Daniel's Verdigogh challenge and Suzy's L challenge

A few weeks ago I ran into a novel challenge by way of *someone's* challenge entry *somewhere*... each challenge features a tangle, and our challenge is to create tangleations on that pattern. Neat, eh?

It can be found at The Tangle Corner, by Daniel and it is called the Tangleation Vocation...again, neat! A calling, in fact.

Verdigoh is such a cool pattern, one I've played with quite a bit, and it was lots of fun to try variations on the theme.The basic shapes of Verdigoh are triangular and circular, so I decided to play with those.

I puttered around on a page in my sketchbook:

 The original is upper left. I did a few different styles. there's a strircle element in the black one. The bottom center is all fine lines, with dots not circles.

I tried my hand at a Byerly style (bottom right) and then decided to try a version with the circular element hugely enhanced.

And that is the tangleation I decided to go with.

This is on a tan ATC tile, in sepia 01 pen. I shaded it with stippling, and added some highlights with a white gelly roller pen.

Yes. I like it. Fun challenge! thanks, Daniel.

For the second entry in this double post, I present the piece I created for Suzy Mosh's New to Me challenge.


This week, we have L and because L has popped up before, Suzy added CZT artist JJ LaBarbera. She has home really nice patterns, and many of hers are on tanglepatterns.com.

I chose Arc Flower and Allium by JJ, and for L patterns, I used Lealad by Lily Moon and Liberty 100 by Neil Burley. I also threw in a pile of leaflet because it's a huge favorite of mine, and it starts with L and yes I've used it.

Arc Flower was so much fun to play with. I've used mumzy before, but not this one, which is similar. I enjoyed adding some variety here and there amongst the "petals" and shading it was SO much fun.

Arc Flower is in the upper left and lower right corners; lealad is the vertical wallpaper; leaflet on the right side of the lealad, allium snugged in there, and Liberty100 is around the background at the bottom and right of lealad.

Double Post: hollibaugh and organic challenges

I'm out of words. My creativity isn't flowing too well. I am not creating art, just practicing and developing patterns. And making lines on paper. Hm.

So, sorry but this time there is not much of a blog entry. Just a couple of tiles.

First of all, Joey has been going through the alphabet. We are up to the letter H, and the pattern chosen is Hollibaugh. yay! I love that pattern! It's very cool.

And this is the tile I made for Joey's Weekly Challenge:

I stole it from another sketchbook, and the idea is right out of a web page I visited who knows when. Stippling is always good for adding character. I like how it turned out. A LOT!

The organic challenge at Diva's page, by guest CZT Cari Sultanik...where to begin? nearly all of my pieces are organic, because I prefer the lush feel of curvy and shady zentangle art. So I could have chosen one of MANY pieces I already have around.

For instance, this is a favorite that I  made this week.

The pattern in the upper left is my tangleation of Neil Burley's "Pineapple 1" I also did an adaptation of Cabana (the shiny split leaf looking things) and you also have Dave Hunter's putki, oolo, hollibaugh, and N'zeppel. Isn't it cool, making the N'zeppel rise off the page with shading? also, a few cute little shiny black pearls here and there.

So yes, a lot of my work is already organic, but I decided to create a tile using organic shapes that also created an outdoor scene. And this is what I did:

I used one of my pre-colored tiles that I made a couple of weeks ago with my Derwent pencils. Patterns are: niuroda, pines, leaflet/pholantern/pineapple curves, mooka, and festune. With tipples all over the place. oh...b'tweed in amongst the pines.

Shaded minimally with French gray 50% prismacolor pencil.






Okay so i wasn't out of words. Who am I kidding...I'll never run out of words. 

String #102

Adele's String Thing Challenge this week was to use string #102 and our choice of three tangles: Frost Flower, Sez, and Graancirkel. This time around, I played and played, with the tangles and the string and all kinds of combinations.

Freezing Over

This was the first tile, the only piece with all three patterns in it. It reminds me of the beginnings of ice on the edges of a pond. Graancirkel made it into this tile, but none of the others. It needs to be bigger and I want to play with it more.

