Sepia Challenge

I am late! It was a busy week here.  School is out soon and there are lots of goings on that kept me away from  blogging.  I was able however, to squeeze in the challenge from The Diva.  I like using sepia markers for zentangle drawing.  I think that they can be just as zen as a black micron pen and maybe even more so, as the brown is easy on the eyes.  Well, mine anyway.

Since I'm late, I'll just cut right to the chase.

I have a set of sepia pens as well as the lighter brown one that you see here.  I kept it pretty simple using only the three tangles.  The bottom is my first try at the new tangle Pea-nuckle.  That deserves some more attention. I have the basics down but I tried to crowd it here.  I think I'm in need of a new 01 sepia micron too.  The top is Atorm.  I messed up in my initial grid so I had to do a variation instead.  The middle is Ticking.  I was playing with it a bit and trying to make it look like a bit of a stripe.  I don't think it looks like I hoped but I still like it.

I am looking forward to summer break.  Things will settle down a little, and that will be nice.  I will have to fight the kids for the desk top a bit but as Mom, I get to trump their game playing.  :)

Have a great week!

Color in New Sizes

I am still exploring using watercolor with Zentangle.  I learn more each time and am finding this a lot of fun.  I have tried the standard 3.5" X 3.5" tile, Artist Trading cards, 5X7" and working on a 9X12 page.  Each size can present its own challenges and each brings a new experiment to learn.  The only constant that I find so far is that everything is different each time.

I think that I MIGHT have figured out how much paint is too much though.  On a few ATC that I painted over the weekend, I just dropped the watercolor on the wet card and let the paint flow where it may.  While producing a lovely effect, it left a lot of the watercolor on top of the paper.  Too much paint on the paper will disrupt the ink flow from the Micron pen.  The end of the pen, picks up the paint causing the ink to stop.  Good news is that you can write or wipe it off and the pen works fine again.  I think to finish a spot or two I will have to use a Sharpie Pen to finish.

Sometimes there are places on the ATC cards where the ink from the pen bleeds a bit.  I am not sure if this is how the ink flows on the watercolor paint, or if that the paper was wet changes how it accepts the ink.  The bleeding isn't bad though.  The line is a touch thicker and is darker in those spots.  My main concern with this however, was that the bleeding would pull the ink from my Micron faster than normal.  Then I remembered that I had a few older pens that didn't work as well any longer, they left skips and/or a lighter line, and wondered how they would work on these watercolor places.  I am happy to report that they work great!  It is almost like having a new pen. Plus I don't worry about those pens losing ink too fast.  I had already written them off but was keeping them around because I couldn't bear to part with them.  The old pens now have a home in my ATC kit that I am keeping in my purse.

Color Wash

This is the first ATC that I tried with watercolor.  Again, I just followed the paint as the string. The pattern on the left is a variation of Atorm.  I wanted to let that beautiful blue show through.  When I was photographing it, the light caught the pencil shading that I did and gives the photo a shine that isn't in the original.

I like these small sizes.  This one is done on a Bristol card.  I just bought some watercolor paper sizes that I have painted and will try ink on next.  I am interested to see if the ink will flow differently on the water color paper.

Aliens

Aliens was an experiment with less color on a page.  After I got all the lines drawn, it looked like some alien life forms.

Before I started playing with the ATC size, I started doing a 5X7" size.  I liked how it was going and was moving right along on it but then I got to a section and was stuck.  I couldn't decide if I wanted to add a tangle or not and if I did add one, I couldn'd decided on what pattern to put there. So, I set it aside and waited for an answer.


Last night I was trolling Pinterest for some inspiration and found Braids.   I love the flow of this pattern so much.  The site is in German though, so if you would like to read the great lesson that Simone Bischoff has posted I would recommend it. So, braids... This morning I flipped back to the 5X7" piece to see what new things, if any, it had to say.  I had braids in mind so I thought that I would try it in my trouble spot and see what happened.  I am sooo pleased to say, it worked great!

Color Study

The "steps" there are my try at Planateen that went terribly wrong.  I did it fine on my practice of the pattern, but once I put my pen to the paper, I lost my mind.  Luckily, I think that it came out ok despite my best effort to mess it up.  In this piece, I still used the color as a string, but wasn't as fussy about it.  I also drew on the white paper.  Some bits are more successful than others but on the whole, I like it.

Thanks to all of you for the great feedback that you have been giving me on this journey into color.  It helps so much.

Sepia Zendala

Last year, I did an art exchange with some on-line friends.  It was a lot of fun.  I was just getting into Zentangle and made tiles for each of the people that I sent stuff too.  In return, they sent things that they made back to me.  One sent a knittted hat and beautiful jewlery that she made, another sent the most adorable knitted cupcakes (which my 5 year old promptly claimed for himself.)  Since I enjoyed it so much, I proposed to do it again this year. 

I had four takers interested in doing a "creative swap" with me.  As I only had four takers, I figured that I could really have fun and make some larger zentangle inspired pieces.  My skills are better than they were a year ago (I hope.) and I saw this as a chance to give back something beautiful to friends who had sent me such wonderful things.

Mandalas and Zendalas have really been inspiring to me as of late.  I created one for an auction at my son's school and wanted to keep going.  Once again, I started with mandala design that I traced out on to watercolor paper.  My geometry skills are at a solid F so I have to rely on a shape created by someone else.  Wanting to keep with the Indian feel of the mandala, I chose to draw in sepia.  I used the micron speia pens in a 01, 05 and 1 sizes.  I did most of the drawing with the 01 and used the others for fill in and where I wanted a thicker line.

Mostly done here. Just needs some shading and a few highlights.

It took me about 3 weeks to get it all done.  In that time though, there were days when I didn't work on it at all and other days that I drew most of the day.  I finally got it all finished this morning and I am soo pleased with the finished product.  I am tempted to keep it and hang it on my own wall. 



All shaded

 As I was working, I was afraid that the many different patterns would make it too busy.  Often I want to fill in each section with something different.  Once I started shading though, the different sections started to pop out and pull back into their own spaces giving them enough seperation that I think it works.

The final size is roughly 7" and will be framed in a 12X12 frame with a 8X8" opening.