Sunday, June 26, 2011

Wedding Flowers

This ZIA was done for tangling friend who recently announced her marriage.



It's 3.5 x 3.5, drawn on bristol smooth using micron pigmas in sizes ranging from 005 to 02, with just a hint of shading with an HB pencil. I'd like to add more shading to it, but I am so bad with deciding where to shade...

Tangles include whiska, scrawlz, border one, barock, deflour, jacki, chugh, poke leaf, roseira, bleeding hearts, kalancho, rose (the one by MakeArtBeHappy), vigne, leilani, and several nameless wingdings.

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Mt. Dex -- aka Week 27

I had a hard time with this week's challenge, as many did. The two patterns, Dex and Vertigoh, only seem to go together in so many ways. I have several attempts that I put aside, but I kept coming back to this one. Which, oddly enough, was started as just a quick sketch just before going to bed to remind me what I wanted to try. Hence the shaky outline. It ended up being the only one I finished.



Done on cardstock in micron sepia and black, shaded and very lightly colored with prismacolors. Coloring which really didn't come through in the scan.

Monday, June 20, 2011

New patterns: Cariv, Saltire, and Hardy :D

As promised, my three newest patterns.



Cariv is based on an ivy I saw in Carmel.

A saltire is a diagonal cross, or an X. Since the second pattern starts with big Xs, I grabbed that one for the name. :) It's based on an ancient Egyptian pattern that was in the Grammar of Ornament. Many thanks to Mafe for directing me to that book :)

And the last one is one I've been sitting on for a bit. I call it Hardy, based on a commonly used Hardanger pattern. Hardanger being a type of embroidery.

Hope you enjoy!

Saturday, June 18, 2011

I've Got A Golden Spiral

"I've got a golden chance to make my way..."

Oh, sorry, that's Willy Wonka :D

I still have shading to do, but the deadline for the Diva's entries is rapidly approaching, if not already passed. So, here's what I have done anyway. :)

The first thought I had for the spiral challenge was the galaxy, but the second was the golden spiral. And this one wasn't a quickie ;)



Here it is unshaded, and uncolored. But even knowing it'd pop more with shading, it still needed something more...



Color! One of the few pieces of mine that shouted at me from the beginning to use color.

This was drawn at about 4 inches by 6 inches, and very definitely done on the rhodia dot pad. I needed the grid for almost everything on this.

Now technically, it's an approximation of a golden spiral. ;) A golden spiral is a spiral that circles around blocks drawn using the Fibonacci sequence. That's the mathematical sequence of 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 and so on. Start with 1 and 1 and then the next number is the sum of the previous two numbers.

Materials were the micron pigma pens, the pentel sunburst gold gel, and several colors of derwint inktense watercolors. This was also my first time using the pentel water brush pen. Basically, it's brush on a hollow pen and you fill it with water then can use it directly on the paper. It worked *wonderfully*, even on this non-watercolor paper.

And sneak peak for a new pattern I'll be posting very soon... upper left corner.

Monday, June 13, 2011

Spiral galaxy

This week's Diva challenge is to tangle around a spiral. I woke up for some reason really early this morning (the cats nibbling on my fingers to say 'you forgot to fill the food dish last night' probably had a little to do with that), so I checked out the challenge early. When she said spiral, this was the first thing to come to mind.



Done on black cardstock (interesting that I don't mind using the black cardstock like I did the blue... but then, this was gel pen, too) using a white gel pen (though I don't remember if I was using the gelly roll or the pentel sunburst) and a silver pentel slicci.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

A "Linienspiele" for week 25's challenge

Rhapsody in Germany has put together instructions for how to do what she calls linienspiele -- or, "Line play". I love the way that name rolls off the tongue. :D I've been trying it out without much success, but I also admit I haven't carried anything through to the final line.

Until now.

I decided to give it a try to the zendala template for the Diva's week 25 challenge. I'm pretty happy with the results.



This was done on bristol smooth using a black calligraphy marker, black micron pens in .005, .1, .2, and graphic 1, a red micron pen in .1, and grey copic pens in .1

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Weekly Challenge 25

This week's challenge from the Diva is actually from a guest challenger, Geneviève. She gave us a mandala template to use to create a zendala.

Now, normally, I love doing zendalas. But for some reason, I had a hard time getting into this challenge. I'm going to try it again, but use better materials. I think part of my problem was that I traced the template onto a piece of cardstock.

Remember when all my tangles were done on cardstock?

Ever had a tangler tell you that once you try vellum, watercolor paper, etc, you'll never want to go back?

*sigh*

So, I'll have to give it another try, but this time on bristol or freehand the template into my moleskine, and this time keep it to either black and white or the "natural white" I guess you'd call the moleskine paper. And probably go with something more traditionally ZT instead of something with quite so much form.



As for the tangles, one is a seaweed type design that I saw somewhere in my collection. Another is Squid. There's ConchZen, and the rest are just freehand playing. Done on colored cardstock using a blue triplus fineline pen.

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Tangle Sampler

Over on the ZIA Yahoo Group, Sandy asked us to post a sampler of 9 different patterns to build up the reference section. It was also the "entrance fee" for the next bingo game.

I was rather specific on which pieces I picked, but I'm not saying why... we'll see if anyone figures out the "easter egg". ;) But I will say I purposely picked patterns that either are fairly new or were not on TanglePatterns since that reference already exists. Most of these were posted by others in the Flickr pool. The rest I got most likely by following Molossus' link when she found the new patterns posted. :D But just getting "new" patterns isn't the only reason I picked these.



Names of the tangles are under the tangle. Drawn on the large size rhodia dotpad using micron pens and shaded with pencil. (I do admit, I'm a convert to shading with the HB or 2H pencil over using the prismacolors for a lot of these)

Remember that free pen case offer?

The one from Asian Treasure Hunthttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif ? Mine arrived today. :D I got the black one, to match my kindle. Plus, I had a thought of trying a white gel pen and tangling on it. What think y'all? :D

(I'll try to get pictures tomorrow, too tired right now)

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Tangled Tail

I drew most of this for yesterday's drawing day, but I didn't get the 'sky' finished before time for bed (started it late, too). So, I'm just posting it today. :) Inspired by the humpback whales we saw while in California.



Done in black micron on a watercolor ATC with pencil to shade. Tangles used include Flotsam and Skein from Sandy Bartholomew's books, and Sez.