Tickle to Tangle IAST #186

I normally add my IAST tiles to my Diva and Made by Joey posts. But this week I decided to be different.

The challenge was based on the theme of Pi.

Here's my tile - an Opus one today - before I added shading, highlights and more intense colour.

Here's the finished tile.

The colours, other than white (white wax pencil and white gel pen) and grey are all Kaiser Mist sprays in a range of colours. 


Here's how I coloured my tile.

Step 1: I painted the Pi string on the tile with plain water and I sprayed several colours onto baking paper.

Step 2: I placed the baking paper onto the tile and rubbed it, focussing on the pre-wet parts of the tile.

Step 3: I carefully lifted the baking paper off. You can see the Pi shape emerging.

Step 4: I took off the excess paint with a paper towel.

Step 5: I Tangled the tile.

Step 6: I intensified some of the Tangles by using a combination of a paint brush dipped into the Mist bottle and a paint brush dipped into a water and Mist mix. That helped to blend the colours. And then added shade and highlights. 

Hours of work which I'm very pleased with - the process and the outcome.


Enjoy

Miss L

Tangle challenges 22 Feb

This week I've been playing around with the new official tangle Waybop. How lucky for me that both the Diva and It's a string thing challenges feature it this week. 

Here's my Diva tile. I've added Hollyhock, Crescent Moon and Flux to Waybop.

Here's my IAST tile for last week. I've added Mooka, some odd heart-shapes and a pathway of B-tweed. I used some new blank post card paper for this which comes in at 300gsm. Very nice to play with. 

I added colour by first wetting a section of tile with water, applied with a broad paint brush. Then I sprayed blue and yellow Mist sprays onto baking paper. I then  placed the paper on my tile and gave it a rub, which produced the solid colour and the fine spray at the same time. 

Finally, here's an A5 sized ZIA that I made the other night. In this one I've linked the Waybops, added Emingle to the centre pieces and then Sandstorm in light grey pen on the outside. Dark blue Derwent water colour pencils for the contrast colour.

This week, as usual, I participated in Made by Joey's challenge. Joey started with Hollibaugh. I added Huggins, Hibred, Hypnotic and Hurakan.

This week's Kitty Pic is a photo I took yesterday of Arthur playing with a new toy. He's such a cutie! And he is as sleek and soft as he looks.

Thanks for visiting and adding your comments to my blog. Your comments give me a lift.

Miss L

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

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

More tangle challenges

Finally found time to complete more Tangle challenges, including the final 12 days of 3Zs series from Zentangle Central.

Made by Joey

Made by Joey this week is another finish my tile challenge, this time featuring Verdigogh. I find this tangle is quite relaxing to draw. I do have to pencil in an outline first otherwise the shape gets out of hand and unbalanced.

IAST

Adele Bruno's It's a String Thing challenge was to use the new tangle Drawings. My attempt at this tangle reminded me of my favourite flower, which is a pink asiatic lily/ lillium so I added pink and yellow water colour pencils to my tile. 

12 days of 3Zs

Here are my tiles for the last few days. 

Where to next?

I think most of the tangle challenges are having a break for a few weeks. That won't stop me drawing though. I'm thinking of going back to basics for a while, using the first Book of Zentangle and the Primer, to refresh my skills and not try to be too clever.

I'm on school holidays for the next 5 weeks. It's summer here and hot. I'm taking a couple of days on my own down the coast, then back here for Moo's 20th birthday and then Christmas.


Thanks for dropping by. Happy and safe holidays to you all.

Miss L

Tangle challenges

First up I want to thank people for dropping by my blog and leaving comments. The comments help me feel connected to other Tanglers and help keep me motivated to draw. I haven't been drawing much lately due to the usual end of year work and family pressures.

I did order some more Zentangle supplies which arrived a couple of weeks ago. Yesterday I started playing around with circular tiles. Later I'll get out the Opus tiles and see what appears on them.

Diva #295 - more fragments

Loved doing this challenge. I used fragments J6 and X7 on my first tile then W2 and W7 on my second with a little Hollibaugh.

Made by Joey

Not so many people do this challenge. Not sure why. Maybe people don't know about it? I highly recommend it. Joey often gets us to finish a tile that she has started. This is a great way to get back into drawing when you are struggling to find your mojo.

Here's my tile. It starts with Pipez and a zigzag string. I've used a circular tile and surrounded it with Pixioze.

