'R'

One of the new books that I recently purchased is the book 'Zenspirations' by Joanne Fink. It's not strictly a zentangle book but uses the patterns and tangles as a jumping off point to create many more wonderful things. I decided to do the letter R on a tile for my new granddaughter. I even found a frame that will fit it nicely. I may add color later but I want to get my daughter's input before I do that.

Weekly Challenge #41: DuoTangle v. II "Jonqal/Opus"

 The challenge from the Diva this week is to combine two official zentangle patterns - Jonqal and Opus. http://iamthedivaczt.blogspot.com/2011/09/weekly-challenge-41.html  I like doing challenges where I am encouraged to come up with new variations. I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do but one morning as I came down the stairs I found some inspiration. Can you tell I have a teenage boy!

A nip in the air

The calendar says it's officially fall. I've put all my shorts away and started wearing shoes and sneakers again. And I've actually seen several trees starting to change color. So I decided to do a tile for fall.

I started with colored card stock. I used a stencil of fall leaves to create my strings. There are several leaf shapes on the stencil so I just picked a few and layered them. To get additional strings I drew a few vein lines in the leaves. After I did my tangles with a colored Prismacolor Premier pen, I shaded with 3-4 different shades of Prismacolor colored pencils. I really liked the way this one came out.

As always, your comments are greatly appreciated!

Relaxing on a Sunday night

After running around all weekend I sat down with my Zentangles while some of the new fall shows came on TV. While I can't say I was overly impressed by the new shows, I did enjoy going back to some basic tangles. No thought, nothing preplanned. I just went with it. Well, all right, I did use colored cardstock and a colored pen and colored pencil.

That is the essence of Zentangle, just go with it. Relax, watch the ink as it flows onto the paper. Breathe! Let the magic of Zentangle do its thing.

Pinwheels for Peace

I started work on my pinwheel on Tuesday but then my daughter called and asked me to come over - and well, I couldn't miss the opportunity to see the new baby. So it finally got done this morning.

I used a high gloss piece of paper I had laying around and my Sakura Micron 08 pen. I actually did both sides. Using the high gloss paper means it has a nice thickness for use as a pinwheel but it also meant that the ink didn't dry as quickly. I found myself getting my hand into it far more often than I would have liked.

Thanks to the Diva .http://iamthedivaczt.blogspot.com/2011/09/weekly-challenge-40.html

And I can't not post a new picture of the baby.

tile with Pots and Bales tangleation

I was really pleased with how Pots looked on an actual tile. It is interesting but plays nicely with other tangles! I used two pencils to get the shading I wanted. The two pencils gave me different shades. I also had fun with this tangleation on Bales. Here I started out with a grid drawn lightly with pencil and after the Bales pattern was established I erased to pencil. The small lines at each corner used a feathery touch. Then the pencil shading and blending with a stump finished it off. In the corners are Rick's Paradox and Echoism.

'Pots' tangle pattern

 'Pots' is my latest tangle pattern. It relies on lots of lines. When you draw this you may want to use a ruler to get your initial marks in place so that your spacing is somewhat even. You can see my marks when you click on the picture to enlarge it. Look carefully at step 3 and you will see that the small lines do NOT line up. That is intentional. If you end up with a different number of lines between your big blocks, that's fine - just create your own version. The shading for the big blocks in the 4th step is optional. You could  leave them open and/or fill them with another pattern.

I named it 'Pots' because as I was doing it I remembered the small potholders I used to make as a child on the plastic looms. Sometimes I would miss a step and the weaving would come out in a way that was different than what I planned. My mom would still say it was beautiful though and I made a number as gifts for my grandparents too.

'Pots' was initially inspired by the carpet in a hotel I stayed at this past summer. I looked down and though it was interesting so I had to take a picture. When I got home I printed out my picture and placed tracing paper on top. I traced the pattern in a variety of ways until I got the pattern you see above.

Happy zendala

I'm still on a high from last week with the new baby so this zendala used lots of bright, happy colors. I got the string pattern by looking at my rubber stamp collection. The rubber stamp I used was pretty complex but I loved the outer shapes so I used mostly that. I used the Gelly Roll Moonlight pens by Sakura. The shiny black lines are the Sakura Glaze Gelly Roll pen. Then I shaded and highlighted the piece with colored pencils.

