Weekly Challenge #118: “UMT v. XVI – Kuke”

The Diva’s challenge this week  is to learn and use a tangle called Kuke, designed by Katy Abbot, CZT.  It is a tangle I had never seen before.  Katy’s inspiration for the tangle was a cut cucumber.  I had trouble seeing that at first, so I went to the fridge, got out an English cucumber, sliced into it and guess what?  Katy’s tangle DOES look a lot like the middle of a cucumber slice.  I was just checking because, of course, it’s also true that a tangle doesn’t need to look like anything, right?  And Katy said the cucumber “inspired” her tangle named “Kuke”.   Cute tangle, Katy.  (Note:  If I had looked at Katy’s third picture before I started my drawing, I would have seen her shriveled up cuke slice that totally captures her inspiration.)

Okay, having gotten that out of the way, I did a 5″ x 7″ ZIA featuring Kuke.

Tangles: Kuke, Perlz, Onamato, Flux, and Krli-Q.

This was fun, and I should mention I found it easier to draw the orb first, then put the Y in the orb.  I think that was because I was trying to keep the orb really round.  I’m thinking of doing another one in color; and if I do, I’ll post it later this week.  Thanks for stopping by, and I’d love to read a comment from you.  Don’t forget to stop by the Diva’s web site and check out all the lovely art provided.

And here is a real quick tile done on a 3.5″ scrap of hand colored card stock.  I call it my Kuke Garden.

 

Hope you all have a great week!  Happy Tangling!

Zendala Dare #57

This week on Erin’s Zendala Dare, we were fortunate to have Genevieve Crabe as a guest poster.  She makes gorgeous zendala templates, and teaches mandala classes online.  Here is what I did with Genevieve’s zendala.

Tangles: Baton and Meer

This template was all straight lines so that’s the type of tangles I chose.   It went together fairly quickly.

Until next time, Happy Tangling.

Linda

 

 

Weekly Challenge #117: “New Official Tangle: Schway”

Wow!  This has been a kind of tough week for me when it comes to the challenges and dares I love to do.  First Erin’s Zendala Dare, which asked me to draw the whole zendala in pencil (what?)!  I finished that one, and then looked at the Diva’s challenge this week which is for a brand new official Zentangle® tangle called by Schway, designed by Rick Thomas.  I had a lot of trouble with this tangle.  Not because I didn’t like it, or didn’t think it looked good the way Rick and Molly and some of you guys did it.  I just found it difficult to do.  I ruined several tiles trying to do it, and then finally got one I thought at least resembled the official tangle and was presentable enough to scan.  I’ll explain a little more after I show you my tile.

Tangles: Schway, Strircles, Footlights

After I finally got this one done, I tried to figure out why I didn’t like working on this particular tangle.  So many people had done so many tiles that were gorgeous, why was mine so ugly.  I broke a “rule” this time, and looked at a lot of entries while I was trying to do mine.  I think I figured out what bothered me when trying to create this tangle.

This particular tangle looks best when it’s very uniform; straight lines, identical margins, and it’s very geometric.   I think it brought out the anal side of my personality, and I didn’t like what I drew because it looked so wonky, or whatever.  There’s a reason why I’m drawn to the organic tangles, and why my grids are always started with a slightly bent line.  Zentangle has helped me to ignore my anal side, and go with the flow.  I don’t pretend to be there yet, but I’m much better than I used to be, when I was so fragmented.  A very anal personality and habits (born of necessity by my former career choices)  with a very undisciplined nature,  and a creative mind. Believe me, that is not a good place to be.  Once I figured this out, I went from “I will never use this tangle again” to “I will work on this tangle for “fun” in my sketchbook, but not on a tile”; to see if I can find the creativity within myself to turn this into a tangle I WOULD be happy to use again.

Thanks Diva for challenging me to go outside my comfort zone, and thanks Rick for designing Schway.  Your tangle is lovely when you do it, and once again Zentangle has caused me to take another look at myself, and find more enlightenment.  I’m almost 70 and you are never too old to grow!

If you are reading this, I thank you for stopping by, and I would love it if you would leave me a comment.

