Made by Joey #145, Square One: Purely Zentangle and Travelling Tangles

Made by Joey #145

Finish My Tile Series

"Barberpole" frame

For my last post of 2016, I'm trying to play a little catch-up. My drawing time has been very sporadic these last few weeks. I did the Joey challenge earlier in the week, tweaking her Barberpole frame a little to adapt to my coffee stained ATC. I kept this pretty simple.

For the last Diva Challenge I offered up my "Gift of Zentangle" to 3 commenters to the post. The winners were posted here.

"Drawings" for Square One: Purely Zentangle

After last weeks fun with Drawings for the IAST challenge and the come-down from a lot of  holiday frenzy, I felt the need to simplify. Things are starting to get back to normal. That means tangling with my morning coffee at the cafe around the corner from my apartment. Normally, I pack up waaayy too many tools.  I left the apartment with a couple of white tiles, one black pen, a pencil and a stump.

"Stella" for Square One: Purely Zentangle

I think I created this in the midst of holiday madness, some form of procrastination for sure, because I don't remember when I drew this. It must have been for Square One's "Stella" prompt, I was scrolling through my pictures and thought "Where did that come from?" Ha! It's been a rough week;-P
I finally finished these Travelling Tangles this morning. I've got a bit of a backlog to keep me busy;-)

My finishes to the Gems theme tile and Bijou 

sent by Debra Huff in Oceanside California

Deb's start

For some reason I decided this needed a dose of "Icanthis". It's not a pattern I'm comfortable with at all. I love the look of it and I'm a big fan of organic patterns, but through all of my noodling around, I just wasn't gelling with it.

At the same time, whilst procrastinating on Facebook, I came across a prompt to create an art journal page with your "Word of the Year" to describe your approach to 2017. I almost lifted "Explore" from Alphabet Salad but suddenly "Fearless" came to mind. I'll work on that for my first post in 2017.

In the meantime I decided to lay down "Icanthis" and let the chips fall where they may;-)

I love this Bijou!

I returned to my comfort zone of Mooka to finish this one..

 Thanks so much for stopping by. Your thoughtful and generous comments delight and inspire me.

String Challenge #175, 12 Days of 3Z, Made by Joey #144 and more...

It's a String Thing Challenge #175

"Drawings"

Hi everyone! I hope you're enjoying the week before Christmas without too much stress. I have a lot to share with you today, including the 3 recipients of my "Gift of Zentangle" from the Diva's challenge last week. You can jump to the bottom to find out;-)

This time of year I starting thinking of ways to make the blog better. What is it about other blogs I love? Besides the lovely art, I enjoy the personal anecdotes, snapshots of self, home and travel I also love shared techniques, sketchbooks and processes. So here and there you might see a photo of me, my home, my cafe, my sisters cat, my beautiful city...I'm pondering including a feature in select future posts, I'm calling The Bare Bones (for now) where I take you through a tile from start to finish and share my process. I know I love it when others  share their progress through a piece and I've gotten enough feedback over the years that I thought this might be nice way to give back. Anyhoo, I'd really love to hear your thoughts when you've made it through this post;-)

Now...onto It's a String Thing Challenge #175:

Drawings seems to be the "It" pattern this month. The step-out was released last week by Zentangle HQ as part of its 12 Days of 3Z's holiday challenge. Adele kindly left the tile free of a string. 

I was very happy to break Drawings out of the confines of the tiny spaces I'd challenged myself with over the past week, cramming into the corners of some fairly crowded 3Z's;-)

I decided to just go for it...sort of. I thought a Renaissance tile would make a nice exploration of this classic shape. This did not go well. This was the catalyst to my somewhat labored account of the process I share below...but next up is the final final of The 12 Days of 3Z's:

12 Days of 3Z's 

the final mosaic

Day 12 for the 12 Days of 3Z's

pattern of the day: Huggins

I managed to get all 12 patterns onto one tile...for better or worse;-P I loved exploring the 3Z's concept. It truly adds a whole new paradigm to our world of little pieces of abstract art. The mosaic effect is quite phenomenal.

Made by Joey Challenge #144

Finish My Tile Series: Printemps and a star

I adapted Joey's tile and starter prompt to an ATC colored with art tissue. I love drawing Printemps and I just discovered the pattern "Scoodle" whilst exploring my way through all of the HQ official patterns. It's basically Printemps in an S. I also added a bit of Tipple.

