It's a Candy Corn String Thing

When I saw the string thing challenge for this week, I never dreamed I would have so much fun with it.

Halloween was all OVER at work today. Costumes and mini candy bars everywhere, and so many cubicles decorated as creepy as can be. Well, that's where I was when I started this challenge, and I'm sure it influenced me.

It is a string filled with candy corn shapes, and the patterns all start with C. I started with Chartz and ended up with these eyeball looking things, so I ran with the eye theme. They're all over the place! The Jack o Lanterns simply had to be part of it.  I also love the goofy, funky Cracked for this. What fun!

A Halloween color scheme...
And at the very end I did a border of confettus. Yup, this was one of the most fun pieces I've ever done. Enjoyed every minute!

The Moshier U Challenge

This week SuzyMosh's challenge is to use tangles beginning with U, as well as those of guest artist Elena Hadzijaneva.

For this challenge, I picked up a piece I had already started. 

I went down the left margin with heart rope, made shiny. In the upper right corner, Croscro, and across the top, Ciceron. Then I put some hollibaugh in and a ruffle of Meringue.

And then I set it aside for a few. 



When the Mosh challenge came along, I picked it up again and started putting some relevant patterns in, under the meringue

Hypnotic by Elena is a favorite from my very first days doing zentangle. Undling DOES start with U, but I've used it before...but it just fit with the repeated fine lines of the hypnotic. Then Up and Across behind, repeated the stripe running down from heartrope into meringue. The hypnotic reminded me of bunso which was my VERY first tangle pattern, so I put some there. 


We needed some more U patterns, so I put an arch of Ups and Downs along my Hollibaugh arch

and notice the Join in there, under the Hollibaugh...and when I was halfway through filling that in, I caught it: Join is a repeat of the shape from heartrope!

This turned into a real exploration. Starting with patterns, repeating their shapes or their sparkles, drawing out the feel of each tangle, making new interactions and really running with the elements of patterns.

This is the piece in its entirety. Some of the details I added were perfs and ribbons; the shading in hollibaugh just makes it rise from the page. A few ribbons on the bottom sort of carry the theme of shiny stripes. Another croscro and some wavy ripple thing I invented finished it off. 

The only thing I would change would be to make the bottom left patterns bolder. I used 05 for a lot of this piece, but the fineness of lines for hypnotic and undling sort of need 01 IMO.

What does it remind me of.  It is quite structural, but with lots of motion. Maybe a Medieval city square with a fountain, and some merchants. Some stone, some water, some cloth.

Waymarks

This week the Diva turns over her blog to a guest CZT, Paula Bramante. She shared her love affair with stones, cairns,  and ceremony, and asked us to tangle using the cairn or stones as our inspiration.

A cairn is a stack or pile of stones that marks the way for travelers. They can be found on mountaintops, along trails or at the peak, to mark that people have been there. There are large, tall cairns, that are like permanent structures, and there are people...artists...whose passion is

the balance of one stone upon another

How cool IS this!

when I first read about this, I tried my hand at building cairns on the bed of the creek, in the park where I like to walk. It was meditative, and creative. It would be fun to really take the time to find the center of gravity in each stone. I love it!

And I love the idea of waymarks, set up for travelers on a path, to help them know they are going the right way. Lovely metaphor. We all need some guidance in our journey thru life.

Ultimately, a piece I had done using ING came to mind.

thinking about stones and such brought this piece to mind. It is the first I drew in my medium large sketchbook and I really liked the corner with ING in it, and that stone wall.







so when I got thinking about this challenge, I thought I'd go with ING. It does look like a tall narrow stack. Sort of balancey.

ING, Dust Bunnies, and River. 

 Anyone who can walk this path is already free of the pull of gravity.

Diva Challenge: The Seasonal Edition

This week, I finished a few more tiles in the "emergent flower" theme. Like the flower is slowly rising up out of the paper and filling up the color with its shapes.

While garden mums ARE autumnal, these tiles have no tangle patterns on them at all, so I decided to do a piece using leafy, seedy, blowy, swirly tangles.

I started in the middle, with Prestwood, and I've been in a "frond" sort of mood, so those were next, on top. In the spaces between my fronds, Fricle! That's an old favorite that I haven't got out in a while.

In the Fall, the ground gets scattered with leaves and other detritus, so I made a drift of Widgets, Podz, PeaFea, and my own Flysh.     A few sparkles, a few single seeds. Then Diva Dance, flowing and blowing, and a line of Flux along the edge. There needed to be some leaves fluttering down, so I did a few single flux leaves there, with Rain Dotty. An aura. Then Umble and some more Fricle. Oh, and up top, some energy swooshes along with those spiraly things.

