It's interesting to me how thoughts seem to be shared by many people unknowingly. How the universe connects us together even though we may be unaware of the connection. (Part of the reason I like Common Prayer where people all around the world say the same prayers, often at the same time. Maybe they are somehow stronger.) This week I have been seeing lots of posts online about tangling on a photograph. Margaret Bremner posted a beautiful piece she tangled on a black and white photo of some architectural columns. Another blogger is a photographer and has published a collection of photographs specifically for people to tangle on. And then...The Diva posts a challenge to use color. I know there will be tons of gorgeous, glorious, riotous, crazy good colored works to admire this week! But you know how I am... The strange part is, I have been hanging on to a selfie photo that my granddaughter posted on Facebook. She, of the formerly glorious, glowing light brown natural hair color, has seen fit to bleach her locks and color them shades of pink. Well, I'm all for self expression, and her mother and aunts all hit the hair color aisle in their early teens, too. My oldest daughter died hers a Strawberry Shortcake doll hot pink at about this age. None of us actually remember what this child's mother's natural hair color is, as it has been colored any and every hue since she was 13 or so... hehe! The youngest has taken her brown hair back to her childhood blonde shade (She was so cute - like Cindy Brady!..I digress...) I, of the color phobia, resisted coloring my hair until I was well into my 50s. Now, my reddish curls are what everyone notices about me! My first thought on seeing this photo with the hair going every which way was that it would be fun to tangle. So, here is my Tangled Pemba Kai... Gosh, that was FUN! (DISCLAIMER: actually, I posted this on one of the Square One boards a couple of days ago, but I really like this so figured double duty was not in infraction of the rules, right? I should do something more, but...you know me and color...) * * * That's New To Me #24 was to use tangles beginning with "R" and include one or more patterns by the artist Lila Popcheff. Wow, she has about a billion of them on her blog site! (http://poppiespenpics.blogspot.com/p/poppies-patterns.html) Hard to choose! I loved a number of them, but you can only put so many tangles on one little tile... I chose the R tangles Reye by Penny Raille, Radi8 by Lizzie Mayne and Lila's tangle Zoose. Interestingly, my first instinct was to strip away some of the details and just use the basic shape. But once I got the design put together, I found they were just the right thing! See - TRUST! Thanks, Bijou! * * * For Square One: Purely Zentangle, the focus this week was Flux. I was still enamored with Genevieve Crabe's tangle Demi, and started playing around in my sketchbook. Flux is usually so flowing and flowery and organic looking, but that doesn't seem to be my style. So, here is my response to that focus. Then I did another tile just because... Everyone seems to be loving Narwal lately - and why not! With Sand Swirl and Waax. * * * In other news, I finished tangling that wooden box - finally! So, I am moving past the little square tile now. Yay! But original Zentangle tiles, I still love you best... I guess the upshot of this whole post is that we as a Zentangle community encourage us to move forward, expand our creativity, try new things and embrace the imperfect. Like everyone else out there, I have self-imposed limitations that I am working to be free of. Each of us tends to stay within our own little garden and never venture out into the world. I'm so grateful to have found Zentangle (yes, through a woman who is NOT a CZT, but passed along the beginning seed of Zentangle to our creative arts community). I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to become a CZT and to have an expressive art form that I can work at every day - no big studio or messy table required! Thank you for stopping by and for your comments. I cherish them all! Namaste, Antonine
Rick and Maria from Zentangle have been presenting us with wonderful videos throughout this holiday season. If you look for them on YouTube will find them memorizing. I haven't had time to do them all but I hope to get to them later. This one is based on the tenth day. We were presented with using the tangle Paradox as a string. On the video the tangle chosen was striping. I used my tangle 'coil'. On the black tile I used the new #10 white gelly roll pens. then I used a blue and white chalk pencil for the color. I liked the effect as it reminds me of all the holiday ribbons that get scattered around the presents. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
