Diva Challenge #241 ~ Stones and Ceremony

When I read that the challenge this week  had to do with stones, I remembered back to my childhood to a close friend that had a huge backyard, the back half of which was full or rocks and apple trees. We used to play with the rocks and stones for hours, making up new games and just appreciating how different they all were. This particular friend was very smart and was my first boyfriend (at age 5 no less!), so we had rock fairs in which he would decide what color and shapes we had to look for and then we would have a contest and he would award prizes. When it came to my turn to decide how we were going to play with the stones and rocks, we would make villages of stone and have all kinds of rock and stone builds set up. It was a glorious time and I never did outgrow my love for nature and stone builds. I love to take the stones in our backyard even now and try to pile them up to see if I can make something worthwhile. Not much stands anymore, but it was fun.

So when I read that guest blogger Paula Bramante wanted us to pay homage to stone cairns and ceremony, I thought of my little zen garden that I used to have at work and decided to try representing that. I'm not sure that it represented it all that well, but I quite like this piece and probably will end up framing it. This piece was originally started for something else, but I had set it aside in the hope that I would finish it at some other time. Well, it called to me to put my little zen garden inside the space in the center and I really kind of like the way it turned out.  Here it is!

"Zen Garden"
4" circular tile, black and sepia microns, graphite pencil,
light gray and light brown markers
Tangles used: Florz, Dragonair, Flux, Printemps, and
a few others I can't remember

As always, I appreciate you stopping by and visiting my blog and leaving comments if you are so inclined. I must apologize for my lack of comments posted to others' blogs lately, as I am having problems with my hands and can't really type real fast or very well lately. Please know that I have seen each and every submission that has been posted and they are ALL wonderfully done. If you haven't seen the other artists' work, check out the Diva's Blog and see all the beautiful work done for these challenges. Hope to be more interactive with all the blogs in the weeks to come. But know that I love ALL the work I have seen!

Diva Challenge #240 ~ Happy Fall

I'm a bit late posting this one...but Happy Belated Birthday Artoo! I actually did several versions of leaves to try to represent fall, but none of them managed to get finished. I kept having to stop because my hands were not liking the fall weather. Yes, we finally managed to get fall here and the temperatures have been beautiful....even the cats loved being outside. This is my oldest cat and he refused to pose for me, but at least it shows the beautiful colors that were outside on the grapevine that my neighbor so graciously grows alone my fence.

Mistoffellees enjoying the fall weather...
he's our 15 year old boy.

But I finally finished my tile and liked it so well that I decided to make it into a card to send my mother-in-law for this month's letter.  Hope you like it too!

Fall Card ~ October 2015

I used some die cuts that I had in my scrapbooking materials from a long time ago and traced them onto my tile. I used micron pens in both black and sepia to do the tangles and colors and then used some chalk for some the highlighting on the front pumpkin. Shading was done with graphite pencil for the most part. The shading around the edge of the leaves and pumpkins is done with a light gray marker. I then mounted the tile on a background piece of paper and cut a decorative edge on the corners before mounting it on a card. Then I just taped a couple of die cuts to the card to complete it. I had fun doing this one.

Thanks for stopping by and, as always, any and all comments are much appreciated. I'm afraid that I need to apologize for not leaving comments for the last few weeks. My hands have not been working well at all recently. I have actually seen all the submissions here, but I haven't been able to do a lot of writing lately. At any rate, I love seeing all the beautiful work that is being done here. 

If you want to see the other submissions, please head on over to the Diva's Place to see what is going on. Maybe you can join us there too.

I'm back! Diva Challenge #239 "Munchin Play"

Well, this long hiatus wasn't really planned or expected, but between computer problems, internet wireless issues, and hands and back not working, it's been since August that I have posted anything here or published anything in the Diva's challenge. I have been working on some tangling, but not as much as I would like since it was hurting to actually hold the pen. But I did keep up with the challenges and try many of them. I will be locating my drawings (scattered in a couple of rooms at the moment, but still accomplished) and uploading them a few at a time with my challenges. I think that the computer and internet problems shouldn't be bothering me again for at least a little while, so I just need to worry about the hands :)

Anyway, here is my white on black (except that it's midnight blue) tile and I was quite pleased with the way it turned out. I have a lot of scrapbooking cardstock from a previous life as a scrapbooker and card maker, so I have been using some of that stash for my Zentangle work. I had actually done a couple of munchin tiles that I really liked, but the other paper had too much texture to take a good picture. It was a light sepia tone with a leather texture and was beautiful with the sepia pen that I tangled with. If I can get hubby's scanner to work and it looks better, I'll post it next week. Anyway, I have talked too much already, so here is my challenge piece.

