debriefing the heart

I wasn't the sort of teenage girl to draw hearts on my pencil case. I've had a fair unease about that shape for most of my life. Mostly because it seems like a rubber-stamped cliche of love - far from what love really means to me. Love doesn't look the same for everyone, so how can we all use the same symbol to represent it?

But I decided to tackle my reluctance head-on, and join in with this years ValenTangle fortnight. I'll share my results in a moment - but first a tile for this weeks appropriately hearty Diva Challenge. I actually started this tile for Day 11 of ValenTangle - but it drifted some way from the prompt, and then it went a bit wrong, and then I tried to correct it by throwing a colour wash over it, and then some TranZending. And then I thought it looked a mess so I put it to one side and made a new tile for Day 11. But I've resurrected it today, tinkered and shaded and I'm willing to call it done.

This started as a band of Marguerite Samama's Love Fragment -
which has been featured throughout ValenTangle

And so to my experience of ValenTangle. I reflected often as I worked on each daily prompt, and I've come to a number of conclusions. Firstly that I love working regularly and intensely on a theme - I feel proud of the body of work that has resulted. Once I decided my limited colours and materials (I stuck with a cool blue as my only colour to keep in mind with my Winter Inklings project) I could let go of planning and expectation. I could immerse myself in Marguerite's profoundly inspiring prompts - each satisfying enough to get your teeth into, but with plenty of opportunity to flavour as you see fit. But at the same time I felt the downsides of working this way. I rarely join in anything with a regular commitment, and whilst I could have dipped in and out, once I'd made my commitment I stuck to it. Much like love, I'm faithful once I decide to take part. And there were times when I found the need to produce a tile every day a little draining, and there were times I craved creation unrelated to hearts. But darkness makes us appreciate light, lack of love makes us appreciate its presence. I'm now relishing the thought of being utterly directionless in my tangling - who knows where I'll go next.

A whole lotta love

I've shared these tiles in the ValenTangle Facebook group - but repeat them here as I know some of my readers don't do Facebook, and also it's nice to see them all grouped together.

Day 1 - exploring the Love Fragment.

Day 2 - Hearty Ratoon

Day 3 - a little tangling, a lot of space

Day 4 - make a 3Z mosaic

Day 5 - tangle an object

Day 6 - hearty Wholly Hollibaugh

Day 7 - the Love fragment in a hexagon

Day 8 - tangle the initials of your loved one/s

Day 9 - hearty Star-Ing

Day 10 - tangle your corners

Day 11 - tangled borders

Day 12 - hearty Yuma

Day 13 - Bijou in a grid tangle

Day 14 - tangle a puffy heart pillow

Over the course of 14 days I came to realise that the heart shape is just a shape, no more no less than any other – it has points, recesses and curves. It can behave in all manner of different ways and if you tangle it enough times all meaning, both good and bad, begins to recede. I don't think I'll be drawing hearts on my pencil case any day soon, but I definitely don't feel quite as allergic as I did, and I can imagine that by this time next year I might get the urge to join in with the next ValenTangle.

listening to echoes

Mostly when I tangle I don't think – my mind pleasantly disconnected from anything other than the flow of ink across paper. But if I do think I think about the tangling, and sometimes I think about what I might say in my next blog post.

This week I thought about repetition. About how I find myself often saying the same things to different people within the tangle community. I don't think this repetition is a bad thing. I often rediscover and repeat the same things to myself on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. This is how they sink in, this is how we learn.

This week I shared the thought that taking part in tangle challenges should never feel like a chore, merely an invitation to inspiration, that we should always feel able to decline without a shadow of guilt. This isn't the first time I've said this, and it won't be the last.

I didn't feel inspired to respond to the invitations that the Diva put out in the first couple of weeks of the year. But this week I did. The opportunity to fill stripes was too good to resist.

Keeko and a Beadlines variation -
ragged in places like a beloved old cardigan

But then a funny thing happened, all of a sudden I felt like doing a tile for the previous week's challenge as well. I explored a new medium by trying out a form of reverse TranZending which I've been watching Anica develop and explore over the last few months.

A rare photo of the works in progress

I used a Posca white pen to lay down a base layer of Baton. The benefit of the Posca pen seems to be that it dries to a permanent finish – which means it doesn't clog your micron when you go over it many times, and it doesn't re-moisten and start to move about. I drew my tile on a Strathmore grey tile - newly recommended to me by tangle friend Jules after I'd admired one of her 'hairy' grey tiles. These come measuring 4x4 but I cut this one down to our more familiar 3.5 x 3.5.  I often tangle on grey toned pastel paper, but these tiles have a smoother surface which seemed better suited to this technique.

