Shaded Tripoli

After some playing today, I decided how I wanted to shade my tripoli creation. I hadn't realized at the time that there was a natural shading orientation to it already based on the colors I used. It wasn't until I played with it on some scratch copies (yay for having a scanner!) that I found just how much the piece wanted to be shaded in a certain way.

So, here's the finished Tripoli.



Tangles used in this one are Tripoli (of course) done in black micron pigma, keenees, vitruvius, well connected, lis, and rosquire in copic grey, and zuanshi in sepia. Shading was done using a combination of 8b, 6b, 4b, and hb graphite, and thank you to my facebook friends for suggesting I try softer leads for shading.

I did promise some WIP pictures for this particular ZIA (and it is very definitely an inspired art rather than a zentangle...way too much planning in this one), so here's how it progressed. Probably in more detail than anyone cares about ;)

I started out by drawing the s-curve, squares, and circles. S-curve was freehand, the others used templates. I knew I wanted the s-curve to be filled with Tripoli, so I filled that in with just the triangles. I'd also expected the orientation to be different than how it ended up.




Then came deciding which other tangles I wanted to use. I was after a specific look this time, so I spread out my pattern cards and narrowed it down to... well... take a look.



Every one of those cards is an ATC with the pattern in a 2 inch square. I keep them in deck boxes designed for baseball cards (and other collectables), organized into the most common 'theme' I hunt down. Namely, a pattern on a grid, an official ZT pattern, or what I call 'motifs' and 'freestyles'. That makes it easier to find a pattern with a certain feel when I'm after something specific (and gives me something to do when all I feel like doing is playing with cards). I've got them laid out on two magnetic dry erase boards, held down with magnets I've been collecting the past few months.

Once I had the patterns narrowed down to about seven, I started filling in.



Once all the patterns were filled in, it was shading time. Next comes actually putting something on display for a change. ;)