Linda

Zendala Dare #56

Well, this week’s Zendala Dare was also a real challenge for me, and apparently others as well.  Being the first of the month, Erin added an extra challenge.  She asked us to use only pencil, no ink on our zendala.  What an amazing learning experience that turned out to be.  I ended up doing three because I was so disillusioned with my first two.  The third one’s no great shakes either, but I’m going to post them all.  I know it’s supposed to be about the journey and the process, not the outcome.  Intellectually, I can agree with that.  But, let’s be honest, ok?  Nobody really likes to produce a piece of art they don’t like, do they?    I did all three of these yesterday (Saturday). but didn’t post them.  This morning when I looked at them again, I didn’t dislike them as much as I did yesterday.  That was interesting; I wonder if there’s a lesson in that about self judgment.  Also, I looked at some of the other entries and read how many of you had some problems producing something you really loved.  By the way, , the fact that I don’t absolutely love my results this week doesn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy the challenge.  I did enjoy it immensely, and I thank Erin for once again asking us to leave our comfort zone and try something new.  However, don’t hold your breath for me to do another one in just pencil, OK?

The first one below is the last one I completed.  It was traced with an F  pencil, and the tangles and shading were done with a 3B art pencil.  One thing I did on this one, I didn’t on the other ones, is that as I completed a section, but before shading, I sprayed a fixative on the piece.  This helped reduce the amount of smudging I got.  That’s probably cheating in the zentangle style, but it’s done all the time with graphite sketching.  Besides, I still got some smudges anyway.

This one looks quite a bit different than the template, because although I drew it like the template, I covered up the irregular rectangles with tangles.

This next one is the second one I did.  I decided to go minimalist on this one and emphasize the shading.    For this one I added another pencil, a Kimberly 9XXB.  It’s a thick pencil, with a thick lead, and very soft.  I had never used it before and it won’t be one of my favorites in the future.  It produced lots of unwanted smudging.

Tangles, Ixorus, Printemps, Hibred, and two variations of betweed.

This is the first one I drew.  It’s the only one that is full size.  I drew this one with a #2 pencil, and then used F, 3B, and 9XXB for the tangles and shading.  This one had the most smudging, partly because it was so big and I had a really hard time keeping my hand off of it.  I’ve read that you can eliminate that by placing a piece of paper over what you’ve already drawn, but I didn’t think of that.  I think I would really like this one if it were in ink with shading.  The hibred sections really seemed to get washed out in pencil.

Well, that’s it for me on this week’s Zendala Dare.  I’d love to see your comments if you have the time.  Now I’m off to the Diva site to leave comments on all of the art there.

Until next time, Happy Tangling.

Linda

Weekly Challenge #116: “Blind Sighted”

This week, Laura Harms, our Diva; asked us to do a tile using a blind string.  That means while we can draw the dots and rectangle with our eyes open, then we are to draw the interior string with our eyes wide shut!  I did two of them, and they are below.  Note that the “string” image on the top is not exactly like the actual tile.  That’s because my lines were so light they wouldn’t copy, so I had to produce a facsimile.

For this one, I used only two tangles, a hybrid of Fife, because I drew it on a grid; and Shattuck.

For this one, I thought the kindest thing to do with the string was to cover it up, lol.  Fortunately that wasn’t too hard, since I had used a very light touch when drawing it.  The main tangles are Mumsy, Zinger, and Flux.  Not sure what to call the other little lines.  The border was an afterthought to cover up my rectangle, and I guess it’s a hybrid of beadlines.

I’ve been kind of hit and miss about doing the challenges lately.  I hope that now things will settle down and I can participate every week.

I love to see your comments if you have the time; and I want to say thank you for those of you who have graced me with your comments on previous posts.  Now I’ll head over to the Diva’s sight and look at what my compatriates have submitted.

Weekly Challenge #113: String Theory v. XXIV “Hip to be Square”

Laura Harms, our wonderful Diva gave us a special string challenge this week.  This one is really fun for me, and also pretty easy.  You start with a square, put another square inside it, then another, and another…..you get the idea.  I’ve done two already, and am working on a ZIA, but I didn’t want to wait to post.  So, here they are:

I just noticed that the one on the right is more like “rectangles inside a square”.  Oh, well.  I still like it.  Hope you do too.  I’d love it if you have time to leave a comment.  Now I’m off to comment before I finish my ZIA.  If I get it done in time, I’ll post it later.