It's a string thing

This week's feature tangles of Veridigogh and Cruffle.

12 Days of 3Zs

Finally, The Mother Ship has released triangular tiles and a 12 days of Zentangle Challenge. The link to the challenge is here. I've made my own triangular tiles from 220gsm artists paper.

Thanks for dropping by.

Miss L

Tangle Challenges

The Diva's challenge for this week was to use a leaf as a string. I chose to use a tulip from my front garden.

Here's the reference image and my tile. And a photo of my dog Milo with his best friend Elsa. They were at the Dogs' Day Out at Floriade, which is a big flower festival we have here each year.

I did a tile for Made by Joey as well. The string was a series of circles and the tangles were Dicso, Drogon and Msst.

Finally, I did a tile for It's a String Thing. I found this challenge really hard as both tangles - Ponio and Winflo - seemed suited to borders. I like both tangles but not what I've done with them.

Other drawing

Not much drawing is happening at the moment. I seem to have lost my mojo with regard to Zentangle. Inspiration and the desire to draw have left me. I think once work pressure eases things will get better. 

At work we are in the final term of the year, so marking and reporting deadlines are looming. The kids are getting ratty and teachers are getting tired. And I'm changing schools at the end of the year so motivation for anything school-related is a bit low.

Any tips for getting back into drawing or how to silence that awful critic who sits on your shoulder and says everything you draw is rubbish?

Have a great week.

Miss L

Tangle challenges - 1st October

It's a String Thing

This week's IAST challenge was quite simple - use a basic square border then use W2 plus whatever other tangles we liked.

For my first tile I kept it as a monotangle. 

But one tile was not enough, so I did a second, this time adding Fleavy and Dicso.

Made by Joey

Made by Joey is another finish my tile challenge, using a strip of diva dance flowing through the tile. While I like the way other people use Diva Dance, it doesn't flow for me.

My first tile uses Cadent, Shattuck and Mooka. 

My second uses Flux (my go-to tangle), with Lollywimple (thanks to Ria M for sharing that tangle), CreZendo (careful if you search this for tangle as you may end up at a condom website), and Pufcookie.

Other art

I tried my hand at decoupage this week using Japanese Washi paper. What do you think?

Where I've been creating this week

I have just come back from a few days on my own, staying in the beautiful Blue Mountains. Here's a shot of the Three Sisters, which is a major, major tourist attraction for Sydney, even though the Sisters are 3 hours west of the city centre.

And here's a couple of photos from Govett's Leap, which was only a 15 minute walk from where I stayed in the village of Blackheath. More photos to come.

Ah, the serenity.

Miss L

Tangle challenges

Diva Challenge

The Diva this week asks us to relax. She also asks us to draw with the sole purpose of relaxation and for show. Mmmmm.

I'm putting these images on my blog and I'm hoping for comments. I get a sense of recognition and value from the comments themselves and from the number of comments. I get the most comments when my work is good. But I need to put that aside and just draw. OK.

My first tile is a play with colour. Mist sprays, coloured pencils and lots and lots of Mooka. There's some Diva Dance around the edge of the red blob and 'Nzeppel within the blob. I enjoyed creating it but not sure that I relaxed that much. I was very focussed though.

My second tile is a play with two favourite tangles: Flux and Shattuck. This one uses black and grey and a simple string of wave-like lines. 

Made by Joey

This week's Made by Joey challenge features Buttercup. I combined it with W2 on a colour-misted tile.

It's a String Thing

I struggled with the IAST challenge. It uses Andante, Flux and Cruffles with a curly string. This tile is so bad that I doubt that I'll submit it. It goes on my blog because I like to show failures as well as tiles that I like. This one is a fail.

Postscript to IAST

It's a day later and I've created another tile for this week's IAST challenge. This one is better.

Other drawing

I've spent a bit of time with my travelling tangle kit this week. My page shows me playing around with CreZendo, which is a tangle recently featured on the Square One Facebook page. 

Spray mists

If you looked at my blog last week, you'll see that I've been playing with spray mists. I got the idea from an Eni Oken book about making distressed tiles. While I have downloaded and printed the book, I have gone beyond glancing through it. That was enough for me to get out my old scrapbooking materials or from buying some new colours.

Here's what I've been using.

Have a great week and thanks for dropping by.

Miss L