Weekend Tangling

In addition to the Zendala Dare, I pulled out string 144 from TanglePatterns.com and made this tile. I modified the string slightly. I also dithered quite a bit on whether to stick to b’tweed, or alternate patterns. Ultimately I’m very pleased with putting a onomato variation in the one section. I think the result looks like an antique brooch, though that hadn’t been my intention. I kind of expected a seashell like thing when I chose the string. Such is the beauty of Zentangle. You never know where you will end up!

Zentangle Tile 2015-064 with b’tweed, onomato (variation), and fleurette in TanglePatterns.com String 144.

Then on Monday between work and knitting group I sat in a café and did the tile below. It was the exercise for Day 31 of One Zentangle A Day. The pattern was Paizel. I clearly need some work on randomizing. Since at this stage in the book more of the instructions are just written and there are no step-outs I felt the instructions were more directed toward the one example which placed it in a long cylindrical space. I knew I wanted to shade to create irregular undulations so I actually tried bending the flux shapes at the dips a bit, but I quick gave that up. At least for now. I just free formed what I did in the dyon-like flower, tossing in some shattuck and tipple into the stripes.

One Zentangle a Day, day 31, featuring paizel with a dyon variant including shattuck and tipple and other meanderings of the ink.

This was definitely not one of my favorite tiles. It is, however, a really good example of a tile serving a greater purpose than the finished product. The coffee shop I settled into that afternoon was really not relaxing. There was a realtor conducting very loud business with an older couple a few tables away that was causing every other table to raise their voices a notch or two. Then a mom was rolling a stroller in random circles of sorts just on the very edge of my peripheral vision. Something about the particular motion she had going and it being where it was in my field of vision was causing my blood pressure to rise with each pass. Maybe because it kept entering and exiting my vision so often, but not in a rhythm so it wasn’t easily ignored? Whatever it was, I was quickly developing sensory overload. I put my own headphones in (despite liking the music they were playing) and turned more towards the wall trying to get the stroller out of my field of vision and started tangling. Eventually I got absorbed into the tile and my blood pressure dropped and I relaxed. It was a life saver. I was really about to lose it.

I Am The Diva Challenge #208

I couldn’t resist the I Am The Diva Challenge this week. Participants are to make a duotangle using cubine and pokeroot. I *adore* cubine, but don’t incorporate it often enough. I also enjoy using pokeroot as an organic filler. It makes me think of cherries most of the time which makes me think of my dad.

Zentangle Tile 2015-067, I Am The Diva Challenge #208 with pokeroot and cubine.

I opted to explore both at a bit larger scale than I tend to embrace. I liked it. It gave me more room to shade, LOL! Though I think my pokeroot, separated like that and at that size came out more like apples than cherries.

I’m uncertain if my last-minute frame, all be it light, disqualifies me? I just felt it needed a boundary. I may blame it on Day 31 (I think) of One Zentangle a Day. The focus of that daily lesson was framing.

Be sure you check out all the other participants. The work I’ve seen trickling through my Facebook groups and my blogroll have been fantastic!

Feathers On The Wind

The Zentangle method of drawing a feather ala “One Zentangle A Day.”

It may be organic, but Day 29 was much more of my kind of organic!

A pair of feathers on the wind.

I didn’t know how to finish off the tile. Cate suggested leaving it as it, but it felt unbalanced. But I too liked the simplicity of the feather not fighting for attention against anything else. The only answer seemed adding another.

OZAD – Let’s Talk Style

Week Five of One Zentangle a Day is focusing on personal style. That is something I’ve always struggled with. I don’t really see it in my own body of work, no matter which creative discipline it is in – bookbinding, collage, photography, knitting. Perhaps I’m too close to it? But I feel pretty doubtful that someone exposed to past work would see new work and identify it as mine.

Or, maybe the issue is that I’m always seeking out new things? I’m always challenging myself and learning so there ends up being little repetition. That probably also means less of adding my own flare to things I suppose.

