the rise and fall

Last week I said that I'd been making lots of backgrounds.  I said some had turned out very bright, others rather pale.  This week I decided to work on a couple of the pale ones.  I had no particular plans as to what to do on them, but some plans found me, and they turned out to be a rather good fit.

As well as creating a technicolour wonderland of inspiration on her blog, Alice Hendon runs the Tangle All Around Facebook group, which provides weekly prompts and a place to share our works.  At various times I've joined in with some of Alice's previous ventures, such as stacked tangling, and a summer of sketchbook tangling.  But these days I mostly lurk or pass through just to see what's happening.  I did that this week and saw that one of the weekly tangles to try was Sassanian by Neil Burley.  As soon as I saw it I thought it would look great on one of my pale tiles.

A touch of Art Nouveau - Sassanian with Msst

The tiles were coloured using blended Distress Inks in a couple of colours - I forget which (must remember to write these things down!).  I then applied an additional helix of colour through a stencil - this almost disappears once the tile is tangled but you can see bits here and there.  I tangled in black ink and with a Wine coloured Copic Multiliner. I put a few extra details in but didn't want to detract from the shapes the tangle forms - that wonderful sense of looking through the mist and rain to the soft spring days just ahead of us.

I dawdled a bit about what to do with the matching tile.  Then I noticed Hanny Nura's Full Moon Mosaic and knew that would be perfect.  Hanny devises Moon based prompts that she introduces on her Instagram account every month.  I'm not on Instagram - but that doesn't stop me looking and admiring her work and the responses of those who join her.  This month she gave us a string, asked us to use Irka by Alena Light, and only botanical tangles.

Pale moon rising - with A-Dalfa, Irka and Flux, Fescu

I found myself unconsciously choosing tangles that mirrored that teardrop shape that Irka begins with.  I used a strange variation of an auraed Flux in the central V, with feathery Fescu poking through.  And while I'm not sure my A-Dalfa border is strictly botanical, I couldn't resist it. The resulting tile looks like it honours the sun as much as the moon, and could be an autumnal scene as much as one from spring.  But at the end of the day, those are the just names and words we apply to things that existed long before the words did.  The important thing is to focus on how they look, how they feel and the fact that they keep going, age after age after age!