One of the purple patterns uses the official Zentangle patterns Echoism. That pattern is one of my favorites. It goes together quickly and I love its look. You can see me demonstrating this pattern in the new video by Suzanne McNeill. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCyus3viTZA 

The link to the video is on Suzanne McNeill's blog. http://blog.suzannemcneill.com/2011/09/15/7-zens.aspx?ref=rss Thank you very much Suzanne for putting it up! It was done at the CHA show in Chicago this past summer. I was very nervous making the video. We planned it on the fly and after it was done I started thinking of all the things I should have done or said. We had to start and stop it a few times when they started making announcements on the loudspeakers. And then we had to recharge the camera's battery. I hope you enjoy it anyway.

Pink or Blue results

Remember when I posted these two tiles with the tangle pattern 'Tootsie'? This was shortly after my daughter found out that she was expecting a girl. Of course, the ultrasound technician only gave her 70% odds that it was a girl, so we had to wait till the birth to be sure. So now it's pink here we come!

I'll be spending the next few days with my daughter and the baby so I don't expect to be posting too often. I hope to be back next week at full speed.

Welcome new baby !

Today is a special day because my daughter had her baby girl at 4:06 this morning. 7 lb 2 ozs. I was a loooong night but so rewarding. My blog entry today is brief because I need to get some sleep! More details tomorrow.

Paradox challenge - Better than a Pair of Ducks

I actually got two done this week. Woo-hoo! I thoroughly enjoy working with paradox so when the diva posted her challenge (actually from Maria), I was excited to get going. Weekly Challenge #38 "Better than a Pair of Ducks" Of course it took me until Friday to get them all done, photographed and posted - but what else is new in my house. I'm the queen of procrastination.

I love working with circles so for the first I drew my three circles in pencil and then went to town. It was fun to add the paradox shapes that go behind the others. That's one of the basic concepts in Zentangle. That is, "drawing behind".

For the second tile I used the black Zentangle tile.  The basic shapes were done with a Sakura Gelly Roll Glaze pen in Black. The paradox is done with the Sakura Gelly Roll Moonlight gel ink in Fl. Green. Wow, those Moonlight colors really pop when you draw with them. I just got a set and I assure you I'll be playing with them a lot more.

DuPage Art League Class 9-6-11

A very creative group of students. They were all so absorbed in their tiles I don't think they realized I took their picture. Be sure to enlarge the class mosaic to see what they created.

There are two more classes coming up at this location. Oct 1st and Oct 10th. Contact them to sign up.

DuPage Art League - Wheaton, IL 630 653-7090

October 1, 1-3:30 Beyond the Basics

October 10, 1-3:30 Teens and tweens 
http://dupageartleague.org/workshops.html

Kyiv - new tangle pattern

Click to enlarge picture.

I haven't put any  new tangle patterns out for a while so while I'm working on some new ones I thought I'd pull out one from Ukrainian egg designs. Thus the name, 'Kyiv'. I thought about using Kiev but I didn't want everybody thinking about making chicken Kiev so I went with the more authentic spelling.

Kyiv is a simple but effective pattern. The only trick is to get you initial 'X's spaced right.

Draw two parallel lines. (Extra lines are optional.)
Draw a series of large Xs touching the lines. Leave a small amount of space between each X.
Next are two smaller Xs in the center. When drawing these smaller Xs, one side should form a lazy 'S' shape, with a curl at each end.
Connect the ends of the small Xs with two or three 'humps'.
Add a dot between each shape.

For my example I used a white pen on colored cardstock. I know it's only September but if you start now by practicing your patterns on circular pieces of paper, you will be in good shape when the holidays get here.

Static Tangleation

I am so excited when I learn from my students. Last week I had a basic class and one of them came up with this tangleation for Static. This was just after we had gone through Hollibaugh. I love her variation and wanted to share it.

Kiss my Grids challenge

The latest Diva Challenge asks us to use grids and tangles that use grids. I had fun going through my pattern book to pick out the ones I wanted to use. This was an interesting challenge.

On a personal note, I've had a very busy past few weeks. I've done some traveling, some teaching, and now I am anxiously waiting for the arrival of a new grand baby. It could be any day now. So if I suddenly disappear for a couple of days, I will have a very good reason.

Happy Labor Day to everyone in the US!