Cate, I know you speak often about my precision which would be an element to personal style. I do see that, though much less so in the past couple weeks. Am I learning to let go and loosening up my style? Or is the chaotic state of life right now creeping into the tiles? Or is it just my lack of a solid surface like a desk or table?

I maybe see a bit of style in how I shade, though I’d like to loosen up in that regard as well. My shading is often as long or longer in process than the drawing. But I do so love the depth I get when I take the time to layer in my shading, starting with the lighter/harder graphite and working my way to darker shades held tighter to the shapes. Can I keep that, but speed up the process a bit?

How do you see my style in the first 28 days of OZAD work?

Here are thirty images of my first 28 days worth of exercises from One Zentangle a Day, starting with the most recent in the upper left (click to enlarge).

Eke she Sez…

I’m super talented. I can eat a bowl of oatmeal, drink some earl grey tea, stand up from the table, stretch my arms up over my head and totally screw up my neck and shoulder. Nearly to the point of tears. Fortunately I was already set to work from home so I almost immediately soaked in Epsom salt and arnica. That thankfully dialed things down a couple notches. Nevertheless, I can see the flare of my chronic pain in today’s zentangle tile. I suspect Sez is especially susceptible to less than stellar tangling conditions. 



One Zentangle A Day, day 28 tile featuring Sez and Eke with Shattuck, Tipple and Fasset.



The focus for this tile was the OZAD day 28 patterns Sez and Eke (I did a tangleation of one of the tangleations). I added shattuck to Eke to give it some heft, then the loops just begged for tipple. Then I saw fasset-like bits between the loops.

I can see myself exploring Sez some more. I think I could space the starting dots for a more dynamic look, or at least not do the auras equally on all of them. In an odd bit of synchronicity Sez is the pattern of the week in the Square One: Purely Zentangle Facebook group this week so there is some phenomenal inspiration to be seen there.

OZAD Day 27

I’m falling behind a bit on working through One Zentangle A Day, getting distracted by the various challenges out there and the call of zendalas. But I finally sat down (ok, reclined in bed to be truthful) with a tile in hand last night.

I chose to use a template from Genevieve of Tangle Harmony. It’s number 6. The patterns for day 27 were Meer, Enyshou and Reef. I added a bit of tipple to the center. I had used Meer in my 12 tile mosaic I did early in January in a ring and I should have remembered how difficult it was to work those veins around a curve. Oh well! I need some help/practice with Enyshou too.

2015-055, “One Zentangle A Day” Day 27 featuring Meer, Enyshou and Reef.

Given my exhaustion, mental state, location and lighting when working on this tile I’m fairly happy with it. It’s not a favorite, but it serves it’s purpose.

Cate, I’ll work on a post about paper! In the meantime, you may find this video slightly helpful. Oddly I had just stumbled on it yesterday.

OZAD Days 25 & 26, More Organics

Tile 2015-051 Unshaded, “One Zentangle A Day” Days 25 & 26, featuring perfs, Growth and Poke Leave. With some Tat and Festune on a Yincut background.

 

I combined day 25 and 26 into one tile last evening since the exercise for 25 was to use perfs with the patterns of your choosing and 26 was Poke Leaf and Growth. I used Random.org to choose a string from TanglePatterns.com for me. The result was a nice organic, loopy string, 016.

I decided to give Tat another go. Apparently I can’t let it go. Nor can I get it. I’m starting to think loopy, light line patterns are not for me. I’m not a fan of Growth, my Tat is awful and really disliked my Echoism as well. Growth also taught me that I’m not really an ambi-looper (bonus points to anyone who recognizes that reference). Making the left side of Growth was much more difficult for me than the right.

Tile 2015-051, “One Zentangle A Day” Days 25 & 26, featuring perfs, Growth and Poke Leave. With some Tat and Festune on a Yincut background.

