onwards and upwards

This week's Diva Challenge is another one of those that invites us to remember where we came from.  To take a tile from the past and recreate it.

And so to 2nd July 2013 - I'd been teaching myself to tangle from a book.  This was Day 5, tile 5.  I had a handful of tangles at my disposal, a basic pen, pencil and some tiles cut from thin white card stock.  But I could see something I liked in the way these strange shapes started to rise up from the paper as I drew.

Things I would have thought then -

• that Printemps is harder to draw than you'd expect
• that I didn't really 'get' Isochor
• that I didn't really believe in all the 'talk' about certain pens, tiles etc
• that shading seemed a bit like putting a load of graphite over something that looked neat until you did
• that I couldn't imagine this Zentangle holding my attention for more than a few weeks

Then and now - the evolution of a tile
[click to enlarge] 

Fast forward to now.  The same tangles, a similar string.  And a world of difference.  And the differences mainly come about from confidence, commitment and community.

What I know now -

• that Printemps is still a challenge, and Isochor is a odd one!
• that better materials do help - not least because they make you value yourself and your art
• that shading makes the ink lines come to life
• that nearly three years later I tangle almost every week, and can't imagine ever stopping

molygon and done it

I'll admit that when the first tiles featuring Molygon started to appear, before it was released to the masses, I wasn't that impressed.  I couldn't see it as much more than a few crescents laid side by side.

But Molygon comes into its own when you actually start to draw it, you get into a kind of rhythm, and then stopping is far hard than starting ever seemed.  Prompted by this week's Diva Challenge - I played with lots of variations in my sketchbook, but for now I went with this one. 

Micron and watercolour pens on lilac Indian cotton rag paper

A sort of nameless line fill, partly like the fill you sometimes see on Jetties, and partly like my own Kitl.  It just seemed to work well round those bends.  And then Finery in those panels that appeared when I followed the breaks between the Molygons.  I don't think I'm tucking my Molygons in as tightly as suggested, but I quite like them this way, with that gap in the middle - room to tuck something else or just leave blank.

take one

I'm not saying I lost sleep over a tangle, but I did spend a lot of time with it circling around in my head between seeing it and getting to draw it.  The ever-inspiring Sandy Hunter's new tangle Lollywimple is one of those.  You know them when you meet them. 

Apprentice sized tile to allow room to play.

So I'm taking my time getting to know it - I don't want to rush things.  On my tile, her three simplest versions as three partial frames, so allow me to practice the tangle, and to try out different fills and shading.  I think this could be the start of something wonderful!

lovefool

It was only as I sat to enjoy my Tuesday morning ritual of browsing through the array of tiles sent in for Adele's weekly String Thing challenge that I noticed that my tile was missing.  And only then that I realised that it was missing because I hadn't sent it in.  I'd drawn it, scanned it, and then forgotten all about it.

Drawn on Daler-Rowney Murano paper so those
white ink hearts would really stand out

So here it is.  The one that never reached its destination.  The one I encouraged (I won't say forced) myself to do despite the fact that I really don't like drawing hearts.  It's not that I don't like love.  It's just that hearts remind me too much of the commercialization of love.  But then I remembered that in the weird world of Zentangle a cirlce is an orb - which makes it far less scary to draw.  So surely therefore a heart is just a shape, with a point at one end and two bumps at the other.  So I just drew some of those shapes.  And as a result of that slight tweak in my thinking I had a great time.  Even if I did forget to email it to Adele!

something simple

What truths from the mouth of the Diva this week.  How easy it is to lose our way when there are so many paths to choose from.  How powerful it is to turn back and begin again from where we started.

Two and a half years ago I drew my first tile.  It looked like this -

Today, I sat down, with an Official tile , the recommended pen, a pencil and two and a half years of confidence and community and drew this.

I did it by the book, from the basic Zentangle principles.  No pre-planning, no thought as I drew, other than following the flow of the pen and my sense of what to lay where.  I drew with whatever tangles came to mind without needing to look up their step-outs or trying them out first.  I even left the smudges I made as I worked on the tile.

And for that it's wonderful.  And as I inevitably get drawn back down all those fascinating and fanciful by-ways I will remember to come back home once in a while.

deju vu

My first tangling day of the year - and for now I resist playing with the new pens I got for Christmas, or looking up more pens that I might want to buy, or starting on any of the tangling projects I've been pondering of late. 

I just dive in.  To a couple of old faithful challenges, to kick start that pen across the page.  And so to the latest Diva Challenge - a simple mix up of Auraknot and Diva Dance.  And this is what came out.

And I like it - but something niggled, it seemed familiar.  A quick search on this blog, and I found an identical Auraknot a year and a half ago, just with different fill and a border.  Oh well, at least I'm consistent!

a three-cornered problem

I have mixed feelings about Tripoli.  I quite like drawing it, and I like the look of it when it's done, and in some people's hands it is a wonderful tangle.  But I'm never really sure what to do with it.  And quite often, in fact usually, I draw a bit of it, on its own on a tile, and never really know what to do with it.  Whether to include other tangles, or let it stand alone.  In fact I usually end up with an unfinished tile.  I've got quite a few of them sitting in my little tangle basket - maybe I need to think about a project to finish the unfinished... 

But anyway, when the Diva challenged us to work with Tripoli I knew it would be a tough one.  I started well, laying down lots of triangles with my thick Sanguine Pitt Pen.  I like the way it looked a bit like potato-printing.  Once dry I went back and added some details with my Micron.

Work in progress

 But then I got stuck - with Tripoli hanging there in a unfinished state.  And it sat like that for days, and it could have ended there... but I risked inking in a few tendrils, so that the Tripoli looked like it was attached to something, like it belonged.

Done and dusted

And I think that worked out okay - I think it's good enough to call it finished.  Not an easy one, but a sense of accomplishment nonetheless.