Bunzo, Mooka and Tipple - I love how shiny and dark this looks -
like seeing an underwater world trapped beneath ice

Guess what happened then! I fancied doing yet another Diva tile, one for the first challenge of the year. I don't have a spinner machine so I laid down some concentric circles using two shades of grey watercolour brush pen. When I blended these with a water brush a subtle purple started to appear - sometimes an unwelcome side-effect, on this occasion a welcome hint of colour.  Not that I'm missing colour, despite being firmly locked into the blacks and greys of my Winter Inklings project.

CC and a bit of Mintea - and lots of graphite -
ornate cloud banks on a misty day

I politely declined to join the party for the first two weeks of the Diva challenge year, but this week I had a ball doing all three. I feel sure that I wouldn't have created these tiles if I had forced myself last week or the week before. These tiles could only appear when they were ready, when I was ready - I just need to remember over and over again to listen to my instinct.

opportunities lost and found

I've only sent a handful of tiles to dear Adele in time for her weekly It's a String Thing challenges.  A few I've finished but too late for the deadline and I've posted them here instead.  But the rest I've still managed to enjoy thanks to sticking to my year long pledge to make at least a Bijou if I don't have time for a full tile.  Although admittedly some of these were completed some time after the challenge!

These are real tests of economy and invention, how to fit the string, or occasionally only part of the thing onto a tiny tile.  How to bring in two or three tangles and make them play nicely.  How to get shading and highlight and sometimes colour harmoniously working in a two by two inch space.  Challenging,  but really rewarding too!

 

On quite a few of these tiles my tangling deviated quite some way from how the tangle is 'meant' to look - my D'rua insisting on becoming Antidots, and my Baraquillos is totally wrong but looks just as tasty!  But how much of life really turns out like it's meant to? At least in Zentangle you can still guarantee a happy ending!

A few of these were done on pastel paper - I find it works nicely for the limited space, allowing for simple highlights and shading to really stand out.  It was drawn a while ago but IAST #253 features a broken version of Printemps that I've drawn a few times.  It's a simple but incredibly versatile tangle as shown by Margaret Bremner in her hot-off-the-press post - Printemps, And Then Some.

And as always there were a couple of pleasant surprises.  I had a couple of tiles that I'd done some watercolour blobs onto and then discarded onto the pile.  I picked one for challenge #245 which was donut / doughnut themed!  It had a jammy look to it that I thought might work.  I didn't really like the string, or the tangle selection - and yet I really like the finished tile!  Isn't that strange!  And the same happened with challenge #255 - I played with Konk but didn't like it a great deal, but once I tangled it over some colour bursts I love it.  And some tweaking and shading made me see the appeal of Flog too!

I'm sure I'll miss a few more IAST challenges before the year is out, but there's always a ready supply of  tiny tiles in my little tin! 

Footnote
I've had a bit of a tidy up here, a new header banner, which I aim to change seasonally.  But most importantly I've tidied up all the different buttons to my tangles on my sidebar.  Instead they are all group together clickable via the single Ragged Ray's Tangles button.  Thanks to Susie Ng for her invaluable technical help!

burning bright

I'm finding myself increasingly drawn to working on series of tiles.  There is something both comforting and inspiring about having a fix set of variables - pen, paper, colours - and then nothing but the tangles need to change.  I find that limiting choices makes me more inventive.

I've done this a couple of times before - working in grey, honey and green - but this time I grabbed a frightfully bright orange paper and wondered if I could tame it into elegance.

Orange pastel paper / black ink / white gel / white pencil / pale green brush pen / graphite

And I think I did.  The subtle hints of green help to break up the orange.  And then of course I dabbled with the new official technique of Tranzending.  To be honest I wasn't too sure I liked the look of it when I first saw it.  It looked like a way to 'mess up' an otherwise appealing tile.  But then I played about, adding a little hint here and there and it started to make more sense.  As you can see through the course of these 4 tiles I got more adventurous, using a larger and more complicated section of Tranzending each time.  It takes a bit of thought in my mind, to work out how it can be brought in to compliment rather than obscure what's already there.  But I think it's an interesting way to add another dimension to our tiles.