Usually when I shade a tile I’m at least one step happier with it. I think this might be the first time I’m waffling (along with being the first time I captured the before and after). Without the shading I think Growth stands out from the background (Yincut) better. Though it does read as ordered scribbling without any dimension. Perhaps if I’d taken a lighter hand on Growth I’d be happier with the result? The rounding on Poke Leaf was a really good move though!

Benched By My Writer’s Bump!

I’ll save you the photo (I did take one, but it isn’t pretty, trust me). I’ve had a writer’s bump since about the 2nd grade or so. It is ugly and one of the reasons I refused to have the traditional wedding band hands photo taken at our wedding. Well, yesterday at some point it cracked from the dry air and all the paper/box handling going on around here. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. In the packing phase of the last two moves I’ve made my hands have molted.

A cracked writers bump is better than both hands molting. I can moisturize and bandage a cracked writer’s bump. There is pretty much nothing to do for molting hands. Despite first-aid, tangling last evening did not feel good. I did my OZAD exercises in my notebook but never did a tile. I guess it was a good thing I did two tiles earlier this week to put me ahead. I’ve still tangled a little everyday in 2015 though!

A little peek into my notebook where I do the “One Zentangle A Day” exercises.

The above photo is not last night’s exercises, but rather one from Day 18 at the beginning of this month. My preference is to do my exercises in the morning after breakfast while finishing my coffee. Then I do a tile in the evening after work. It doesn’t always work out that way though.

For my exercises I’m making 1″ squares in an Extra Large Cahier Moleskine plain paper notebook using a clear 6″X1″ ruler. I then do the step-outs as shown in the book. I’m finding repeating the early steps really helps my patterns a lot because those first steps are the foundation of the pattern so getting a solid feel for how to form those is fantastic. It also gives me step-outs to photograph for entering into my Doodle Organizer app on my phone/iPad! Once or twice a week I go through and add them to the app which helps solidify the names of the patterns.

Sometime in the future I’ll post more on how I’m drawing my 1″ boxes. I’d like to figure out how to set up my phone to video me doing it and then speed it up for you, but I don’t have a tripod for my phone so I’m not sure if that is doable. I’ll also post more about the Doodle Organizer app at some point.

OZAD Day 24

2015-050, “One Zentangle a Day” Day 24, featuring Striping and Zinger (labeled as Pepper Tangleation), I added some Tat, Sedgling, Ynix, Rain, Mooka, Festune, Sampson and Fescue.

More organic a today. I threw nearly every organic pattern learned so far into this one. Is the organic version of the kitchen sink the compost pile?

I still can’t get Tat down. Despite it breaking up the long continuous stroke, layering it behind things made it worse! Though putting an aura around it like Ynix helps give it a bit more structure. I am starting to like Mooka – finally. So I suppose there is hope for Tat eventually.

Does anyone have tips for Tat specifically or working with organic patterns in general?

Tangling On & Spreading My Wings

“One Zentangle A Day” day 22 tile featuring Kathy’s Dilemma and Flux tangleation with some regular Flux, Fescue and N’Zeppel.

The patterns for today’s exercises were a little more to my liking. I had already worked on putting Flux on a curve so this was really good practice.

My very first Zendala Dare (#96)! Here I used a variant on Yoga and Paradox.

I had carried around the template for last week’s Zendala Dare, #96, at The Bright Owl since Erin posted it. It really resonated with me, but I never got the opportunity to work on it until last night.

I think I’m in love with Zendalas! I’m not surprised. I’ve long been interested in mandalas, even created some digitally with my photographs in the long, long ago before I was even a very good photographer. I’m also thinking that in addition to Zendalas appealing to my preference for order and symmetry in design they are kind of uber-Zentangle practice. You get multiple layers of repetition – the strokes making up the patterns but also the repetition of the patterns around the mandala form.

I scribbled pencil on the back of my print out of the template and then traced the template to transfer pencil markings to the tile. In the process I learned it really doesn’t take that much pressure to transfer 3B lead. If you look closely at the tile you can see a set of lines I chose to ignore — they are indented! I pressed a bit too hard, LOL!