Well, I got my ZIA done, and I’m calling it “Paradox and then some” after a very informative article written by Margaret Bremner.  It can be found on her website here

Tangles: Footlights, Fife, Lainie, Verve, Diva Dance, and Paradox

I got the idea for this while I was drawing the one on the right above.  I started with a big square, about 6″.  I used a ruler to place the four dots in the corner, but from there on, everything was drawn free hand.  I placed the pencil “X” in the corner so I could keep track of where I was, and where to start the next round of paradox since I did this one round (square) at a time.    When I got close to the center I went back to a real square to make it parallel with the outside square.  It was lots of fun to do.  I actually did a similar ZIA last year when I had only been tangling a couple of months.  I thought I’d post it too, just to show any newbies that you don’t have to be really good at this hobby to do a piece that’s presentable, but practice will help create improvement.

I did this one before I had learned much about shading, which glares at me now, but  I sure was proud of it when I finished it then.  I’m glad I kept it so I can see how I’m improving, lol.

Happy Tangling, everybody.

Hugs;

Linda

And the Winner is…

This is my personal favorite…my vote didn’t count in the poll.

Sorry this is one day late.  Had some challenges yesterday and couldn’t write a post.  This will be a short post, but there’s a couple of comments I want to make.

First, let’s announce the winner:  Cheryl Rotnem!  I left her a message on Facebook on how to contact me so I can mail the prize to her.

Second:  As a way of increasing readership, this didn’t work very well.  However, I’m really glad I did it anyway.  I learned a lot, which is explained below.

Third:   Favorite art to hang is in the eye of the beholder.  I should have already known that.  There was no resounding preference at all.  No single version got more than a 20% vote.    Here’s how it came out.

Version 1 – 20%

Version 1A – 20%

Version 2 – 20%

Version 3 – 10%

Version4 – 0%

Version 5 – 10%

Version 4A – 0%

Version 6 – 20%

Now, guess which one I’m going to hang?  ALL OF THEM, LOL.  I’m going to do an ensemble wall in an alcove which shows them all.

Thanks for playing along with me in this fun little project.

Until next time, happy tangling!

Linda

Weekly Challenge #112: UMT v. XV “Tuxedo”

This week the Diva, Laura Harms, challenged us to use a tangle designed by LeAnn, also known as Ledenzer.  LeeAnn is one of the tangle artists that I truly admire for her beautifully flowing art often with mesmerizing use of color.  When I first saw this tangle, called Tuxedo, I didn’t think it looked like LeeAnn.  However, when I saw what she had done with it, I saw how she had incorporated it into her gorgeous style.  I have to admit, that at first I had a lot of trouble with this tangle.  I could do steps 1 through 3 just fine; but when I tried to do the circle shapes in steps 4 and 5, it just didn’t work for me.  I filled up a couple of pages of paper trying to get something that was minimally acceptable to me.  Finally, I decided to try straight and only slightly curved lines in steps 4 and 5 and it finally came together.  Once I got the flow of it, I really liked this tangle.  It has many possibilities for tangleations.  Here are the first two I did after my “aha” moment.

The one on the left is a 3.5″ tile and the one on the right is 3.5″ x 9″ on a scrap of watercolor paper.  A serendipity on this one is finding LeeAnn’s bracelet tangle which is in the lower right corner.  I wasn’t totally satisfied with this piece, because I thought the composition was unbalanced, but it did give me a chance to practice Tuxedo more.

Here is my favorite which I did next.  I call it Tuxedo Pieces.

It is partially colored with Prismacolor pencils and also shaded with graphite.  To demonstrate the versatility of this tangle and what can be accomplished with fill, shading, and color, here is what this tile (measuring 9″ x 3.5″) looked like after it was drawn but not filled or colored.

I think it could even be colored to look like stained glass; although I didn’t try that on my tile.

Thanks to Laura for hosting these wonderful challenges.  Thanks to LeeAnn for providing us with a wonderful tangle to learn and play with, and thanks to all who have graced me with comments on previous posts.    Oh, that reminds me.  I am hosting a give-away of some colored Sakura pens on a previous post, and there’s still a couple of days before I do the random drawing.  If you are interested, go here, and leave a comment.

I hope you’re all having a wonderful week, and now I’m off to go leave comments on this challenge.