Then I colored it. And that is my Autumn Inspired ZIA.

A comment about my new mediumish sketchpad.

My favorite sketchpad has been the Canson 5.5x8 spiral bound 100 sheets, 65 lb. Small enough to be portable, with a decent paper and not too expensive. And I have bought them at Michael's up until lately...Michael's seems to have dropped that item completely. And, as a matter of fact, they don't have gray toned sketchbooks either, which I wanted.

Well, I found a sketchbook by Canson, just a noodge bigger at 7x10, and the paper is 98 lb multi media and OH BABAY, do I like this paper! What a difference the heavier weight makes. The size isn't the most convenient, but truly, the paper is luscious. And Canson is committed to sustainable paper making practices, which makes me happy.

Check out their site here.  and click around. I'm actually pretty impressed.

SuzyMosh and Joey Challenges

A real quick blog post this time...it's been a lovely, busy week, and today will be busy but my day hasn't *quite* launched yet, so I'll get these challenge entries posted.

Suzy' challenge is for P tangles this week, plus the work of Sayantika Ray. I went a little nuts and filled a page in my medium sketchbook with P patterns and two of Sayantika's patterns: Tuck In and Woodlock. Both of them appear more than once in the piece. Woodlock makes a terrific border.

 The string for this one was to trace four tiles on the page, then I chose String # 178 from tanglepatterns.com and put it "in" each "tile". In the lower right corner, this made quite a jumble of string, with lots of little spaces, and that is where I started with Tucked In. That one was the most fun of the patterns I chose, though Pand comes in a close second.

Some P tangles I already knew, such as Purk, Paradox, and Pineapple (by Neil Burley). Others are completely new to me. Paiz ended up sort of being a star in this one, to finish the cornders. Pand, Planateen, Pea-fea, and Podz.

(I REALLY like Podz. In the beginning steps, it reminds me of my own Starsket     that sort of five point foundation.)

At Joey's place, we've gotten to the T's and the monotangle this week is TaDa. What fun, because I first used TaDa in Adele Bruno's "It's a String Thing" Challenge just last week!

For some reason, I can't seem to get the lines between the rows of perls to meet up the way so many samples of TaDa show. But it is a relaxing pattern, and I'm going to play with it some more today.

I did this one first, on a Bijou tile (homemade...can you see the glitches in the edges?) ...and see? The radiating lines don't converge all cool and sort of  "gathery"

This one, on gray, has some of that converging lines effect. It would be fun to do this style on a grid and have a whole pageful with all kinds of swerving and converging lines, like vortices.

and last but not least, this one with a variety of tangleations:

On pink. My favorite is that upper left, where I just focused on the perls.

Combined Challenges: Joey, Diva, and Suzymosh

Some good challenges this week.

SuzyMosh's random chooser chose Z, which we have done so there is also a guest artist, Livia Chua who has several tangles on tanglepatterns.com. while the diva has brought us Munchin, a rather dramatic pattern that is fun and relaxing to draw. I hope the diva didn't want a monotangle because...that is NOT what I did.

One tile got it all done.

The Love Train

 Using a brown tile and sepia 01 micron pen, I  started with munchin last night at work during free time, then started again this morning. That's when I decided to go with tangles from the Mosh challengs. I chose Zin for my Z tagnle, and Hearty by Livia Chua.

The Zin is like a railroad trestle, with Hearty the train? and Munchin everywhere...maybe the rhythm of the train over the tracks?

As always, my favorite part is the white highlights. Every tile should be toned, so white highlights can be used.





At Joey's we are up to S in our monotangle challenges: Striping! Very cool and dimensional when it's finished. 

I chose a bijou tile (mostly to save on ink) and String 103  because...Spiral!

I like the way the string holds its shape with this pattern. Adding the gleam makes a big difference.

Nugget

When I was playing around one day, creating Mezzanine,  and doing a lot of spirals, I discovered how cool it looks with Tropicana arcs inside a spiral.

I'm still not convinced on the name for this one, but I'm calling it Nugget for now.

 Draw a loose spiral

Aura it (I like to make my aura a little wobbly)

Starting at the open end, create arcs all the way in

Weight lines wherever they connect.


Shade and embellish.

 experimenting with warm and cool. I used black and sepia pen, then tried shading with either 50% French gray which is warm, or 50% cool gray, which is...cool.

There is something pleasing about the Sepia with cool gray, but all of them turned out neat looking.

This is one of my favorite pieces. I carried on with the warm and cool, using cool gray and slate gray for my cool shading, and french gray for my warm.

I love how my spirally "nuggets" look, and with Lealad behind it, and some light spirals in various grays...I just really like it.