double duo

I loved the idea for this week's Diva Challenge - a duotangle with names beginning with the letters of our initials.  I choose to try two new tangles - starting with a J and an M (for my real name Jem Miller).  I picked Japonica (by Sandra Strait) and Me Three (by Cindy Pope).

Both were a pleasure to learn and play with - but somehow they didn't hang together quite as well as I hoped on the finished tile.  I tried again with some variations but still didn't really like the result.  But in the spirit of 'no mistakes' I thought I'd share them anyway.

I like the sense of taughtness in the monochrome one - I feel like I could reach in and twang the Japonica straps - or poke my fingers through the Me Three holes.

For the second attempt I decided to straighten the edges of the Me Three sections - turning circles into hexagons and suddenly I had honeycomb.  But then the Japonicas seemed like bulging larvae burrowing their way into the comb.  Quite creepy!

I think that some place between the two tiles would have been preferable.  I little less Me Three than the first, but sticking with the taught rather than bulging Japonica.  Oh well, there's always next time!

melting point

For this week's guest Diva Challenge post, Caroline Broady invites us to play with her tangle Truffle.

It's one of those really good tangles, as delicious as the confectionery it shares its name with.  It melts in the mouth, it delights with surprises hidden within.  It invites all manner of tweaks and changes and never looks the same twice.

I kept it simple and put it in a circle (confession - I used a template to get my circle neat!).  I filled the middle with a burst of a recent Tangle Patterns offering - Xplode.  I went for the aura version and heaped on the black ink to make it pop out.

The temperature has been rising lately, causing uncommonly hot weather for the UK.  We've had lightning storms strobing us from sleep.  We've been turning to face the electric fan like its some futuristic deity we need to worship.  And I think a bit of that atmosphere has seeped into this tile.

fortune favours the brave

The guest-posted Diva Challenge this week is to Bring Your Own Beverage.  And what a delight that invitation is - it feels like permission to be a child again, to play with my food, to make a mess, to make things up as I go along.

I'm English - I bracket sections of my day between cups of tea.  I don't have blue blood but significant traces of tannin surely run through my veins.  The first cup of today, we save a teabag.  I plonk it down on a round of paper - once, twice.  It makes strange rose-like imprints - ghost roses, or fading photos of continents long lost beneath the seas.  I squeeze three drops and let them sit before running them off the paper - far more Miss Marple than Jackson Pollock.  And finally I tear open the bag and scatter some leaves on the paper.  Later it is dry, I brush off the leaves and take up my pen - ready to read my own fortune in the patterns left behind.

The bag-printed rose islands seem too precious to overload with tangles.  I decide to merely aura them and anchor them with a stem.  A cluster of Pozer works well over the leaf-tinted area.  I think of how the touches of colour look like real-flowers, the way nature does random so well.  And those drips turn into wonderful Zingers - if you could shake them you would hear them rattle - dried and full to bursting with seeds ready to fall and grow next year's dreams.  A little border to hold it all in place and I'm done.  I sit back and sigh and feel as if I've just enjoyed a good cup of tea.

Eke and ye shall find

One of the things I love about Zentangle is its unpredictability.  A tangle can morph into something quite unexpected at the end of my pen.  Two tangles can meet and make beautiful music together.  Two's company, but sometimes three's a crowd - tangles sitting on a tile barely making eye contact.  Even so, I'm learning to love the days when it doesn't go that well. 

For One Zentangle a Day 27 we learnt Meer (which I had used before and like a lot), Enyshou (which is surely related to Squid) and Reef.  Somewhat inevitably an underwater vibe took over my tile.  But something didn't quite come together, and it looks a bit unfinished.  With hindsight I could go back and darken the background to make the tangles stand out, but sometimes it's good to have an example of something not quite right to learn from?

Who knew Eke could even work in a grid?

