Diva Challenge 179: Bijou

binial, writ large

The Diva challenge this week is to use a smaller size tile. Bijou is a little snail that migrated to the US from Paris, when Maria and Rick were traveling. It is a charming story, that you can find at diva challenge 179: bijou space    I don't have any Zentangle ™ tiles, but usually eyeball my measurements to the 3.5 inch size...or not. For me, until I get some Zentangle ® tiles in the house, the size isn't as important as the creativity and exploration.

However, with this challenge, I did get out my ruler and measured 2 inch squares to work in. One page of my sketch book can hold six two inch squares, so i did a couple of those.

On this page, I explored connecting the squares to each other just a bit. It was fun to do, but nothing struck me as special, really.












However, the binial, upper left corner, gave me an idea: why not take one element of a tiny design, and make it large, to fit into the two inch bijou square?

 binial, jessicup, pendrills, laBel, Rixty, and camelia

I liked this page better, but it was harder than I thought to find patterns with tiny elements to expand on. I wasn't really looking for grid things like camelia...but it's a favorite, so it's in.

this one is my favorite. Binial.

Here, with a pen for scale.

this is a fun challenge, and I'm going to make a template out of card stock, so i can always have some bijou size spaces to work in.

Playing with a tangleation of Bales

I recently saw a pattern on a dog bed, in walmart. It caught my eye (funny how, since discovering zentangle TM, patterns have become so interesting to me. I see them everywhere!) and I snapped a pic of it

Later that day I played around with it. It ends up looking a lot like bales, but the focus is the diamond shape. I loved how it looked on its own, and have added it to a few pieces.






It makes a really good filler/background. You can see the bales coming out.

here, I really drew out the circular part of the pattern

Then I did a square of it, and added trunks to the bottom

I call it glen.

I'm not sure if I've created a pattern, or if I'm just playing with bales here, but I do know, this is a fun pattern for play time.

Diva Challenge #178: Use My Initials

Diva Challenge 178 duo tangle using my own initials

What a great idea! My name is Heidi Whitney, so H. W.

My first one, I used Hollibaugh and Well. Both of these are favorites, and I wanted to play with well some, because it's so much fun.

hollibaugh deepens this piece tremendously

In this piece, I used well in many different forms. There's a cadent-like phase, and there's a phase that reminds me of gothic. You can make it into flowers whenever, so I did some well-behaved grid oriented flowers, but my very favorite way to do well is with randomly placed centers, so your flowers end up looking playful and funky. That version is the centerpiece.
Hollibaugh all around, which adds so much depth. Things ended up looking so layered here. Hollibaugh does that so well, which is why it's so much fun.
I also used String #23 (W is the 23rd letter of the alphabet) and had a lot of fun making this. Sorry it's blurry. Some day I'll get a scanner.







I decided to do a second piece, this time using string #8 (for H, the 8th letter : D )

I like the 3D effect of Waves

It is Hurakan, filling the center square of the string, with some baby Hurakans filling the corners. Then, somewhat following the theme of storms at sea, the pattern Waves.

I'm going to be playing with this challenge all week. There's LOADS of H and W patterns.

Diva Challenge 177: Truffle

This week's Diva Challenge

is by guest CZT Caroline Brody, a Junior in high school, who is also a Certified Zentangle Teacher. Way to go Caroline! 

She created a tangle pattern called Truffle, and asked us to use it in our art this week. It is a fun pattern, easy to play with, wonderful to embellish and decorate.

Well, I had a card left over from the BYOB challenge of last week, so I decided to start with it. It was made of chai tea droplets, and had lots of round splashes which were perfect for the truffle pattern. 

when I got the first row of truffles drawn, they reminded me strongly of sea shells, and my theme just flowed from there. I call this piece "Shell Party"...it has Caroline's Truffle pattern, and Phicops. I gave each phicops a passel of ribbony tendrils to swirl around. Some aura lea in the corners. And bubbles galore.

they seem to be so happy, swirling and swishing around each other.

 

I used water color pencil in light blue for some complementary color in there, but found that where the water touched the ink, it tended to bleed, so I wasn't able to do the color justice.  I do like how the brown and blue look together, but I'll need to play around more with my watercolor pencils and learn how to do it better.

Shading turned out less pleasing than usual, not sure why. But, overall it's a happy piece. 

My Pattern: Concert

This has been a rock and roll, shake my booty weekend, for sure. 

A friend took me to Steve Miller Band/Journey on Thursday night, where I danced like a fool for three hours, not kidding. It was so joyful, especially SMB...I laughed and danced and sang along. Both SMB and Journey did amazing things with light, beaming long rays of light out over the audience and flashing lights on their back screen and over the group. 

Me? YES! dancing? (yes, always) to the Steve Miller Band, live? Oh. My. Wonderful! Loads and loads of joy and excitement and energy.

steve miller band stage. Yes, they lit up after dark.

