Duo Tangle ~ Boo-Kee/Artoo

This week Laura Harms, the Diva, has challenged us to make a duo-tangle using the tangles Boo-Kee and Artoo, which she designed and named for her two boys. This week has been a difficult one at their house, what with one having a tonsilectomy (sp?) and the other visiting the ER. It's so difficult to have young ones that are sick and I know that she has had her hands full.

I had fully intended to have my offering done earlier in the week, but as quite often happens, my hands weren't working the best. So I mostly just browsed through the rest of the submissions and was amazed at all the beautiful ideas. The Diva's piece for the week is such a beautiful zendala and uses both tangles to their best advantage. I love both of these tangles and they are fun to do, but somehow I just wasn't managing to get them to play nicely together. So in the end, I did two similar tiles, but I do like one better than the other.  Here they are for your perusal.

This actually was the second tile that I completed, but since I like it better, I am posting it first. I had hoped to get the picture taken while there was still beautiful sunlight outside to show it off to it's best advantage, but it was dinner time so I had to wait until after dinner to take the picture. The blue-grey on the tile apparently is a shadow from my hand and shouldn't be there, but it is what it is. So anyway, here is the one that I actually like.

This is actually the first tile that I worked on and mostly didn't finish because I didn't know where to go with it. I loved the way the Boo-Kee started out, but they kind of overpowered the Artoo tangles and it just wasn't doing what I wanted. So I kind of took the same idea and did the second one (above). I may try again on these because I really like these two tangles together. Again, you can see the blue-gray shadow on the tile. I'll work on that next week and hopefully get the pictures taken earlier in the day and/or week.

I'm not sure if the background on this is showing up as well as I had hoped, but this was an experiment in a background treatment that was meant to look like diffused lighting in the background. It is called "bokeh" and is actually a photographic technique that has been adapted to use with rubber stamping. At least that is where I found all the instructions for it. I got some more white ink that should work better and I think that I will play with this one a bit more. Basically, all you do is blend the colors you want for your background to be very subtle and then take your white ink and use circle stencils and randomly place them over the background ink to indicate blurred lights in the background. I'll do so more and show the steps at a later date.


So that's my offerings for this week.  Thank you to all who have stopped by last week and left comments. It is always appreciated and as always, I always love comments and constructive criticism as well. If you haven't stopped by the Diva's blog yet (CLICK HERE), the hop on over there and take a look at all the wonderful artistic submissions for this (and other) challenges. I want you to know that I am not always able to leave comments on some of the submissions, for one reason or another, but I DO look at them all and appreciate them all.  See you all next week, and have a great ZEN-ful day!

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!

Diva Challenge # 254 ~ Valentangle

First of all, thank you for your kind comments and thank you again for stopping by. I appreciate the visits and comments from you. They mean an awful lot to me. I love being part of this online community of wonderfully creative folks and learn from you all the time.

So this week our challenge from our Diva was to make something "Valentiney".  I had all kinds of ideas running through my head, but wanted to play with some of them on some artist trading cards (actually they are business card size, but close enough). I never did get my full size tile started because I was just having fun playing with some different ideas. So here they are....hope you enjoy!

I was trying my hand at some gems and decided to make a heart brooch of sorts, but I made the heart too big so I couldn't put the setting on that I has envisioned. I had fun making the gems, but I think I need a lot more practice.

Diva Challenge 254 - #1

This one was just playing with two of my favorite tangles, Flux and Luv-A. Out of the ones that I made this week, hubby liked this one and the gem the best. I quite like this one too.

Diva Challenge 254 - #2

Another favorite tangle of mine has always been Bunzo, so when I drew this heart, I could see two Bunzo cozying up to each other for Valentine's day and decided to just make it into a balloon. I really like the way this one turned out. I find it rather whimsical.

Diva Challenge 254 - #3

The picture I took for this last one turned out a bit dark and lightening it on Photoshop didn't help because it washed out the Printemps background. So please forgive my lack of photographic skills on this one. It really is a lot brighter that it appears in this photo. The lower part of the heart under the pink Printemps is actually a very nice lavendar, but it didn't photograph well. Ah well, such is life.

Diva Challenge 254 - #4

Color was added to all of these with the exception of the Bunzo Valentine with Prismacolor colored pencils and black micron pen was used on all. The background of #4 was added with a grey Tombow marker because I didn't want an overpowering background.

This was fun this week and I will try to get around to all of the other blogs in the next couple of days (yes, I know I'm late, but it seems I can only do what I can do and I DO always look at all the blogs and attempt to leave comments). If you are reading this and haven't joined the Diva's Challenge or checked it out to see all the amazing artists out there, please check the Diva's Challenge Blog HERE and see if you want to come and play with all of us. It's great fun!

As always, thank you for stopping by and if you get a chance, leave me a comment. Happy Tangling!

Diva Challenge #253 ~ Molygon

I had been seeing Molygon showing up in tangles and on some of the posts on Facebook, so I was happy to see that Zentangle released the step outs for it in their last newsletter. It was such a fun one to try.

I had big plans to do much more, but I about knocked myself silly during the week. I'm not exactly sure how it happened, but I fell and bit clear through my lip. Now it's just going to be ugly...the weird thing is that it really doesn't hurt, but I really have a headache and it sure makes eating meals difficult. Well, it seems that my family are all klutzes right up there with me...son slipped on the ice while trying to help me clean the car off, hubby over-reached when he was picking up something from his bedside stand and fell out of bed. I think we all need to live in a bubble with no sharp edges and nothing to slip on...lol.

But anyway, here are my offerings for Molygon this week:

Molygon practice
Media: Moleskin sketchbook, Black and sepia micron pens,
graphite pencil, grey marker
Tangles: Molygon, Zinger, and a few that just happened,

With this one, I had actually just been playing with Molygon in my sketchbook and it just kind of went it's own way, but I think that by and large, it turned out pretty good, You can't really see my shading in this one too well, but the camera never does it justice.

And here's the one I did on a regular tile:

Media: 3.5 inch tile, black micron pen, graphite pencil,
colored pencil for the jewel
Tangles: Molygon, Flux, Black Pearls, Mooka, and I
can't remember the ones I used for fill

I'm not at all sure that I like this one, but I do like parts of it, so I'll just keep working on Molygon and use the parts I like. But all in all, I like playing with Molygon and plan on using it more...it's a fun little tangle pattern.

If you would like to see more artists' vision on Molygon, then head over to the Diva's blog (click here) to see what everyone has done with this versatile little pattern. 

I usually check out everyone's submissions and try to leave as much feedback as possible, but there are some that I can't post comments on, so those of you that use Wordpress and Instagram, please know that I DO take a look and would love to leave comments, but I am unable to because I am not a member. I tried to get an Instagram account, but I don't have any devices that the program will operate with. But I just wanted you to know that I have been taking a look at them all and appreciate that everyone has such wonderful ideas.

With that being said, as always, I do appreciate comments and thank you for stopping by!