Diva Challenge 273 ~ Tangle Remix and Playing Catch-up

Would you believe it? It's only Thursday and I am actually posting today  instead of Sunday night! It's been a pretty good week for me and I have a huge stack of tiles that need help badly. Our challenge this week was to take an old tile that we had in our stash and find one that could be helped by a remix or fresh coat of ink. I picked 2 and sadly, only 1 of them actually looks better. So I think I will show you that one first *giggle* I hate to show my worst work first....

So here it is initially....minimal shading and pretty much just Plain Jane. I suspect this was one for a stripes challenge and was done either in late 2014 or early 2015. When I looked at it, I felt it could be helped by a bit of a facelift (I could use one too, but that isn't quite so easy as it is to change artwork). So here is the modification that I did on it - mostly shading and just a few additions.

I really like this one much better, even if it doesn't show the shading as well as it looks in person. Sometimes I think that I prefer taking pictures to scanning, but at least they are getting finished by using the scanner.










This second one was done in July 2015 for a Simplicity challenge for the Diva. I really thought that I could help it out by adding to it, since it looked rather empty to me. I love simplicity, but sometimes even the simplest ones could use a bit more. So here is the original tile from 2015...

Just a bit too bland for me and I don't think I liked it even then. The shading on it is really that poorly done, so I thought I would dress it up and shade it a bit more. But I think I just made a mess of it. I may try to redo it again one day, but you can make up your mind.





Here's the remix, such as it is....

It really didn't turn out anything like I pictured. Oh well, sometimes I like them and sometimes I don't.















I missed the Black and White and Red all over challenge and I did a few of them, but this was the first one that I did and I did it in my sketchbook. I really wish I had done it on a tile as I really like it. But I am going to try it again on the front of a card and see if I can get it the way I like. There are several people that I really need to write to, and it's so much easier to send a card than to find my stationary again.

Thank you very much for stopping by. I always appreciate seeing some traffic here. As usual, I appreciate ALL comments, good or bad, and any creative criticism is appreciated. I have learned so much from this group and am so glad that I have joined in these challenges.

Now I can go back and see everything that everyone else has submitted, since there are so many talented artists here. If you would like to see what everyone else has done, please head over to the Diva's blog (HERE) and check it out. There's always time for you to start joining us. Come try it....it's fun!

Ghosts of Tangles Past

So . . .  this week the Diva Challenge asks us to revisit an old tile and redo it the way we would do it today. I first came in contact with Zentangle in May of 2014 when I was first on Pinterest and saw a couple of drawing that really interested me. They were something called "Zentangle" and I had never heard of it. Well, since I use Google to look up everything, I googled the term and started all kinds of beautiful abstract pieces that I thought I would like to try. So I went to zentangle.com  and started reading the blog there. They claimed that it was an easy thing to do, just one line at a time and you could create beautiful art. I thought that I would have no problem with this, since I had been interested in art my whole life and had even been an art major in college. Of course, that was AGES ago and I had mostly been doing crafts and life since then and I really didn't graduate from college, so I had forgotten most of what I had learned. I mostly drew animals and cartoony things before I got interested in rubber stamps and then scrapboking and when I saw zentangle, it seemed to call out to me.

I didn't know anything about what a string was and I was in too much of a hurry to take the time to do the steps for most tangles, so I would look at something and try to draw it. As a result, most of my early pieces were really crap-tastic and bear no real resemblance to actual tangling. But be that as it may, I started studying what I could find on Zentangle and little by little, I have been teaching myself to do some, what I consider, fairly decent tangle pieces. Check out the before and after and hopefully, there is progress there.

 One of my first tangles done in June of 2014. I really have no idea what the tangles were supposed to be, but my son told me that the big shell type thing was my attempt at Phycops. It took him about 2 weeks of trying to help me see which way the lines went, before I actually had the "aha" moment and figured out what I had been doing wrong. Thank you very much, TB3!

 Here is my redo on this one and I left out a lot of the tangles that were in the older one. I think that I finally learned how to draw Phycops. It's not the same at all because my early ones didn't have strings and no rhyme or reason to them. I feel better about the newer ones, because I feel like I have finally found my stride with them. Hope you like!

Another of my sad attempts at Phycops (also June of 2014), I was fascinated with that particular tangle and just couldn't make it work for me. My son can see things that I can't and he has the knack of helping me to learn the correct procedure. I keep trying to get him to try to tangle, but he really isn't interested. Again, no string and apparently no shading either, so the new try has definitely got to be better.

Again, here is my redo of the old tile and as you can see, I really DID learn Phycops. I used some of the other tangles in this one too, although I didn't use all the attempted tangles that were in the old one. I find that I like a bit of white space as I become more confident in my work. Hope you like! This one was just completed yesterday.









As always, thank you for stopping by and taking a look at my attempts. I am thoroughly enjoying this tangling journey and hope you are too. Thank you also for any comments and CC. It always helps. If you are interested in seeing what some of the other wonderful artists in this community, just hop on over the the Diva's blog (CLICK HERE) and take a look.

Have a great day!