Back to Drawings:

I did the orb and initial "Spine" S-curves in pencil but once I completed all of ink lines I was not happy. I didn't like the shapes of the individual "feathers" and the resolution of the ink lines at the orb was really messy...the "take-offs & landings" felt like a hot mess to me. It was at this point Icamethisclose to chucking it and starting again. After a lengthy stare down I decided to keep going and photograph each step thinking this might pan out into a post about saving a tile...or not giving up...or no mistakes...I thought I'd look to some of Maria's sketchy works which I love and continue this along those lines-pun intended;-)...

...though it never really evolved  that way. Next was where to use brown. Renaissance tiles include some brown Micron work. I was looking at one of Maria's examples of Drawings from the Step-out page (I had this page open the whole time I worked on this) and saw what looked like "Fescu" within the feathers...the image was too small on my cell phone screen to see the detail but I figured why not?

I tried cleaning up the mass of lines with some rounding and stippling. I liked the contrast of the rounding...the stippling...not so much. I was going to aura the wing tips but ended up doing crescents instead. I don't know why, but I'm glad I did because until I started the dark fill and subsequent high light, I was still ready to toss it.

I was liking the contrast of the dark bits and kept going. I like doing graduating black pearls along curves and then added the dark bits to the brown Fescu's then had to balance out the stippling.

The white gel pen highlights came next, then I added some graphite shading. finally some white pencil highlight resulted in the finished piece at the top. I was really happy with the way this came out.

I then went on to create the tile I really wanted to make based on the hits and misses from the first attempt. Of course I realized that I never would have gotten here if I'd chucked the first piece and I like them both...now.

Drawings #2

And now, the names I pulled out of my pencil bag for The Gift of Zentangle:

Annemarie of Anne's Tangle Blog

Kate of Art Lady Kate

Denise Vitola

Ladies, please email me your snail mail address to michelewynne1 (at) gmail (dot) com. I'll get your ornaments in the mail shortly.

Many thanks to all of you who visit each week and to those who take the time to comment, you all rock!

Diva Challenge #297, Made by Joey #143 and other artsy stuff...

Diva Challenge #297

The Gift of Zentangle

The Diva Challenges are 6 years old this week. What an accomplishment to have inspired so many for so long. These challenges have fueled so much of my work and I'm truly grateful to Laura and everyone who participates in the challenges. The challenge this week was to choose from the 6 challenges presented at this time over the last 6 years. I decided to revisit last years challenge to give the Gift of Zentangle. 

I started making these Christmas tree ornaments last week after checking out Tina Creates Art's Diva submission. She was inspired by the new 3Z tiles and created elongated triangles to reflect Christmas trees. At the same time Adele's String challenge inspired the use of the pattern "O". I still have to make about 20 more and laminate them... and add the string, but these are going to be gifts this year. I painted both sides of a sheet of watercolor paper and then cut out the shapes. One side is tangled with Adele Bruno's "O" patterns with white gel pen and colored pencil. The other side are gemmy orb ornaments.

In keeping with last years challenge I will also send one to 3 of you. Just leave me a comment and I'll randomly select 3 names on Monday the 19th. So stay tuned!

Made by Joey Challenge #143

Finish my tile series: Verdigogh

Joey started this off with Verdigogh.  I'm still in "O" mode and created this to go with my Adele tree from last weeks String Challenge (it's the one I linked to above).

12 Days of 3Z from Zentangle HQ: Day 9

This has been a super fun challenge. The 9th tile added "Auraknot" to the melange. I'm still determined to get all 12 patterns on one tile when all is said and done. I'm loving the mosaic;-) Check this out to see HQ's mosaic so far and a little surprise: the step-out for the new pattern "Drawings"

I just finished my Travelling Tangles for December's swap. The theme is Gems.

My Moowa page so far

a work-in-progress

This was inspired by Heidi Whitney's blogpost last week. 

Thanks so much for visiting my blog. Your thoughtful and generous comments are what keep me going. 

Wishing you all the happiest of holidays!

String Challenge #174 and other bits...

It's a String Thing Challenge #174

Adele's Christmas Tree String

Patterns: Zenith and O

I just created a new set of watercolor tiles and ATC's, somewhat heavy on the blue/green. This challenge was a great fit and what fun it was doing O with the white gel pen. I love how this turned out.

12 Days of 3Z: Day 6

a drawing challenge from Zentangle HQ

I love these 3Z tiles (hand cut by moi). Zentangle HQ's seasonal drawing challenge features the new 3Z tiles. Each day we're prompted with a different pattern to add to the previous melange. So far, we've used Tripoli, Diva Dance,  Shattuck, Marasu, Tipple, Molygon and Knightsbridge. I'm really happy that I started this because it's given me the opportunity to revisit old favorites. 