"The shortest distance between two points is a straight line." Archimedes I love the tangle pattern Maryhill. It's all lines, so what's not to love about it? The pattern comes from CZT Betsy Wilson, and if you're not familiar with it you can see her step-outs for it here. I decided to focus on Maryhill this week, and created several tiles/drawings with it, varying each one a little (or a lot). Just to show you a very straightforward version, here is a Bijou tile I made a while ago. I think it's amazing what movement you get with a pattern made up of just lots of lines. Next is another one I did in my Tangle It! Journal. This time I added a center filled with Printemps. I really like the way this turned out. Since Maryhill is most often completed in the round, I wanted to create one on a Zendala tile. Choosing a tan Renaissance tile, I used brown and red Micron pens, brown and red pastel pencils for shading, and a white pastel pencil for highlights. I like the way the pop of red worked with the brown. Rather than making them all round, I decided to complete this one in a square. I used white pen on black, even though I'm not usually such a big fan of that. Not that I don't like the look of white on black, because I do, but working with white pens can be a little challenging. I have never been a fan of the white Sakura gelly roll pens, because they always seem to soak into the tiles and not look bright white. So I generally prefer the Uniball Signo UM 153 white pen for its brighter white look, but it's harder to get really thin lines. I used my Bee Paper Aquabee sketchbook with black paper. The paper is thinner than the tiles, but works better with the white gel pens. I decided to try my Sakura gelly roll pen again since it can draw finer lines than the Signo, and lo and behold, the pen worked really well on this paper, to my surprise! Notice I drew a mini Maryhill in the center, with a larger version surrounding it. I used the Sakura pen for the lines and filling in the white spaces in the border, but when it came to filling the larger white areas, I used a Sharpie water based paint marker. And added a hint of bright pink with a moonlight gelly roll pen. Next is another Maryhill in the round, on one of my hand-colored tiles. I used a black Micron to draw, graphite for shading, and white pastel pencil for highlights. Oh...almost forgot. Did you notice something looks a bit different on the above tile? I alternated the direction of each section of the Maryhill, which gives it a totally unique look. Then, for something VERY different, I started the next tile with a bunch of triangles, and then filled each triangle with a "segment" of Maryhill. I didn't really pay much attention to which direction each segment was facing. To give it a bolder look, I added some extra black in each section of the tile. That's it folks! Experimenting with this great tangle, Maryhill, was an awful lot of fun. Even after so many tiles/drawings, I didn't tire of the repetitive lines of this pattern.
Citrus - A Juicy New Tangle This new tangle has a sentimental story behind it, but first, here are the step outs, a few examples, and my notes ~ It's simple and easy to draw. Either in the half or whole versions, the circular lines are more interesting when they are irregular. Citrus can be drawn as small or as large as you choose. In my example above, I drew one Citrus and then layered the others behind it. To embellish, I added detail lines in each of the inner sections. Citrus can also be used as a string. In the example below, in each Citrus half, I tangled a different pattern: Antidots, Florz, Fescu, Teenos, LaBel, Printemps, Betweed. The possibilities are endless... Citrus Strings by Adele Bruno, CZT I introduced Citrus to my friend Tracey Lyon, CZT. A short time later, she presented me with this tile ~ Citrus ZIA by Tracy Lyon, CZT Isn't it pretty?! Now for the inspiration for the tangle... I grew up in Pennsylvania where fruit trees were plentiful: apple, pear, peach, crab-apple, and cherry - most every variety except for citrus. Any thought of citrus trees seemed so remote and exotic. They are now one of the reasons I enjoy living in Florida. Over the years, my husband has planted and lovingly cared for numerous citrus trees in our yard - lemon, lime, orange, and grapefruit. Especially sentimental were the ones he was able to plant with the help of his late father. Unfortunately, unusual cold snaps and citrus blight of one type or another cut their lives short. Below is a photograph of our granddaughter picking one of the last oranges from our lone remaining tree. Sadly, it had to be cut down early this year. The final meager harvest yielded a smattering of these deeply colored and very delicious oranges ~ When it was sliced in half, the idea of the tangle came to mind. Photo by Isabella Bruno I'd like to think that even though our trees are gone, they are still yielding fruit :). I do hope you have fun with it. Enjoy!
On these sessions, we had a lot of fun with the new tangle, Florabella by CZT Nancy Domnauer. If you haven’t yet attended a Tangle Time Session, first – we’d love to have you join…