Here is a tile with just Frost Flower and sez.

There is just the faintest hint of powder blue in a few places here. I like how shading makes Sez look layered. I tried to make the frost flowers more edgy around the fringes, but for some reason, I stopped at the string and then "added" the more fringey ends, but that made it look so choppy.







And the third piece was a tile, traced into my sketchbook. It is a monotangle of Frost Flower and I really like how it turned out, though it reminds me of some other tangle that I can't put my finger on for some reason.

what other tangle does this remind me of? 

Shading wherever the string is adds a lot to this piece. You see the couple of places where I put fanned lines instead of Frost Flowers? And this is the one I like the best, mostly because you can really see the string...and what else is it about? It IS  "A String Thing", after all.

Dicso is New to Me!

so is sweet 101, for that matter...which are the tangles I used for Suzy's Challenge.

We were to find a tangle starting with D, that we've never used before, and also have fun with Sandy Hunter's patterns. Sandy's pattern Cruffle is already one of my favorites, and I had fun with her Unbatz when it was a UMT a while back on the Diva page.

Well, long story short, I found Dicso on tanglepatterns.com and loved it. It is very leafy looking, and the explanation that goes with it is pretty neat. The creator of dicso created a tangle that utilizes all of the basic elements of zentangle: Dot, Straight Line (I), Curve, S curve, and Circle (or o) D I C S O and all in a motif you make without lifting your pen. VERY cool.

So I made a bunch of dicso. It's fun and easy, and makes into a lovely border. And Sandy's Sweet 101 is so cool looking, once it's aura'ed...Well, anyway, this is what I did, pre-shading:

It is in sepia 01. There's a few printemps in there, too. You can see, i had started the shading with dark brown prismacolor.

Eddy in the current

And here it is, fully shaded. I used dark brown, tuscan red, and dahlia purple, then blended with that amazing blending pencil. I love how it pulled the reddish hues down into the negative spaces behind the Dicso leaves.

I also threw some random pieces of sweet 101 in there just for fun.


Also, thickening the lines on the edges of all the "sweets" made them pretty dimensional, without colored pencil shading and blending.

Three Ring circus

This week's Diva Challenge is to put three tangles together: Tropicana and Cack, and choose a third tangle, either fescu, florz, or linq.

Cack is a tough one for me. It is difficult for me to see it as elegant or pretty. It does have some potential for festive-ness, but it's just an awkward pattern for me. So that is the tangle that I focused on for this challenge. I played around with it quite a bit

 I was trying anything I could to make it unique.

It looks better with a 3-D effect, in my opinion. You can see where I had tropicana and fescu in there. Just playing around, trying to see what looked good.

Thick stripes and thin strings

I like this version. Sort of sideways

The pattern reminds me of two peppermints, biting each other, Pacman style. I mean, really. How silly.

Here I threw in some linq

Well, with all this playing around, I just couldn't find a way to put the rather goofy cack with the more elegant tropicana (one of my favorite tangles). No matter what I did, cack looked out of place with the other patterns. I couldn't make it fit in. Even looking at other work using this pattern, cack just seems to stick out like a sore thumb.

Then, on a whim, I tried adding another dot to the circumference of the center circle.

I followed the same steps as the original cack, using a dot about a third of the way around the circle, and another dot, two thirds the way. And looky there! I REALLY like the look of this version. I played with it some more, and decided on a simple solution: One piece of cack, one motif of tropicana, and a floor of flord.  And some shading.

Like a shrine

So yeah. This piece is like a logo Earthlings might create, once the aliens land, bringing us the technology to reach the stars and teaching us about peaceful coexistence. Because the cack thingy looks like an interstellar traveling pod, resting on the earth. And Tropicana, as always, looks monumental.

In the end, I like this. And I'm glad to have come to a peace of sorts, with cack.In fact, I've got it in another piece I started last night, along with cruffle and some meringue. Widgets. etc.

mosh triple play boomerang

This will be my first entry in  Suzy Mosh's new challenge, to play with a pattern, a monotangle using one pattern, three ways. Including the original pattern.  Tangle me 3 looks like a real good challenge to take up, because we'll have to play and experiment and really get to know a pattern.

