one for the wall

This week the Diva has invited us to play with our fragments and reticula.  I don't have the official Zentangle Primer yet.  I was lucky to find a second hand copy of The Book of Zentangle on Amazon so avoided hefty shipping charges, and was happy to give it a home!  Maybe the same will happen one day with the Primer (it feels a bit like Wonka's Golden Tickets - which is fine by me) but until then I can still enjoy the concept of grids and seeds under their new names without the official rule book right?

I designed a fragment based on my Sati tangle - pictured above.  I drew a basic reticula - a 4 x4 grid - on paper coloured with very bright yellow streaks.  Then I started to add in the fragments, turning it this way and that to make the pattern fit together.  This is one of those places where in-progress images tell the story better than I can.

As I've seen a few others observe, this is a different type of tangling that the more freeform string filling thing.  This feel more planned, more methodical, controlled.  But no less pleasurable for that.  It's more akin to working on a Zendala, with repetition and symmetry.  I can see this really being what I crave sometimes, but not always. 

Back to the tile.  For the final stage it's time to fiddle about - this is the bit that makes it come to life for me.  The shading, the blobs of gold paint (I had it out anyway and couldn't resist), making some of the black dots larger (as they looked lost), dotting those with white gel ink.  And then the dreaming.  If I were a ceramic artist - think of the tiles I could design and paint... but then again no!

turning curves into corners

According to this blog it's been months since I've done a Diva Challenge - but this week's really caught my attention.  The Diva invites us to play it straight - using only straight lines on our tile.  While I love the calm precision of straight line drawing, it's the curves that forgive our wobbles and inaccuracies.  It's the curves that truly allow us to feel the freedom of the 'no mistakes' motto.  But it's not a challenge if it's not challenging!

I played around with straightening out a few curvy tangles - with mixed and maddening results.  After abandoning those I decided to try on a couple of my own tangles.  And the results were quite surprising.  These are the two basic seeds of my Snag and Sati tangles.  Curves and loops galore.

And this is what happens when you straighten up and fly right.  A block of 4 Snag in the centre with detail lines and then a border of the beautifully boxy Dex.  Some simple shading just to add dimension.  Drawn on a tile cut from Murano pastel paper.

My second straight lined tile got even more lively.  In the middle 4 Sati - with diamonds instead of rice shapes to start and then a zig-zag line to join them.  Bands of Rain join the Sati to the corners, some straight Mssst in the middle, and the areas along each side filled with one of my favourite straight tangles - Baton.  What's a little scary is where my subconscious took me with the second tile!  We had an electrician in fixing a broken fan and fitting a new light but thankfully there were no bangs or sparks sent flying despite what my tile seems to prophesize!

from fertile ground

The note I attached with the tile I sent to Adele in response to her latest It's a String Thing challenge touched on my dissatisfaction with what I'd drawn.  I know that Zentangle is all about the process more than the results - but sometimes you can enjoy the tangling but still be left with a sense that something could have gone better.  And that was what I felt, in heaps, last week.  I just couldn't get the 3 tangles to work together, even though I like each in isolation.  I told her I'd like to revisit them again to see what might happen...

... and today I did just that.  And like Beanstalk Jack's magic seeds, that his mother threw out thinking they were pointless, something wonderful happened.  From my seeds of disappointment, this image appeared.  Tamisolo rising like twists of beanstalk from the frame of Sati (my latest tangle to feature on Tangle Patterns).  This was what I was looking for last week, but it just wasn't there.  But a few days later, in my sketchbook, allowing it to stretch beyond the bounds of a tile, without a string, there it was.  If I'm lucky, then perhaps soon Fission will start to sprout for me too!

Added the next day - and here it is!