Munchin Play
3.5" Midnight Blue Tile, White Gelly Roll pen, and General
White Chalk Pencil
Tangles: Munchin, Flux, Zinger, Fescu, with Tipple

Challenge #233 ~ Zenith
3.5 Tile, Sepia and Black Micron pens, Spectrum Noir
Marker and Sepia Prismacolor Pencil for shading.
Tangles: Mooka, Zinger, Zenith

Challenge #235 ~ String Theory-Stripes
3.5" Tile, Black and Sepia microns, graphite for shading
Tangles: Phicops, Flux, Hybrid, and just something
I was playing with after reading one of Rick and
Maria's blogs about one of their trips

Stripes #2
3.5" Tile, Black Micron Pen, Graphite Pencil for
Shading
Tangles: Shattuck, Crescent Moon, and I'm not real
sure what is in the lower corner

And here is the last one for this week.  When I find some more that haven't been posted yet, I will add them as well

Challenge #234 ~ CanT
3.5" Tile, Black Micron pen, Blue Derwent Inktense pencil
Tangles: CanT, Maryhill, Paradox

Ok, that's it for me for this week, so hopefully the weather won't get too chilly (lol...it's been around 80F here for the last week - record setting warmth for us when I really wish it was fall) so that I can keep up with the challenges again.

I will likely spend the day tomorrow checking out all the other wonderful submissions to the challenge this week, so why don't you do the same if you haven't already and check it out at the Diva's Place and come join us one of these weeks. Any and all comments are welcome.  Tangle on!

Diva Challenge #231 ~ "Undulations"

This week has been a rather interesting week for us. The wildfires in the Western US have made the outside air almost intolerable to breathe. While there are no fires *yet* here in Utah that I have heard of, the fires in Idaho, Washington, and Oregon, as well as California all seem to be blowing their smoke our way and it has been getting stuck in the valley where we live. Even the cats don't seem to want to go outside in this stuff. But the National Weather Service keeps telling us that it should be getting better soon. At least lets hope so. So as a consequence of all this horrible air (I have asthma), I have actually been inside most of the week and getting some things done in the house and garage.....I even managed to throw away some boxes of stuff that I don't need! AND I found some more of my beautiful paper stash. I was a stamper and scrapbooker before I discovered Zentangle and have tons of beautiful paper and art supplies. I am just starting to get back in to experimenting with some of my stuff and hope to post some of my experiments soon.  So I took some of this paper and cut it into tiles of various sizes to tangle on because I love the colors.

After reading the challenge this week on the Diva's blogspot, I was ready! Our guest blogger this week, Sharla Hicks, challenged us to use an old favorite undulating C or S curve tangle and work in a series OR find a new one and begin a new series.  I love all of the undulating curve, but never really worked with them much knowingly. But I just really like to use curvy, organic tangles, so I just chose  to let my pen take me where it would. I have been sketching all week, but I have a couple of tiles that I want to post now. I have several more in various stages of being finished and will post those as I finish them.  So here they are and I hope you like them!

3.5" tile, Micron pen Sepia, Black, white chalk
Inktense pencils

This one is a bit bigger, since I wanted to try working a bit bigger because I really like working with these fluid, undulating tangles. I'm not sure if I like this very well, but it turned out ok.

4" tile, Micron pen black, white chalk, graphite
pencil for shading

I hope you can check out all of the wonderful challenge pieces that have been shown this week and if you want to try one yourself, you can find it all at The Diva's blog for inspiration and beautiful pieces.

Thanks for stopping by and I hope to get around to all of the blogs sometime in the next week or so. Have a beautiful day!

Diva Challenge #230 ~ ZenDivaDala (& I'm Late Again)

Yes, it's me and I'm late again as per usual. No excuses, just fingers wouldn't work and then I was having all kinds of problems doing a zendala using a template. Erin Olson of  The Bright Owl  fame has designed a zendala template for us for the challenge this week and provided us with a link to 3 different sizes to print off and play with. Well, I printed off all 3 sizes and decided on the standard tile size thinking that it would be the most comfortable format for me. I honestly did try several times to make something decent with this template, but I wasn't very pleased with either of the ones that I actually finished. But.....I will present them here for your perusal anyway.