 12 Days of 3Z: Day 7

Here I am up to Knightsbridge. My goal is to include the new daily pattern with all of the patterns from the previous days on each days tile. Let's see if I can do this without them getting too crowded in the end. HQ just posted today's challenge using Pokeleaf! I can't wait to get going on that one. Check this out to see their amazing assembly so far. They're busy elves at Zentangle HQ, creating multiple tiles daily...i.e. 7 new tiles on day 7 etc. Whew!

In the meantime I'm woefully behind on my backlog of Travelling Tangles, but here are two tiles I've finished since my last post.

My finish to an Apprentice tile started by Muniza Askari in Singapore

This was tricky. I don't use much color in my line work, so my color options are very limited. I don't have any florescent or gold gel pens. I do, however, have pink and blue. I'd pulled out an old gold paint pen for the 12 Days challenge. I had a lengthy stare down with this one, a little daunted by all of the white space. Crazy Huggins popped into my head and wouldn't let go. I went a little crazy with the fillers too. I was surprisingly happy with this playful tile. It took me farther out of my comfort zone than I'm comfortable with, but when I look at it, I think of jesters and acrobats.

This was Muniza's starter

My finish to Liz Well's start

This was a wonderful contrast to Muniza's tile. I finish my tiles in the order in which they are received so it was a happy coincidence to have this next in my stack. I love getting back to the Zen of a white tile and black pen/graphite. I still have Moowa on the brain from Monday's Diva Challenge. I've been working on it more, inspired by Heidi Whitneys recent blog post. She did a beautiful page of Moowa.

Liz sent me this all the way from Down Under;-)

Thanks so much for visiting my blog. Your thoughtful and generous comments delight and inspire me!

Diva Challenge # 296, Made by Joey Challenge #142 and a few other musings

Diva Challenge #296

Use My Tangle Monday: Moowa by Anja Ipsen

The first Monday of the month is a feature the Diva calls Use My Tangle where we're challenged to use a pattern submitted by one of the Diva's many fans and followers. Moowa is a lovely take on one of my favorite patterns: Mooka. It also presents the same challenge for me that Mooka did: avoiding clumsy. There's a Fibonacci elegance to curves and curls that I find that the teensiest misstep bothersome. That's probably due to my slight OCD;-)
Anyhoo, I used up several pages in my sketchbook practicing this. I need more work but this was a pretty good start.

Made by Joey #142

Finish my Tile series: Japonica

Joey started us off with a hexagonal string for this holiday inspired challenge. After much deliberation, I decided to keep it simple. I love the colors of the tissue paper. This was a fun piece t create.

Day 3 of the 12 Days of 3Z

Zentangle HQ

I created some home made 3Z tiles to jump in on the 12 Days of 3Z challenge from Zentangle HQ. These are so nice because they're fairly quick to complete and they make a great mosaic. I sort of penciled in strings that fit together but lost my way;-)


I finished this Travelling Tangle this week:

My finish to Kat van Rooyen's super fun spill tile

This immediately made me think of jewelry, so gems it was.


Thanks so much for visiting my blog. Your thoughtful and generous comments delight and inspire me!

String Challenge #173 and some Travelling Tangles

It's a String Thing Challenge #173

patterns: Verdigogh and Cruffle

 Adele's string was very simple, two crossed and slightly curved lines. I followed it with the stem of Verdigogh and the bauble chain. It's sort of Christmas-y but not completely. I had one remaining  colored tile (using tissue paper) from a jewel tone set I made a month or so ago and fortunately that swipe of green was in just the right spot.

I finished two Travelling Tangles since my last post:

My finish to one of Heidi Whitney's tiles

I immediately saw the potential for a stacked string approach. I love stacked strings! I chose patterns that reflected sand and surf (boards;-) This was so much fun to do.

This reminded me of the beach

My finish to Heidi's 2nd tile

I had a lengthy stare-down with this one. I thought of doing more dangles but the  urge to aura could not be denied;-) Then I penciled in a string. Left to my own devices I rarely start with white tiles but when I do I almost always need a string. I'm fairly certain Heidi uses Fabriano Tiepolo which is the same paper the official tiles are made of. I had only just repaired my 2 finest nib technical pens, so it made this a joy to draw and fill up every lick of space;-)

This is a Christmas gift project I'm working on inspired by Margaret Bremner's recent post. I had a couple of Zia's in progress that I wasn't too crazy about. I cut them up and then finished each bookmark by adding a bit more tangling where needed and then shadow and highlight. They turned out pretty great. I laminated them.

Tripoli for Zentangle's 12 Days of 3Z's

Thanks so much for visiting my blog. Your thoughtful and generous comments delight and inspire me!

