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Wednesday 17 February 2016

Diva #255 - Ghosts of Tangles Past

I love, love, love this week's Diva challenge. The Diva has challenged us to revisit early tiles and then create a new one with same Tangles, same string, same design but a more experienced person holding the pen.

I have not looked at my early work for a long time. It was a pleasant trip down memory lane. 

My Zentangle Journey started on 18th October 2014 with the arrival of my first Zentangle book - the book Pattern Play by Cris Letourneau and Sonya Yencer . I wrote about this book not long after I started this blog.

My first months of Tangling were in a visual diary. It wasn't until a few months later that I started using offical Zentangle tiles. Before I spent more money on this art form I felt that I needed to wait until I was more confident that this was not going to be yet another passing interest  (I have collected quite a few of those over the years - hello scrapbooking and hello Djembe drumming).

I remember opening that first Zentangle book and being gobsmacked by the images. I wanted to be able to create designs just like those in the book.

Here's my first ever tile, dutifully dated, titled and admired. Then there's the tile I created this evening.



What a difference a year (and a bit) makes. My enjoyment of this art form increases all the time.

An unexpected addition to my enjoyment of this art form comes from blogging about it. Blogging taps into my life long love of writing, my new found ability to draw and my new found connection to an online community.

Thank you Amazon.com for recommending the Pattern Play book when I purchased other drawing books.


ZIA jigsaw strings

I've been spending lots of time creating more ZIAs with jigsaw pieces. Below is just one. The shoe lace idea comes from a tile in Beckah Krahula's 500 Tangled Artworks.





Watch this space for progress pictures of my new A3 jigsaw ZIA. 

Happy Tangling


Miss L

A bit more information

Thanks so, so much for the positive feedback that I've been getting about my jigsaw ZIAs. Your feedback encourages me to keep experimenting and pushing my boundaries. 

I visit the blogs of the people who comment and I feel flattered that these people who draw so well think that my work is interesting. 

A couple of people have asked me about my jigsaw ZIAs and how I draw the jigsaw pieces.

I have copied several jigsaw templates from the web into a word document. I play around with the number of pieces and the overall size. I then lighten the image so that it is really faint. Then I print it onto good quality paper, usually an artist's acrylic with 300gsm. 

The faint lines allow me to choose when to darken the pieces or leave them indistinct.

For the ZIA above, I made the lines especially faint. You can see them - just - in the white space. The 3 pieces for the corner I printed onto normal A4 paper, cut them out and traced them where I wanted to place them.

I found plenty of jigsaw templates online. My preference has been to use fairly simple pieces as the point is the Tangle not the complexity of the jigsaw elements.

I hope this helps. Send me a link to your jigsaw ZIA and I'll work out a way to incorporate the links into my blog. Maybe I'll set up a jigsaw ZIA gallery with links to your work and new examples of mine? The possibilities are endless. 

Cheers

Miss L





11 comments:

Wendy said...

I love the changes you made to the first tile--so much more expansive! And your jigsaw idea is really fun.

The Yorkshire Tortoise said...

Wow look at the difference in your style. The design is fantastic and as for the jigsaw ZIA that is awesome.

Shelly Beauch said...

What a treat to see how your creativity has blossomed and flourished! I want to play with that super jigsaw ZIA!

Anne's tangle blog said...

Yes, it's good to walk memory lane from time to time. I loved to see how you have grown.

Anonymous said...

Well the first one looks pretty good to me but the new version - wow, so much more confident and so much imagination and innovation. Excellent. Do you draw the jigsaw pieces freehand or do you have a template?

Simone Sass said...

Wow your new tile is so beautiful and individual, I love the way you recreated the first tangle it shows so much individual style with the variations.

DEMen said...

Your new tile is bursting with style and personality! Well done.

Anonymous said...

So neat to see the evolution of style! Love your jigsaw piece too!

Joanne Faherty said...

I love your new tile the holibaugh edges make it look like trees and the n'zepple in between looks great. I'm loving this challenge.

Annette P.-L. said...

It´s so interesting to see everyone´s development! Your current tile has more flow and movement! I feel more relaxation! Wonderful!

LezliB said...

Your new tile is beautifully organic. Love the changes you made and your style is definitely evolving. This challenge has been so eye-opening for all of us and I think I may do this once in awhile so I can actually see how I have changed. Isn't it fun? Great work on all of your pieces!