Hugs;

Linda

New ZIA and Give Away

This is the first post I’ve made that wasn’t a response to either a challenge or a dare.  I’m working on my blog to make it compatible with advertising classes and events now that I’m a CZT.  For this first post, I’m going to shamelessly try to increase readership of my blog by offering a bribe – uh, I mean, “giveaway”.  More later in the post for how that will work.  This is the first time I’ve tried something like this.  What I’m trying to get out of it is increased readership and opinions about a series of ZIA’s based on a single original.  I’m going to frame one of them, and I can’t decide which one.  I have solicited opinions from my family already, and no two of them agree, lol.  So let’s get to it.  I’ve numbered each version to make it easier to tell me which one you would pick.

Version 1

Tangles: Ragz, Veezley, Shattuck and a var., Hollibaugh, Zander, Meer, Nzeppel, Betweed, Ixorus, Umble, Buttercup

This is the original I drew and shaded.  All other versions will start with a copy of this ZIA, which measures 8.5″ x 11″ and is drawn on 140# watercolor paper.  Tangles used are shown just below the original.  If I add tangles to other versions, I’ll mention in there.

Version 1A

Just for fun, I turned the drawing into a negative in Photoshop.

Version 2

On this version I printed the original shaded ZIA (version 1) onto a sponged and watercolored background I had previously done and saved but made no other changes.

Version 3

I converted the shaded black and white version to a .png, and copied it on top of a scrapbook paper.  Then I added a bit of blue and green color inside the drawing with prismacolor pencils.

Version 4

For this one, I again used the shaded original, and copied it onto a mottled grey card stock.  I added some pearlz  in one of the sections, and white highlights with a chalk pencil.

Version 5

I finally started adding more color.  I took an unshaded copy of the original and colored it with prismacolor pencils on 140# watercolor paper.

Version 5A

Again just for fun, I added a black background in photoshop.

Version 6

And finally, I went back to the colored copy and tangled the rest of the page.  Tangles on the outside are: Z-trek, Cornerz, Zoya, Twile (also named Stoic by ZT), Neuron, Lucky, Hollibaugh, Knightsbridge, and River rock.  In the “Lucky” section I also added a few little drawings I’m working on.

I hope I haven’t left any of the tangles out of my descriptions, and you enjoyed seeing them.  This project provided me with a number of hours of fun and relaxation.

Now on to the give-away.  I have an extra set of Zakura 01 colored pens, shown below.  To get in the random drawing (once I figure out how to do that), all you need to do is leave me a comment and tell me which one of the examples you like best.  One of them is going to end up being framed and hung on my wall, but I need some help in deciding which one that will be.

Comments are always welcome and appreciated, but to be included in the drawing, please comment on or before Saturday, April 6.  The winner will be announced on April 7.  Please be sure to let me know how to get in touch with you so I can get your mailing address.  Or you can stop back by on the 7th when I announce the winner, and if it’s you, send me an email at sqlinda@comcast.net.

Thanks for stopping by, Happy Easter to each and every one of you, and keep tangling!

Hugs,

Linda

Weekly Challenge #111: “More-Mooka-Madness Monotangle-Mania”

What a great challenge!  Mooka was the second tangle I learned in April last year when I first discovered Zentangle.com.  I was totally new, and I watched the Betweed video and learned that one, and went on to the only other video at the time, Mooka!  I loved the organic smooth look of mooka immediately.  However, it didn’t always love me back.  I’ve always had trouble with the really smooth lines that are close together, parallel, and equidistant.  However, that has never stopped me from using Mooka, although, I don’t think I had ever done a monotangle of Mooka before.  So here goes:

Both of these are done on a single 3.5″ x 7″ scrap of watercolor paper.  For the zendala I used a wine glass to draw a circle before I filled it with wine.  I roughly divided it into eighths and then drew a mooka in each section.  It is  shaded with graphite.  The second was drawn as a border with black fill around the edge, graphite and prismacolor shading.   Those two went very quickly, so I decided to do another one.

I’m taking Genevieve Crabe’s class on hand drawn mandalas.  So I used some tips she teaches to draw the next drawing by hand.

This one is approximately 8″ round.  I’m not sure it actually qualifies as a monotangle, since I used some tipple fill in the mookas in the border.  This one took a while to shade and fill, and my Graphic 1 pen ran dry, and I had to finish with an 05 Sakura.  I also used a white Sharpie paint pen for the dots around the center.  Time consuming, but I’m happy with the outcome.  I’d love to hear your opinions if you have time.  But whether you have time for that or not, don’t forget to go to the Diva Challenge website (link on the right) to see all the gorgeous eye candy.

Until next time, Happy Tangling!

Hugs,

Linda