'Nzeppel - Renaissance road

Follow your path, wherever it goes. The tangle used in this tile is 'Nzeppel. It has always reminded me of a cobblestone path so I decided to go with that theme. I used a Renaissance tile, brown Micron, colored penil to shade and a white chalk pencil to highlight.

My path in life is very different than it was two years ago. My husband and I were settling into retirement and enjoying the grandkids. Now that he is gone I am looking at my new life as a widow and wondering what my future will hold. But just like the Zentangle philosophy of  'one stroke at a time', I'm taking things one day at a time. My new phase of life may be a renaissance. We will see.

Twisted Corners

Sometimes I get into an artistic funk. I just can't really get going. I've been in this funk for a while now. I surf the web and see all sorts of beautiful work but I haven't been inspired much.

Thankfully I have the CZT group to inspire and encourage me. Yesterday I saw a Facebook post by Romi Marks CZT showing the tiles from her latest class. She taught the tangle pattern Twisted Corners from Alexandria Cortez Diaz. As I hadn't tried this tangle before now I had to try it out. The other tangle patterns here are Diamond drop, Cadent, and Flux. I added colored pens and colored pencils.

new pen play

At a recent gathering of Zentangle fans in Wisconsin I was introduced to a new way to use a pen. It's the Elegant Writer pen and its main use is for calligraphy.  But someone discovered that when the lines are touched with water the ink bleeds in a variety of colors. Now if you are trying to do an elaborate calligraphy piece that would be a problem. But since there are no mistakes in Zentangle, this is just a happy accident.

In the pieces pictured above I tangled using a variety of tangles, with the main tangle being Aquafleur.  I used the pen both with the thick part of the pen as intended, and also holding the pen so I used only the thin edge. Then I used a brush loaded with plain water and touched the edges of the tangling, allowing the pen to bleed.

 I did a quick video to show how this pen bleeds when it hits the water. I'm trying to figure out how to show the video here but until I figure that out just click on the blue type - 

 video link

I tried running the pen through a wet area on a card just so I could see what would happen. I suspect that this isn't the best idea for the future as it may dilute the ink in the pen. But WOW! it was so cool to see what happened. Look in the picture below to see what happened after the piece was fully dry.