grey is the word

Many people find it dull or depressing but I find it comforting and full of charm and warmth.  It makes me think of clouded skies and favourite knitwear, feathered and furred visitors to our garden.  I'm talking about the colour grey of course. (Or gray if you're reading from the United States!)

I've long loved grey but not used it a great deal as a feature colour in my tangling.  Too often it's simply the colour that gets added when I shade - although it got some attention in January, when I last dipped my toes into Winter themed tangling!   But for the next fews week I'm turning my tangling spotlight onto this wonderful colour to show you what it's capable of.

Trust me when I tell you I'm not sitting a mountain of grey paper, but I rooted through various packs and pads and gathered together quite a sample.  A wide range all claiming to be grey - some dark, some light, some with the barest hint of green, blue or brown.  That's the nature of this colour - it's never easy to pin down, or quantify.  It's also fairly hard to get a photograph that captures their true colours - the truth lies somewhere between the photo of them all together and the scans of my tiles!

[a range of grey papers - detailed below]

1 - Daler Rowney Murano Pastel Paper - from Cool pad - probably Slate
2 - Khadi Paper Dark Grey
3 - Clairefontaine PaintOn Grey Paper
4 - Two Rivers Paper - included in their Studio Pad
5 - Daler Rowney Murano Pastel Paper - from Neutral pad - probably Platinum
6 - Strathmore Artist Tile Toned Gray
7 - Khadi Paper Light Grey
8 - Official Zentangle Gray tile
9 - Stonehenge Colors Paper - Pearl Gray
10 - Bockingford Tinted Watercolour Paper - Grey

I set out on a voyage of exploration - a way to try out some of these papers, to harness and showcase their grey charms, to see which pens and shading styles suited them.  Not a methodical comparison mind you, just a meandering trip through a grey landscape.

I kept my choices simple - a  handful of Official ZT tangles and black pens, white pens, graphite shading, white shading.  First up - something quite minimal, quite sleek.

Mostly just Fife - black ink, graphite and white coloured pencil
on an ATC of Two Rivers Paper (4).  A somewhat delicate paper,
but a rich shade to work on. 

Next up - something different, switching the black pen for the 08 white Gelly Roll with a touch of graphite and some smoky white pastel along the edges.  I find the Pokes quite tricky to tangle elegantly, but rounding helps a lot, a chance to smooth out any anomalies and add definition.

Pokeleaf and Pokeroot - looking frosty and fabulous!
On a tile of Dark Grey Khadi (2) - rough but the Gelly Roll coped fine!

As I moved onwards, each new piece became a favourite - and that's often what happens when I start to get attuned to a certain combination of colour or tile.  I become more confident, but at the same time more calm - more instinctive, more engaged in the process, doing rather than thinking about doing.

Exploring Hollis, with rounding and Tipple - on a tile
of Clairefontaine Mixed Media paper (3).  A lovely paper
to work on, I used the tan version for Inktober.
Black ink, white chalk, graphite and some fine detail
lines in grey ink to add some background texture.

Those three papers all leaned towards the darker and rich end of the grey spectrum, but the next two went to the other extreme, being paler and cooler.

I love how Spoken looks when cut up by the limits
of an ATC.  With Printemps filling certain sections,
rounding and gentle shading in graphite and touches
of white I really like this Stonehenge paper (9).

Last, but by no means least, I tangled on my first ever Zentangle official Gray Tile - released just a few months ago.  This tile seems to be made from the same paper as their Renaissance tiles.  It's a beautiful shade of grey, very classy, very cool - and while you have to work a little gently at the shading stage, both the graphite and white chalk look wonderful

Nothing but Rumpus - looking like frosted flowers. 
This is a tangle that never disappoints offering
a truly mindful calm as you add circle after circle
and then link them together.
Black ink, graphite, and white chalk on a
Zentangle Gray tile (8).

That's all for now with these papers - but I have previously shared tiles tangled on a few of the others.  When I was a novice tangler, way back in 2014, I experimented with my Snag tangle on a Bockingford tinted tile.  A couple of years ago I tangled a lovely set of tiles on the lighter shade of Murano pastel paper.  In January this year I did some reverse Tranzending on a piece of Strathmore! 

My winter time has begun, the nights are colder, the days shorter - but it isn't often about snow and ice and sparkle here in the UK, there's a lot of damp days and grey skies too.  And that's what my last month of Inklings will celebrate - the beauty of winter even when it doesn't look like the image on a Christmas card, even if it's more likely to be raining than snowing on Christmas Day!