back to black

We reach a new chapter in One Zentangle a Day and for Day 29 Krahula suggests that now we've learned some of the rules it's time to start bending and breaking them.

For the first exercise she gets us drawing feathers, building on the technique for drawing the Verdigogh tangle.  At the moment I can't see a great deal of different between my feathers and my Verdigogh - but both are pure pleasure to draw and add a pleasing softness to any tile.  In my tile I had them puffing out from behind some Showgirl.  I added a border of Quatiny - which is a quirky little tangle that I discovered recently which can be a great way to introduce a bit of solidity and three dimensionality to a tile.  I'd already coloured the tile with Inktense pencils and water.  I've found it's handy to do a block of colouring at one point, then let the tiles dry and tuck them away for the day I want to grab one for a bit of colour work.  I like this tile a lot - the tangles sit well together and it looks lively and inviting.  The graphite pencil shading muted it a bit - next time I'll try to shade with the Inktense themselves.  I think it looks like a grown-up version of the second tile on this post. 

For the second tile of the Day Krahula asked us to draw a black tile, but this time introduce colour.  I've never particularly enjoyed the black tile tangling.  The pen feels so thick after the Micron 01 and I've struggled to find a decent way to shade in white.  Today's attempt went better - thanks to the Inktense pencils, which show up in white and colour on the tile.  And I know now that I have to do a different sort of tangling on the black - far less detail and taking care not to smudge.  I used the new to Tangle Patterns Meringue (by Kelley Kelly) - which flowed well across the tile.  I then popped in string of Beadline in gold and coloured some areas with a green Inktense and then put Tipple over the top with the Micron - which doesn't show that well.  The black tile looks better to the eye than to the scanner but I like it.  I think of lights strung in trees, or underwater, and little pockets of treasure.