Diva Challenge #295, Made by Joey #142 and Travelling Tangles

Diva Challenge #295

Reticula and Fragments pt.2

This week's Diva Challenge is to continue on with more Reticula and Fragments, a technique introduced in The Zentangle Primer v.1. It seemed to be a challenging challenge for many last week. There are so many possibilities with it once you start wrapping your brain and pen around it, it can become a little addicting (well, for me it was). I just had an R & F Aha! moment when I saw Annette Plaga-Lodde's blog, CreA(R)Tive, this morning. She perfectly illustrates fragments.

I don't have the book and as things stand, I doubt I'll be seeing one in the foreseeable future, so I'm not referencing the letter/number system the book uses to identify each grid and fragment. In last week's post I noted how I'm sort of sleuthing my way through this concept (which I love by the way) sketching the varieties of grids (reticula) and fills (fragments) that I've seen in others posts, not only from last weeks submissions but also from the Facebook group Reticula and Fragments.

I'm glad we were given the opportunity to explore this more. I chose a grid I saw somewhere that reminded me of a lattice. I framed it first with a fragment of Pokeleaf. The challenge was to use a fragment that was asymmetrical so that when rotated or mirrored it was different.

My beginning

I cannot draw a straight line to save my life. My first diagonal lattice was all wonky. I'm using a tile colored with art tissue. I'm not sure where the fragment came from. I started off in my sketch  book, copying things I saw on the internet and then noodled around with some ideas:

research and development

Made by Joey Challenge #142

Finish my Tile Series: ZigZag string and Pipez

This happens to me from time to time: I look at a challenge and I'm sort of "meh..." Nothing clicks, nothing inspires. One minute I'm thinking I'll take a pass for the week and then the next minute I'm down with it. The pattern Pipez was new-to-me. it has a Steampunk vibe and though I liked the pattern I don't have a lot of Steampunk in my arsenal, then the zig-zag string seemed like an odd juxtaposition. I did, however, have one tissue colored ATC where the colors seemed to follow a left to right swipe. I penciled in the string and the vertical lines of Pipez and did not stop until this was done.

I had a lot of fun with this! I had no idea where it was going. I chose not to worry about if a pattern "went with" another pattern, and inadvertently found odd juxtapositions quite freeing.

I have accumulated quite a backlog of Travelling Tangles in the last two weeks. The next group swap is going to be assigned tomorrow, so a new wave will be coming in shortly. It's supposed to rain this weekend so I'm giving myself up to Travelling Tangles and Christmas gift art. Fingers crossed for a productive weekend;-)

This is my finish to the third of three tiles sent to me by the lovely Jem Miller (aka Ragged Ray) 

in West Sussex, UK.

This is Jem's gorgeous start. 

I love how the colors so seamlessly transition from red to green. In fabric parlance we call this technique "Ombre". I saved this one for last because I truly was afraid I'd mess it up. Jem's line work is so clean. It was such a graphic beginning and my hand is much sketchier. The first two of Jem's pieces can be seen here. Margaret Bremner had recently posted pics of several bookmarks she'd made out of older pieces of art and there was one that had a beautiful Umble. I tried to copy that. I tried, but my line work will never be that clean...Anyhoo, with a little inspiration from Margaret and Maria (I used a few MT inspired columns on the white bits) I managed to finish Jem's lovely start without too much anguish;-)

This is my finish to a lovely start by Linda Kinsella in Ontario, Canada

Linda's starter tile

This was for the Breast Cancer Awareness Pink theme swap. There were so many possibilities here. I had a lot of fun with this.

Thanks so much for visiting my blog. Your thoughtful and generous comments delight and inspire me!

String Challenge#172 and some Travelling Tangles

String Challenge #172

patterns: Cubine, Ennies and Fescu

Fresh on the heels of The Diva's Reticula and Fragments challenge, I had a little play with Cubine. I immediately messed it up. Oh well...I really like how it came out though and it was a very Zen tile to work on. I like how the string has a tile within a tile effect.

I didn't have as much Travelling Tangle time this week. I was truly fortunate to receive a gorgeous little packet of mail from Jem Miller (aka Ragged Ray) in West Sussex (U.K.) a couple of weeks ago. Here are my finishes to two (of  three)  tiles she sent me:

Jem's line work is so clean and graphic. I truly aspire to that so, whenever I get something like this I know it's going to be a long and very Zen process. I was in the mood to create some gems and contrast them with another grid pattern to compliment Jem's starter of OO-Africa. I used Test Pattern.

I love wavy stack strings, so I continued on with a few more wavy pencil lines and proceeded to choose patterns that would alternately compliment and contrast Verve and Footlites, I started off with a little triangle fragment play.

Thanks so much for visiting my blog. Your thoughtful and generous comments delight and inspire me!

Happy Caturday;-)