This week's pattern is Boomerang and I did have fun playing with it. 

But first I want to show a pattern from the Neil Burley book of patterns, that I won in a random drawing from Suzy's New to Me Challenge a couple of weeks ago.

This is Victorian Flake, and it is SO elegant.

 As with all of Neil's patterns, there are individual elements in Victorian Flake that easily take the spotlight.

On the left, you can see where I put them in a grid,

this charming little tidbit in shiny black

 I've explored MANY other patterns in the book, and have developed something that *may* be a new pattern. At any rate, I am having so much fun with it. Thanks, Suzy! Thanks, Neil!

So, the Mosh challenge: To create a monotangle piece using Boomerang. And play with it, so that you have three different "looks" to the tangle.

After practicing a little while, I traced a regular sized tile into my skcetcbook, then a bijou tile gave me a hint of what a border would look like. But I decided to do the border only on two sides.

The original tangle can be seen across the middle, with weighted lines and some tipple. The border has two variations, where I actually goofed. I was making the second variation per the boomerang step outs page, where the boomerangs sort of alternate one leg over, one leg under, but when I went around the corner, and started down the right side...what the hay?

Turns out, that side is just the tips of the boomerangs crossing over each other, without the arcing center. Right?

And then some active dancing boomerangs filling the bottom section.

And I colored it in:

The ombre across the top!

Kept the color palette simple, using prismacolor pencils and micron pens in blue, green, and yellow. It doesn't show that well in the photo, but that layer of blue is actually two shades of blue in prismacolor. I wonder if burnishing it with my blending pencil will make a difference. Hmmm.

I can see where boomerang has potential to add a lot of action and movement to a piece, or in a grid, it can be very bold and stark.

W's and Erin Olson at SuzyMosh

I've been wanting a regular bound sketchbook for some time now, having finished the one I dedicated to One Zentangle a Day practice and play. It was only about $7.00 at Michael's, soft bound with a firm not spiral spine. It has creamy paper, smooth yet with a pretty good tooth. I like that it is soft bound, too. Hard bound usually are more expensive.

So, I went to Michael's to shop. NOTHING. Not. One. Softbound. Sketchbook. There were plenty of good hardbound books, in the $30.00 range (snork) and lots of spiral bound sketchbooks, but nothing of quality in the softbound. (I take that back. They do have softbound books with blank paper inside, inexpensive. 40 pages of 10# right? stapled in the middle. Ugh)
And I walked out of Michael's with nothing. They didn't have the notebook I went in to get, and for once I didn't browse. Just left. 

On my way home from Michael's I swung into Walmart just to see (because by this time I was beginning to wonder if I hadn't found that first softbound sketchbook somewhere besides Michael's) Walmart did have sketchbooks, hardbound, about $5.00 and I grabbed two. When I got home I opened one and tried it. Sigh. Wimpy paper with  WAY too much tooth, and a lot of bleed thru. So I'll take the other one back. I'll probably use this one off and on. It's kinda purse sized, I guess.

Anyway, one of the things I have done in that book was the current SuzyMosh challenge :
W patterns that we have never used before, plus the patterns of Erin Olson. I love Erin's pattern Pystyl (Erin has a charming blog...quite a way with words, that one. I encourage you to check it out

http://thebrightowl.blogspot.com/.

So, the pattern from Erin's collection that really caught my eye was Pystyl. And I love Widgets from tanglepatterns.com. I started out practicing pystyl in that Walmart sketchbook...and it grew on me. Some color, and my attempt at ombre inside the "buds" of pystyl...add some widget floating about, and then I added a little nest or ground cover of widget near the base of my Pystyl tree. 

And this is what I have:

My  Little Ombre Pystyl Tree

 Coloring this one was especially fun. I love my new blending pencil, though even with it, the ombre effect worked best with yellow as the main color. I think it's also fun to look at.


As for softbound sketchbooks, they have some at Blick, and I'll be buying there next paycheck.