it a lot, enjoying every minute.

So why did I have such a hard time with this one? I did several "practice" pieces, playing around with different combinations of different patterns and wasn't happy with any of them. And finally this morning I got out a tile I had colored with watercolor pencils, and tangled on it.

 The patterns are Heartline, Heartvin, and Heartstrings. I put some fescu in, and a bit of beadlines. It still doesn't feel like it has much flow, but I like the color, and the patterns are all fun.

my favorite part is the little pink heart

MMMMM!

That's New to Me, from SuzyMosh this week involves choosing patterns that begin with M.

I started playing with M patterns as soon as I saw the challenge on Suzy's page on Sunday, but didn't get around to making a tile until this morning, and what I ended up with turns out to be almost my favorite piece. It is the first time I feel really good about color, too. For some reason, color makes me nervous.

anyway, here it is.

Tropical Paradise

Mumsy is the star, with maisie waves and meringue leaves. The colors are Progresso woodless colored pencils. HINT: the white pencil is wonderful for moving the color around. A standard stump doesn't work to blend these pencils. The white pencil is a finisher, more than a blender, but I can see the difference (took the photo before I finished the colors).

The tile is standard card stock, and the pen is a Sakura micron .01.

Diva Challenge 203: Athitzi

Okay, this pattern is SO versatile. Peeking at other peoples' entries, I am amazed at how it can be used.The author of the pattern, Eleanor Holt, has a sample on her blog that is stunning to look at. The simplicity, with just the right shading, is stunning!

The Diva's sample follows Eleanor, but also explores other ways to use Athitzi. And everyone looks to be having a LOT of fun with it!

This challenge comes my way, as I am at the beginning of an exploration of mandalas. Those spirally athitzi's just called my name and became the center of my mandala. I also put some athitzi in zig zag, on another round.                                                                         

 In the original, the eye is drawn around and around by the colored orbs. I shaded the athitzi with gray colored pencil, which is maybe more subtle than I want. A few leaf shapes, with some queen's crown making a sort of doily effect.

After reading a piece on using the good stuff  I made a decision to break out my moleskine notebook, and because I am exploring mandalas right now, that is what the moleskine book will be used for. The cool thing about it is, I can "use my good stuff" every day for a while, or not touch it for a few, if I want. Because the moleskine will be a mandala centric notebook, I will choose other places for other tangle play.

Here is the first mandala I created, after seeing the technique on a video we have posted on our website Intermountain Tanglers  in the "resources" tab, under videos. It is the fourth video down, titled "CZT Marketing retreat" ...in that video CZT Sandhya Manne from India shares a technique for putting concentric circles on a tile, which can then be easily made into a mandala. That inspired me to start exploring mandalas, and this is the first one I created:

Four Corners Mandala

What really made this one pop was adding all the lines and aura'ed circles on the outermost edge. Makes it look radiant and energetic.

It's gonna be fun, doing mandalas and exploring athitzi. That is a very versatile pattern!