On Friday, I got to dance again, out clubbing with friends. Another night of non-stop shakin it, to a terrific local country western rock band. No partner? Okay...dance with all the gang. Someone to dance with? Wonderful! Dance and dance! And i did (no pictures, I was too busy boogeying)

And last night (Saturday) out with another friend, to Little River Band at a local founder's day celebration, where I danced the night away yet again, and then fireworks (no pictures again...I'll get better about that). But what a fun weekend! 

When I got up this morning, I started tangling, trying to capture some of what I've been doing. 

It's blurry, but I was trying to put on paper, the rhythms and beats and energy of the rock music I've been enjoying. The rhythm and sway of the dancing. Repeat patterns, and some swaying curvy lines, and some thumping jagged lines...Now notice, in the middle right, there's a sun-ray looking thing. There was a VERY decent light show by Journey that wanted to be in on what I was doing. I think this tile has a lot of action, and a lot of rhythm, and a bit flowy feeling.

I liked it so much, I created a tangle starring this spotlight thing:

There is also some diva dance, umble, crux,xyp, hollibaugh, and rixty. Oh, and floatfest. Notice the  spotlight repeated on the top. 

Then I just took a page and played with this, and had loads of fun:

For the first time in a while, I just felt creative. Wasn't hampered by any right way, simply exploring how many ways can I do this? 

and here is a step out. I'm calling it CONCERT, though I think it is not entirely original. Seems there is a pattern called spotlight, similar to this.

Start with an arc. Add rays. Aura around the first arc. Add rays to the second arc, between the rays of the first arc. Then add another aura around the back of the second row of rays. 

Seems this could be the star of a tile, or drawn small, would make an energetic background or border. 

I just realized that on none of these, did I do any shading. Another element of interest. 

Time to go play again some more!

Zentangle challenge 175: using a beverage to create a tangle.

Okay, playing with inserting pics and other things into a blog post. I may start using this blog to post at the diva's page for my participation in the challenges. 

This week's diva challenge was to tangle using our favorite beverages as inspiration.

Well, I drink water, so I posted a zendala that I made with water as the theme. It's splashy, and has loads of concentric circles. And so weird looking, but I like it. It actually was initially inspired by a visit to the pool with my grandkids. It's only my second zendala that I've ever made, and it gives me a giggle.

And since I also drink green tea, I decided to create a green tea string. I just made my tea, then dribbled the tea bag over a blank card (I don't currently have any tiles...soon to be remedied)...Initially all the droplets were the same light color, but I left it to dry naturally, not blotting off the excess and was thrilled at the variety of colors I ended up with.

The darker the stain, the longer it took to evaporate. I'm fascinated with how dark it turned, and no longer wonder at 1) the stains in my mug or 2) whether I should use a whitening toothpaste.

(I should)







And here is the piece I made from the green tea stain:
(along the top edge you can see some dots. That is sheet music, since I used my piano to prop up the ZIA for photographing.)

Isn't that bizarre?
I struggled with it, because it wasn't looking pretty, but as I continued, and set it down to look at it from a distance, I got to thinking it was pleasing in a funky, quirky way. My favorite parts are in the tropicana arches, where I aura'ed with a gold gel pen. I think it makes it look kind of three dimensional, just a bit.

The tea was fun enough, but I wanted a brighter color, and remembered that I had fresh cherries in the fridge. I squeezed one over a new card, and found it liked to run over the page, so I tilted it to get some stringier shapes. (note the fingerprints on the upper and left edges) The cherry juice was a rich pleasing purple when it dried, which would have been pleasant enough, but I also had lime juice, which I splashed over the cherry juice, and WOW! wherever the lime juice touched the cherry juice, it morphed into a stunning magenta.

Just looking at it, I knew this would be a fun string to play with.

Again, however, I found myself nervous about starting. I felt almost like there were some rules or something, and I hesitated and studied it for a day or two. How to start? I didn't want to wreck it. (no wrong in Zentangle™ right?...sigh...)

Then I decided to simply let the string itself be the star of the piece. As with the tea string, I started outlining and filling. Lots of aura, plenty of queen's crown, diva dance. Spirals, dangles, arches, loops, stripes.  I think it looks like some fantasy underground world. Freaky and funny.

 

Like a playground with funny looking flora and fauna. 

And that concludes my first blog post with inserted links and pictures.

two pieces

 

 

My first, and my most recent.

 

On top, the first zia piece I ever did, before I knew there was such a thing.  I had seen some zentangle tutorials, and I used a couple of patterns, then just went sort of silly and fun with it. It reminded me of a cave.

 

The bottom piece I did today, just wanting to play with Barney. When I made a birthday card featuring a dragonfly on the front, I used Barney for the eyes, and they turned out much more symmetrical, but looking at these, I like my Barney here too. It's fun to look at. I also added some striping and inapod to finish, and two corners of betweed.

Striping is much nicer with the highlights, in my opinion.