Diva Challenge #370 and Inktober

Diva Challenge #370

UMT "Mezzanine"

by Heidi Sue Whitney

For the first Monday of the month, it's a "Use My Tangle" challenge where The Diva chooses a pattern submitted by another Zentangle enthusiast. Heidi is one of my Travelling Tangles swap mates so it's always fun when one of my tangle peeps is featured in a challenge. I love patterns like this, sort of free form organics. I knew right away that it would make a good companion page to last weeks challenge. I'm coming close to finishing off my second Trainwreck Journal. It's a handmade journal where I go at it with watercolor and inks to create backgrounds that will inspire future art. I generally make a big ol' mess and just have fun.

Zendala Monday

fun with botanicals

Inktober Day 2

"Tranquil"

Inktober is here. It's a month long challenge to do a drawing a day. This year I've challenged myself to focus on botanicals, both detailed studies and simpler, more whimsical pieces as well. I love drawing flowers and I've always been of the mind (well, what was drilled into me at art school) was that in order to abstract something you have to study the real thing.

Inktober Day 1-"Poisonous"

Hydrangea

 I'm going to try to follow the prompts if I can relate them to botanicals. I had brought some hydrangeas home from work (I sell cheese in a small specialty food market that has gorgeous flowers we get to take home once they've lost their vivacity). I googled poisonous flowers and Hydrangeas were the first on the list. It was an ambitious challenge to start with something so complicated but what the heck.

Inktober Day 3

Waterlily

I had intended this to be "Tranquil", but I got a bit frustrated when it got to drawing the reflection. In the meantime I'd started the Zendala which was proving to be a much more tranquil drawing experience. What was great was that having studied the Hydrangea the day before, the petal shapes inspired the flowers I created on the Zendala;-)

Yesterday, I had the epiphany to use a dried out brush pen to do the reflection and water.

Inktober Day 4

a free-form day 

 The eco-print on this sheet of paper was the two large Eucalypus leaves. The Zinnia was just made up in the moment.  The Hotel Flora stationary was unplanned serendipity;-)

I used  several pieces of hotel stationary I collected from my travels abroad

in my last batch of eco-printing

I encased some flowers and leaves in tea bags.

Held up to the light the detailed veining

is super clear

I mailed off another Flow-ish Journal to a swap partner on Friday. This is the Facebook group I follow. A Flow-ish journal is a collection of papers, cards, images and other bits of ephemera that is used in art journaling and mixed media art. It's a way to exchange bits of our stash with each other. Nothing is permantly bound or glued so that the recipient can easily remove things to use in their own journals and mixed media art.

The cover is made from a colored file folder that had these weird wavy tabs across the top. I glued a bunch of paper scraps all over it, then painted and stenciled it, did some machine stitching and added a button/elastic loop closure to it.

I have a large collection of postcards and images, books and pictoral research from years of being a student of theatre design and then free-lance costume designer.

I also have a ton of stickers I collect from cheese delivery at the market.

 I paint and stencil over them.

Magazine pages stenciled and lined with a gold paint pen

Copies of my original butterfly art

And finally a junk journal for another Facebook group challenge where we were asked to construct a journal from one week's worth of junk mail. I painted, stenciled and then decorated with images from an Open Art Studio directory I picked up at my local library.

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