Day 28's tile felt like a vast improvement.  Krahula taught us Eke, and a tangleation of it and Sez (which I just couldn't get on with - sometimes the simplest ones are like that).  When I first encountered Eke a while back I thought it was particularly lame.  Just a loopy line, which didn't suggest much potential - and that surprised me because the official tangles are usually so well chosen and engaging.  But, revisiting it, something clicked, and I could see so many different ways it could be drawn and darkened and changed.  And now I thoroughly love it - enough to do a monotangle featuring nothing but Eke.

A simple string, a muted palette of my new Inktense pencils and a lot of gentle looping back and forth.  Mesmerising to draw, and pleasing to look at.  I can see a tree rising up from from the depths of a valley.  Draped fabric.  And the strange spine of a long extinct beast.

four sure

Sometimes a challenge makes me want to get clever, to push myself and think of new things to try.  At other times I simply want to play and see what happens.  And that's what I did this week, with the Diva Challenge asking us to use Crux (by Henrike Bratz).  With nods to Bales and 4 Corners I just let my pen roam, picking out or omitting parts as I fancied.  And I popped each Crux pattern on top of a square of Inktense colour (trying out some new pencils I just got for my birthday).

I toyed with the idea of putting something else around the squares, to link them together maybe - but in the end decided less is more? 

Perhaps my subconscious was at work while I drew - as she texted to ask me for directions to the fabric shop.  She came home empty handed but my tile seems to have four swatches of fabric on it.  Or perhaps some nice Moroccan tiles.

come again

Things took a different turn over at the Diva's place this week - where guest Sharla Hicks asked us to Redux / Remix / Revisit one or two of our frequently used tangles.

I varied the size and direction of Flux
and had Tipple pooling and dripping
down.  I tried to shade with watercolour
and stippled with a coloured pen.

One of the things I like about Zentangle is its mindlessness - no, that's not quite right, its mindfree nature.  The fact I can sit and let the pen make strokes and see where they take me.  But sometimes it's good to make it a more mindful activity.  To really worship the form and honour it and see if it's willing to grace us with even more beauty and pleasure.

I tried to make Tipple textural by having
it wrap the columns and I let Flux tumble
free.  I tried to shade more heavily than
I would usually.

To choose which tangles to redux I went back to some of the first ones I learned and those I use often but tend to be lazy with - using them over and over in the same ways I originally learned them.  The two culprits I chose were Flux and Tipple.  Flux I always have as meandering vine with even sized leaves on each side.  Only once or twice have I drawn it as a fixed clump.  And Tipple is always a helpful little filler, but never much of a star in its own right.

I altered Flux and drew it as a freehand
grid 'wrapping' a solid.  I tried to alter the
size of Tipple to create dark and light
but lost focus a bit!

In addition I wanted to try to give more thought to shading, and to the layout of my tangles on the tile - I always tend to stick to the square border and fill it - but often admire the tiles of those who deviate from this.

I spent a long time playing in my sketchbook and then produced three tiles (click on any image to enlarge) over two days - each to some degree succeeding in doing something new.  It was a great challenge, and has opened a new way of exploring tangles.  I know I'll do this again.

under my skin

One of the great things about a good tangle is that it has room to grow.  You can get to know it.  You can develop a rapport.  It can accompany you to new and unexpected places.  A good tangle is much like a good friend.  While Mooka and I still have an uneasy alliance, Auraknot excites me and my ease with Auraknot encouraged me to try something different with Mooka.  This is the result -

Diva Challenge #172 - take two

To begin with I wasn't that happy with the colour combination I'd used on this tile - there was something a bit 'off' about it - but she said it looked okay, a bit like bruised skin, and I kind of liked that so stuck with it.  Mooka wrapping a dark border and an Auraknot centrepiece.  Some stippling with the Micron, and it all comes together looking a lot like a tattoo.  Which is apt as the Diva's original post mentioned her Mooka tattoo.  And while I'm not likely to get a Zentangle tattoo, I'm sure to use these tangles again.