Illuminated Letter

I have finally finished a piece that I have been working on for several weeks.  Some friends of ours are getting married next weekend and I made a piece for them.  Usually I would get a couple something from their registry but these two don't want anything.  They have been together for a while and have bought or collected most of what a couple starting out would want.  Something they do have is a new home.  The house is really beautiful and has lots of wall space.  Naturally, I thought that I would make them something to hang on them!

I really admire the work done at the Zentangle Illuminated Letters master class that was held in Rhode Island.  What incredible art was made there.  Taking the idea, I decided to try my hand at making one of my own. 

I am not a calligrapher nor is my handwriting very good, so I chose a font that I liked and traced out my letter L.  From there I divided the space and kind of made it up as I went along.  I am quite pleased with the final product.

I toyed with the idea of adding some light washes of color with watercolor paint but I think I need to learn more and practice before I add to this work.  It is hard to see the shading here but the patterns really popped out once the shade was added.  This was done on 12"X18" watercolor paper using micron pens, pencil, and the Sakura Pen-touch gold marker.  I was going to use my gold leafing pen but it was not working well.  I think the pen-touch did a great job.  It covered really well and the shine is nice.

Curiosities

I just wanted to do a quick post on where the pattern Curio came from.  Here!

It's down there in the bottom right.  I have an online friend who lives in Ogden, UT that has opened a new little shop.  She asked people to send her postcards as she wants to post them all around her shop.  I had a 5X7" piece of watercolor paper around so I decided to make her a tangle.  I started with the word and went from there.  You can't see it in the photo here, but Curiosities has glitter on the letters.  I used the glitter pen from Sakura.  This is the first time I used HighC's and am really excited what happens to it when you put it in squares.  When I do it right it really looks art nouveau-ish.  :)

Anyway, this was really fun to do.  I might try some Zentangle inspired art  with words in the future.

New Tangle: Curio

Hey Look! I found another new pattern.  I was working on a 5X7 ZIA piece to send to a friend and decided to try something out that has been rolling around in my head.  The result is this: Curio.  So named for a business that this friend is about to open.  

I think there are quite a few possibilities here to vary the pattern up a bit.  I tried to think up a few in the larger example as well as play with the shading.  I still haven't finished the piece I was working on.  I decided I needed to stop and work out this pattern more.  I'm off to complete the ZIA but wanted to publish this before I let too much time get by me.  

I hope that you like it.