morning comes and morning goes with no regret

Great-great grandmother Selina -
not looking keen on being tangled!

Zentangle HQ recently released the latest Project Pack and the accompanying series of videos.  The theme this time is to tangle frames and borders around various keepsakes and treasures.  I have a fair few precious things tucked in safe places, and plenty of wonderful old photos of my family both near and distant, with copies of some going back to the 1800's.  But I just didn't feel the desire to connect those things with my tangling.  Which isn't to say I didn't like the techniques introduced in the videos!  I loved tangling along with the gang, in my sketchbook, and I knew that sooner or later I would find a way to use those frames in a way that made sense to me.  I often work that way - noting down an idea, to return to it sometime later, when it's mulched down and fermented into something a little different from how it started.  Sometimes that takes months, sometimes years, and sometimes it happens much sooner.

Over the long Easter weekend I found myself tangling those frames onto some tiles that I'd pre-coloured using Moss Green Brusho powder.  I've had these powders a few years but have struggled to develop proper affection for them.  They are either too pale or too intense.  But this one, this one worked just how I wanted it to.  And when it works it's wonderful - because you get to see little blooms of all the different colours that work together to make Moss Green.  Part science, part magic, pure wonder.

'Empty rooms that echo as I climb the stairs
And empty clothes that drape and fall on empty chairs'
Don McLean

In one of those little blots of pigment there is a very deep purple, and so I found the need to reach for my rarely used purple pen.  My black ink, graphite and hints of white chalk all took turns to bring these frames to the tile.  Each empty of any image - which feels just perfect to me.  I'm a person who finds charm in derelict places, abandoned spaces.  Hospitals and homes long vacated and left for nature to reclaim.  I see these frames hanging on damp and mossy walls.  Perhaps the frames once held photos, fading images of friends and lovers who've since moved on, departing on a spring breeze.

POSTSCRIPT - In this old post from 2016 I tried to use Brusho powders with less success, and I also attempted something involving empty frames.  It seems I'm contendedly regurgitating the same ideas, but at least they are improving a little each time!