Tangle challenges

Thanks to all those lovely people who commented on my blog this week. I think that's a record number of comments for me. Comments make my day and inspire me to keep Tangling.

Diva #300

What an amazing, incredible milestone that the Diva has reached with this week's challenge. So many Tanglers around the world owe their persistence and growth with this art form to the Diva's challenges.

I started this blog so that I could participate in the Diva challenges. I learnt about the value of these and other online challenges after spending time drawing with Shelly Beauch CZT. 

Below is the first Diva challenge I posted on my blog, back in September 2015. 

Here are my tiles for challenge #300. It is kind of weird that one of tiles this week features Zenith, as did my first ever challenge tile. I did not even think of looking for this until just now. 

My second tile features Drawings (I like doing this one now that I've go the hang of it) and Florz.

It's a string thing

IAST #181 uses a string based on Zen Bud, and tangles Pozer, Puf and Flukes. 

Made by Joey #149

This week's challenge uses D as the string and starts with some Dicso. I added D'rua, 'Dillo and Golven. 

I'm continuing to use a hand made journal for this challenge. The paper is quite rough and thin, so I have to quite careful how I colour it and shade it. After so many supportive comments about last week's ZIA, I thought I'd include some photos of the process I used to create this week's ZIA.

Create a template using scrap cardboard

Spray on some colour with Kaiser Mists, being careful not to over-wet the page

Shade as I go. I normally shade at the end but that leads me to damage this paper. Not sure why.

New School

I started at my new school this week. I had been at my previous school for 5 years, so starting somewhere new is daunting. Very nervous to begin with. So far it's been a positive experience. I think I'm going to enjoy being here. Students start back next week.

I don't expect to be very active in the Zentangle world for the next few weeks as I get used to new students, new environment and to the general busy-ness of every new school year. Sorry if I don't get to visit and comment on your blogs. 

Cheers and thanks again for your comments and support :)

Miss L

Tangle challenges

This week in Canberra the weather is hot. Really, really hot. I'm talking heat wave conditions with temperatures above 35 degrees every day. It's the sort of heat that gives you sun burn when only in the sun for 10 minutes. 

Luckily here it is a dry heat which is not as hard to deal with as humid heat. 

I'm currently savouring my last week of holidays before returning to work and a new school next week. Getting lots of drawing in and getting ready to refurbish parts of our house. Bathrooms and window furnishings are top of the list. More on that in the weeks to come.

Diva #299 - Drawings

This is a tangle that I tried last week during the 12 days challenge in December. Didn't like it, couldn't get it to work. Then I visited CharKat's entry for this week's challenge and I understood it better. 

Tip for drawing Drawings - start from the outside and work inwards. That gives a more natural flow to the lines. 

Here are my two tiles. The first uses a filler based on Bunzo while the second uses Dex and some Inktense pencils.

Made by Joey

This week's Made by Joey features Cat-kin and the letter C. I've added Curly-Q, Cathedral and Chard. I used a spray mist to colour the page. The mist took ages to dry, even in this heat and weakened the paper. Will have to use less next time. 

IAST #190

(post updated 19 Jan)

I don't always attempt Adele Bruno's challenges. There's only so many hours in the week for drawing!  I couldn't resist this week as it uses Paradox (we should all know this one), Fassett (which I used to use a lot but have forgotten) and Trimonds (a new one for me which I will try and use for often).

It took me a couple of attempts to get a tile that I was happy with. The first one is incomplete and in the bin. 

Here's my second one. Much too busy I think.

And now the tile that I submitted. The phrase 'less is more' comes to mind here.

Both tiles use yellow spray mist. The second also uses white pencil.

Colourful Arukas continued

I started playing with this style of drawing Arukas after reading Eni Oken's blog. Here are my latest (and possibly final) ZIAs in this series.

Thanks for your comments and for dropping by.

Miss L

Tangle challenges and holidays at the beach

This week I have been away on holidays with my family. We had a week at Huskisson on the NSW South Coast. This was my 4th visit in 12 months. It's become a favourite place. My last visit here was for a few days on my own just before Christmas.

Anyway, I didn't do any Zentangle challenges until I got home today.

