This week's Diva challenge involved two Tangles that I've never seen or used. I struggled to get these Tangles to talk to each other on my tiles. The images I had in my head just did not want to appear on the page. I kept having to look at the step-outs for both and had to resist looking at what other people created before I finished my own versions of the challenge.
Here's what I came up with.
Jigsaw ZIAs
Over the weekend I finished my first ever A3 ZIA. I'm happy with it, particularly with how I limited myself to two colours - black and brown - and did not try and use every Tangle that I know.
Here's a link to it.
Arthur
Readers of my blog may remember that I have a kitten named Arthur. I haven't put any recent photos up of him because I don't want my blog to be about him or the other animals in our family. But, today he is getting in the way as I type this so maybe it is time to put a new photo of him.
Arthur continues to be happy, cuddly, playful, adorable and full of mischief. He and Luna (the older cat) can chase each other for hours.
What I'm doing this week
- Struggling with the heat. Canberra is having a week of 35 degree + days. Trying to teach teenagers in these conditions is impossible. My students are being pretty good about it all, considering.
- Re-reading Harry Potter. I never get tired of this series and I continue to be surprised at just how much I love the books. I'm in the early chapters of book 6.
- Re-watching The Good Wife on DVD while watching the current series on live TV.
- Watching some trash TV and yelling at it - I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here is on and I am hooked. Who needs to think when it's this hot anyway?
Have a good week.
Miss L
If you've been visiting my blog lately you'll know that I've been experimenting with using jigsaw pieces as strings.
Thanks for all the supportive comments about this. Your comments encourage me to keep exploring. While I don't consider myself to be an artist, I do think I'm getting the hang of this Zentangle art form.
I'm using the jigsaw ZIAs to learn new Tangles (Inapod, Kloorz, Meander and Palvero) and to play with shading in colour.
Here's another simpler jigsaw ZIA where I've played with strings inside the puzzle pieces and kept to a two colour palette.
From Little Things Big Things Grow
From Little Things Big Things Grow is the title of a very well known song in Australia by Paul Kelly. In my blog is applies to my first A3 ZIA.
Here's the initial jigsaw string.
Now for some Tangles.
And some more Tangles.
And now it's done.
Details about using jigsaw pieces for strings and where to find the pieces on the net can be found elsewhere on my blog. Just follow this link.
Send me a comment with a link to your jigsaw ZIA and I'll include it here. Let's see what other creative minds make of this.
Miss L
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
