we have lift off

For this week's guest-hosted Diva Challenge, the lovely Bright Owl asked us to have fun with one of her Zendala templates. 

I only discovered the pleasure of Zendalas and Erin's weekly challenges shortly before she took a break - but now she's back and I want to get back into doing them.  They offer a subtly different experience than other types of tangling.

I used the graphite transfer technique to copy the template onto a standard (9cm x 9cm) sized tile and it worked way better than I expected!  This would also offer a great chance to alter or omit any lines you don't fancy using.

And then I went in with my Micron - popping Sandy Hunter's delicious new Papermint tangle into the circular sections, and then a sort of Ticking variant into the leaf shapes and then a few bits of Beadlines and some tufts and dots and shading and there you have it! 

It looks like it's about to fly away, and I feel a fair bit lighter than I did when I started it! 

the beautiful silence

For this week's guest-hosted Diva Challenge Sandy Hunter asked us to leave some white space untangled on our tile.

I pencilled a quick looped string and then it seemed to say that it would welcome woven type tangles, so I popped one each into the four quarters.

Featuring Harfe, Bask-it, Looplopp and Keeko

One of the things I love about Zentangle is that while I'm drawing my mind seems to drift in directions it might not otherwise take - sparks of ideas form, and elusive realisations come into focus.

While drawing this tile it started to dawn on me that sometimes we are so keen to fill every moment of our days with activity that we leave no space to appreciate or enjoy the unplanned.  The moment that arises without warning that might be the truest treasure in our all hustle and bustle.  The voids also leave valuable breathing room for the presences - they allow them to be more alive than if they are squeezed into a limited space.

So I'm going to try for the rest of this week, in my tiles as well as my days, to leave a little space.  I wonder if you will too?

I'll grow wherever you will grow

For this week's guest-hosted Diva Challenge we were asked to celebrate the organic.

I began with no destination in mind and this is where I ended up.  A fusion of two tangles recently introduced on Tangle Patterns.  Mei providing the swirled trellis, with little Flux leaves appearing along its branches.  And a deconstructed Dicso appear at the cross points. 

It took quite a long time to draw.  Mostly because I wanted to have that thick and heavy look to all the lines - they suited the gothic garden image I had in mind.  But it was a tile I did in multiple sittings - adding a little bit more each time I had five minutes to spare.  It grew, almost by itself.  Spreading across my initial framework.  As if by magic.  As if by the magic of nature itself.

Despite spending most of my adult life lost in books, I read very little as a child.  But I do remember one hot summer, ill and lying on a mattress by an open door reading from a hardback copy of The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett).  And I wonder if a little bit of that garden stayed with me, and regrew this week.

send in the clowns

On the surface it might appear that I have abandoned the wonderful world of Zentangle.  Not so - I just haven't posted anything on my blog for a while.  I've been mostly caught up making ATCs for the swap organised on the Facebook based group for art that is Stacked and Tangled.

Now that they have safely arrived in Arizona I can turn my attention to other things.  And one of my first stops is the latest Diva Challenge.

I'm not a big fan of the circus, although I did go quite a few times in my childhood.  And the thought of using bright colours freaks me out a bit - but I pushed myself to stick with it and I'm really pleased with the result.

Entertainment provide by Cack, Tropicana and Linq

what a hoot

It would have been so easy to get carried away by this week's Diva Challenge.  I could have spent ages searching the house for exciting things to use to make my string, but then I would never have got to the tangling!  Instead I grabbed the first thing that came to hand from the stationary drawer.

And this is the result.  A strange tulip? An owl perhaps, with Crescent Moon eyes and Onamato beak? or maybe just a pair of scissors filled with Baton, and a sort-of Balo going down onto the blades.

dream a little dream

For this week's Diva Challenge we were invited to use Fanz.  I liked its shape straightaway, but couldn't find quite the right fill.  I put a few down in my sketchbook, went away, came back, added a few more, tinkered and tried and then... suddenly I hit on this fill.  And I loved the way it looked like wrought iron. 

And I thought about how one of the many dreams my partner and I have (and we have many and most of them will remain unfulfilled, but that's okay because we believe that sometimes just having the dream is enough) is to have a design cast in metal which we would position against a brightly painted shed. 

And if we did, and we allowed things to grow up it, like Shelly Beauch's beautiful Wist, maybe it would look a bit like this tile.

a feast of flux

If I take the time to sit with one tangle, and really get to know it, drawing it over and over again, in new and/or similar ways, I always seem to get pleasing results.  The simpler the tangle the broader the results.  This happened when I worked with Flux on a previous Diva Challenge with these results.  This week's Diva Challenge asked us to look again at this humble tangle and I loved every minute of time I spend in its company.  I feel I've expanded on some of the previous ways I used it and taken it in new directions too.

Flux Framed - some with darkened centres,
and some slighty blotchy block shading.

Puddle of Flux - dodging this way and that, with
darkened N'Zeppel between rather than the usual Tipple

Flux Squared - I just wanted to see if it would work
in a grid.  And it did.  With sepia lines, a couple of different
centre details and some rounding to add weight.