Diva #298 - Orbs-la-Dee

This is a new tangle for me, although I do use use a something like it which is based on Purk. I decided to use some colour today so I got out my Kaiser Mists.

My first tile uses Orbs-La-Dee with Florz and 'Nzeppel.

For my second tile I used B'twixt and Shattuck.

Made by Joey #147

This week's Made by Joey challenge was to use the letter B and B-twixt. I added Bubbles, Barber Pole, Batik and Bandola. It was fun looking for B tangles and finding ones that I haven't used in ages. I'm still getting to know the recycled paper in this journal and how it reacts to colour, pressure and pencils, shading etc. Gentleness is the key.

Other drawing

I spent hours drawing this week. Recently I signed up to emails from Eni Oken. I admire her use of colour and her bold approach to some well-known tangles.

Here's a ZIA based on Eni's interpretation of Arukas.

Here's a ZIA based on fish.

Catching the big one

Speaking of fish, my son, husband and I went fishing with a fishing guide. Well worth the money. Our guide has us targeting flathead. The biggest flathead I've caught would be about 40cm. On this day that was our smallest.

The Husband caught the first fish (60+ cm), BoyBoy caught the most (5 fish, each over 60cm, and one over 70cm) while I caught the biggest fish. My beauty was 83cm. She was tagged and released. We kept enough fish for two dinners and let the rest go.

It was THE BEST fishing experience we'd ever had. 

Here's some photos.

One happy dog

We took our dog Milo with us for the week. There were off-leash beaches for him to swim in. Here's a photo of one very happy dog. 

Have a great week.

Miss L

Exploring new tangles

Learning new tangles

This week I watched a Zentangle video class by Eni Oken. Eni is a CZT who publishes pretty amazing ebooks. Her books cover 3D tangling, shading, Zen gems and colour. 

Anyway, I attempted to complete a tile as I watched the video. While I kept pausing the video as I drew, I found the process was NOT easy. I ended up with a mess of a tile that I couldn't face shading.

Here's tile. It uses baton, marasu, joki, holibaugh, opus and pufcookie.

I then had another attempt after rewatching the class and taking more time over it. I didn't try to copy but rather used my own interpretation of the tangles and Eni' process. I took out Puf cookie as this tangle rarely works for me and replaced it with poke root. Here's my tile.

The particularly nice thing about Eni's video class is that I got it for free. I only found this out this evening as I was putting links into this post. I got the class for free as thanks for being a 'power supporter' of her site. Yay! Thanks Eni.

Tickled to Tangle

My main source of learning new tangles is through online challenges. I find that looking at lots of people's work is a better way for me to understand a tangle than by just going to the step-outs. 

This week's IAST challenge uses MySwing, zonked and pathe.

Here are my two tiles. In the first MySwing follows the string closely. In the second, MySwing lies under the string.

Have a great week and thanks for dropping by.

Miss L

Daily drawing

Made by Joey challenge #146

This week Joey has combined her finish-my-tangle challenge with colour and the alphabet.

Here's her starting tile using A-dalpha.

Here's what I've done with it. I kept it simple by adding Waves and some colour.

I've chosen to complete these challenges in a special book. I purchased the book while on holiday in Tasmania last year, so it comes with nice memories. The book was hand made in Nepal. I found it in a museum in a fishing town called St Helens. The museum, among other things, celebrates the history of Chinese miners who came to the area in the 1850s to mine for tin.

I've been waiting for the right inspiration/ courage to start using it. Joey's series of alphabet based challenges is perfect. 

I found out while using the book that I'll have to be very gentle as the paper tears easily and doesn't take pressure. The paper is also full of imperfections, making it quite challenging to draw on.


Opus tiles

I've been continuing to play with Opus tiles and revisiting tangles and techniques that I learnt last year. This tile features bunzo-inspired stripes as a filling for squill, large and small Zen Gems, 3-loops-6 and some old favourites  - mooka, printemps, cadents, and bales.

Below my tile is a photo of my desk as I was working on the tile. You can see a copy of the 2016 edition of Tangle Patterns, a book by Eni Oken, a folder of challenge tiles (this is how I store all my tiles), and a book by Shelly Beauchamp, plus all my drawing paraphernalia. 

Thanks for dropping by.

Miss L