wide awake and still dreaming

A hostile take-over - featuring Somnee, Barney, Bubbles,
Tipple, Vortex and other strange tangle-type things

Rise of the rusted Flux

As soon as I grabbed a pen and started playing with Laura Diva's new tangle - tentatively titled Somnee - I loved it.  I filled a page with it - I did all sorts of weird and wonderful things with it.  It's a very satisfying tangle to draw - once you get over the fact that your initial orbs will never be as circular as you'd like them to be!  I like the way it is a tangle that stands well in its own right, but allows for other tangles to work in the orbs or sectors it creates.  It also allows for infinite shifts in the balance between dark and light - which can really help on a tile.

Somnee reminds me of this weird tracing toy I had as a child.  It involved pieces of plastic in a strange grid formation that allowed you to place a pencil in one end and pass a pointer on the other over an image and it would copy it, as if by magic, to another paper.  It never worked that well - magic rarely does.

I liked the first tile I created with it - it was fun to draw.  But it looks disturbing.  Like a sinister futuristic world where familiar things are now accessed via metallic pathways.  It looks like the kind of dream I'm pleased to wake from.  I decided to rectify things with a second tile.  Where nature makes a come-back, in the form of a big bushy Flux.  Up from the wreckage grows hope.  And I like the look of this one far more.

It seems that while I love Somnee I've got to take care not to use too much of it.  Tangles can be a bit like food - just because you like something doesn't mean it will taste good everywhere.  Smoked paprika on a cupcake? Custard on a pizza? No, I don't think so either!