This one was my first attempt and I swear that there really were tangles in those spaces that just look like messy lines (oh yes, my hands and fingers were not doing the greatest), but my hubby generously said that he really kinda liked this one. I would love to get him to try some of these because he is a painter of miniature wargaming figures and has probably the steadiest hand I have ever seen. But he really isn't interested :(.  Anyway, here it is.....

Media: 3.5" square paper, Micron Pen Black, and pencil
for shading

I like this second one a bit better, and I think I may actually try again some time in the near future to use a zendala template. My son liked this one much better too. And yes, I always ask them for their opinions since they usually offer me good advice.

Media: 3.5" square, Black and Sepia Micron pens,
Pencil for shading

I can tell I need a lot more practice on using templates.  Here is a zendala that I worked for quite awhile on that was just drawn as I went. I think it probably took me a good 12 hours when all was said and done and I haven't shaded it yet as I was waiting to make copies of it so I could decide whether or not I wanted to color it. I really like the detail in this one and even though it was fussy and meticulous, it was at the same time very relaxing for me to do.

Size:  6 x 6 inches, Micron black pen only

Even though this is not strictly zentangles, it IS a ZIA and I now have ink, so I can make copies and attempt to color it. Wish me luck....LOL

I also have some tiles that I finished up for some of the challenges that I missed, but this post has been going on long enough, I think and I am getting tired. I'll post them next week sometime.

As always, thank you for visiting my blog and any and all comments are always read and very much appreciated. I have been lax, I'm afraid, on getting comments posted on the submissions lately. I have been looking at all of the wonderful work being done and I will try to do better next week on leaving comments. If you want to take a look at all of the submissions to this challenge, just go to the I am the Diva blog (CLICK HERE) and check out all of the artists submissions. Once again, thank you for stopping by!

Diva Challenge # 229 ~ Negative Space (Sandy Hunter)

It's good to be back and able to do a bit of drawing again....feeling much better and learning to take it easy on my hands to be able to do a bit more. This weeks challenge came from 'Guest Diva' Sandy Hunter, CZT, a very accomplished tangler in my opinion. Her challenge was to shift the focus to the negative space in our tile. When I read the challenge, I was watching one of my most favorite operas . . . the 25th Anniversary Celebration of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Phantom of the Opera" from the Royal Albert Hall, so of course that influenced my piece.  I hope you like it as much as I enjoyed tangling it. I am planning to do another one, a bit larger to hang in the house because I liked it so well.

"The Phantom"
Media: 3.5" tile, Black and Sepia Micron, Pencil, White
Gelly Roll pen for highlights
Tangles: Putki, Meringue, Abundies, Tipple and
1 or 2 others that I don't recall

I may play with the shading on the negative space as well, but all in all, I quite like this and hope that you are too.  Thanks for checking out my submission this week and as always, any and all comments are welcomed. I have been watching all the submissions over the past few weeks, but haven't been able to leave comments because of very sore hands, but I will try my best to get comments out this week. I'm so glad to be back playing again!

If you want to play too, then check out all the submissions at the Diva's website (click here) and hope to see you all joining us there!

Diva Challenge #226 ~ Simplicity

This week Laura (the Diva) had a guest blogger while she takes a well deserved rest. Our hostess for this challenge was Katie Crommett, who has challenged us to simplify. In her words

Your first step is to breathe. Reconnect to the vital activity we do all day, keeping us alive, whether or not we’re aware of it. Place your hands on your paper or tile and take a minute or two with your eyes closed. (Really -- go ahead and close them. I'll still be here when you open them.) Now that your eyes are open, I'm going to give you simple directions/tips for the challenge, but take this where you feel you want to go. Keep your tangling space manageable. If you don't have an official Zentangle tile, you can cut a piece of paper into 3.5" x 3.5." Pick two or three tangles, at the maxium. After you draw each tangle, be conscious of when you've reached your point of "enoughness." White space is your friend. Or, even, it's more than a friend. And that's it. Simple.

So here is my somewhat late challenge tile and yes, it is difficult for me to make a "simple" tile.

Simplicity
Tangles used: Abundies, Murmylies
Media: 3.5" square, black micron, and pencil

I have a few more that I have been working on, but I wanted just to get this one up this week. Hopefully, I will be back and joining the challenges again very soon. In the meantime, please take a look at the Diva's website (CLICK HERE) to see what everyone did with this challenge. And, as usual, comments are always appreciated. Thank you :)