earning our stripes

This week the Diva asked for stripes!

For me stripes are one of the most comfortable ways to tangle.  They take all of the planning out of the process but leave plenty of room for invention.  Because while it still looks great if one tangle lays next to another, even more fun happens when you try to gently join them.  In fact I think it's a great way to learn the sometimes tricky art of joining tangles.

Tangles used - from top left to bottom right -
Fescu, Ponio, Y-Chain, Copada, Snugz, Antidots, Quib

To choose my tangles I simply looked back through the last few weeks in my sketchbook and picked a handful of tangles that might work.  Then I started with the longest stripe through the centre and then built out from either side, squaring off the whole with a couple of organic tangles.

I used the first piece from a pack of Khadi paper (Indian handmade cotton rag paper) that's been sitting here for a while.  It's A6 size (roughly 14x10 cm) and has a very toothy surface.  I used a larger than usual pen (0.3mm) to try to lessen the bumpyness of my lines and the graphite was hard to smooth and blend as much as I like.  But the paper was otherwise a joy to work on and it feels like quite a special little piece. 

kiss the graphite goodbye

I didn't fancy doing a full globular grid, as suggested by the Diva for this week's challenge.  So I just worked with the central cross-section part.

The only tangle I'd chosen before hand was Wallbucket by Sandra Strait (which I spotted on a recent via to Ina Sonnenmoser's new tangle resource site Pattern-Collections.com).  I wanted this for the middle section and I think it looks great. 

And then I just let my pen do whatever it wanted.  The arched sections took Betweed very well.  Some non-specific arches provided a base for a few Flux and then I did a Verve-type border. 

I've got into a habit lately of taken before and after images between finishing the line work and shading.  I almost always prefer the shaded version, but today I didn't.  It looked a bit messy.  But perhaps because I'd coloured some sections with a grey watercolour brush pen before I started the detail work there was enough contrast to not need additional shading quite so vitally. 

Anyway, there it is.