Monday 10 March 2014

multi-tasking part 1


For the second activity on Day 23 of One Zentangle a Day Krahula asks us to use the Sakura Glaze pen. It lays down a milky line of ink which when dry resists colour - so setting boundaries between areas and rising white and slightly shiny from the paper when finished.

It was more challenging to work with than the trusty Micron 01 - a thicker line, a pen keen to roll away with me, and ink that needs a few minutes to dry. I made good use of the drying time (see my fellow post) and even the little places where the ink flicked as I lifted the pen have their own charm - see those little flecks inside some of the Tipples!


I kept the tangles fairly simple and avoided ones where the lines touched too much. The usual nudging of 'nzeppel wasn't possible but the wavery lines work well in the overall underwater atmosphere of my finished piece.


I coloured my piece using four different Zig brush pens - in brown and green, blue and grey. With a bit of encouragement from a water brush these blended well, and I'm still delighted by the way the ink made its own variegation along the branches of my Sampson. I feel like I'm looking down into a tank - it's a welcoming world and at any moment I expect something to swim into view!

4 comments:

  1. Hello Jem. Did you draw all of the white tangles with the Glaze pen before adding the colors? It seems like it would be hard to draw an invisible design on a white tile. I have one of those Glaze pens but haven't quite figured out what to do with it.

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    1. Hi Linda. Thanks for browsing through my old posts - glad you're finding things that are useful and interesting.

      Yes, I tangled all the white / clear Glaze first. I was a suggested exercise in the book I learned from. Not easy for sure - the Glaze stays wet for longer and you can't really see it - unless you angle so the light shows the shine of the ink!

      I haven't used the technique since, but it might be fun to try again - although I'd probably tangle something larger or more abstract. Mostly now I use the Glaze to add a bit of shine here and there - it makes black look much blacker. A trick I heard from Margaret Bremner!

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    2. I'm enjoying reading your early posts about your explorations of Zentangle because they remind me of myself doing the same thing. I wish that I had known about "One Zentangle a Day" back when I got started. Now I'm wondering if the book would even be useful to me at this stage. What do you think? I'm pretty familiar with all of the current Zentangle patterns and I've read quite a bit about the Zentangle process too.

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    3. I think the book wouldn't offer you much in terms of the basics. But the stuff that explores pushing the boundaries - like the Glaze pen, working with brush pens, stuff about colour, toned tiles, black tiles etc might offer some extra inspiration. There's plenty in the book.

      I think I stopped working day by day about 2/3 of the way through, but I'm sure I'd find something I wanted to try, or try again if I opened it now!

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