Earth Day 2015

The earth here in Delaware has started to really wake up and I am so glad!  The leaves are popping out and early flowers have started to bloom.  We even had our first thunderstorm this week.  Spring is really here.  Each year, over at The Diva, Laura posts an Earth Day challenge.  This year is no different.

I tried another zendala this year.  I adapted a mandala pattern from a book I have to make it more zentangle friendly (read opened some space for tangles) and gave it a go.

I am so happy with how it turned out.  For the "water" I used a dip pen and Winsor & Newton blue ink.  I love how the Crest 2 pattern turned out.  I want to fill a whole page with those awesome waves.  Look for this in another design soon.  I used my green Sakura pen for the Garlic Cloves and Diva's Dance. A little ink wash and some white ink fescu finished out the center.

I hope that the weather is nice for you on this Earth Day.  Thanks for stopping by and taking a look.

Pretty in Pink Flowers

October is Breast Cancer Awareness month.  Over at the Diva's challenge, Laura is honoring her Grandmother who had breast cancer.  The challenge is to use pink to honor someone you know that has/had breast cancer.  I did zentangle inspired art to honor Laura's Grandmother, my Godmother, and my friend who all battled breast cancer and for my Aunt who had cancer but is luckily now cancer free.

While it didn't scan really well, the pink here has a little shimmer to it.  I started by watercoloring the background and using a dip pen and india ink, drew my garden over the top.  I used variations of Diva's Dance and Arc flower and the top flower is inspired by Charles Rennie Mackintosh.  I think that someone has already done a step out for a pattern like it but I am not sure.  I was going to shade with my prismacolor markers here but the paint really stopped that from happening.  I'm not sure why, maybe the paint and the alcohol? but as I started, the marker picked up the pink as I went and was not doing nice things.  So, I stopped and made a light wash with the india ink and used a small brush to shade.  The outside shading is the marker.

I like the whimsy of the piece and even the pink (a color that I don't usually embrace).  This is also doing double duty for my inktober drawing for today.  Not too bad for a morning's work.

Thanks for stopping by and for all the wonderful comments each week.  I appreciate them all, I just don't usually have time to go back and comment to everyone individually.  Have a wonderful week!

Yuma tangle

A new month brings a new tangle in the spotlight over at I Am the Diva.  This time the tangle is Yuma by Tina.  I like this tangle but my version needs more practice.  When using this tangle in the past, I have started out not liking the results but by the end, I like it a lot.

For this week's challenge, I decided to use a black zentangle tile.  As I have been using a dip pen lately, and have some white speedball ink, I used those to draw.  The results were mixed.  I have had issues using this ink before.  I haven't figured out if it is me or the ink yet (me I think) but it doesn't want to work well with the nibs that I have used.  Not to worry, I will keep at it.  My results are:

For the tile I tried the original version of the tangle.  I also tried my hand at Onion Skins, another new tangle I haven't tried.  I enjoyed it but it also needs a little work on my end.  I started to "shade" with a white charcoal pencil but changed my mind and just stopped.  To fill in, I used a small brush as the pen wasn't cooperating.  So, this tile, not my best but I learned doing it.

I have used Yuma once before a few weeks back.  I gave it a try when making a pin and experimenting with a new Shrinky Dink film.  I used a black and pink sharpie to draw and used a Sakura gold marker to fill in the seed shapes.  I felt a little lost as I was going but by the end I liked how it came out.

Happy belated Thanksgiving to those who celebrated in Canada.  I am looking forward to Thanksgiving here in the US.  My family will be here to visit and I am excited to see them.

I hope you all have a great week and thanks for stopping by!

Diva Duo

Every week I check in to Laura Harm's site for her weekly Challenge.  I don't always make it to the end of the week with a challenge completed. Often, if I manage to do the challenge, I don't always get it posted here.  Why? Laziness. But this week! This week I got it finished, scanned and am now going to post.  I'm on a roll baby!

So the challenge is to create a duotangle using only the tangles Diva Dance and Phicops.  I was happy to see these two tangles being used as I used the two together this summer and wanted to explore them further.  The idea was added to my idea list, but stayed there until this week.

As you may know, I created the artwork for a coloring app this summer.  You can read more about it here.  After finishing, I wanted to keep going with the coloring idea and made a book, which you can also read about  in the link.  Anyway, one page was a nod to zendalas with half zendalas covering the page. See the bottom of the image on the right.  While I like all the designs here, I really love the bottom one.  So, this was my inspiration for the challenge this week.

Wanting to separate the challenge from the coloring book, I chose to use tan drawing paper as a beginning.  I then used black, brown and a burgundy micron pen for the drawing.  Exploring colored paper is a lot of fun and I really experiment with the idea of white as a highlight.  I have a white chalk pencil that I use and it is really nice.

I redrew the phicops and diva's dance from the coloring book but then I was a little stuck.  I was really happy with what I had so far but the drawing didn't feel finished yet.  And as the challenge only allows for the two tangles, I wasn't sure what to use next or how I wanted to use it.  I opted for diva's dance and making it look different than I had used it before.

Drift

 The new burgundy pen is the outer layer and I like it.  On the brown paper it doesn't look as red as I would think, more of a darker brown.  I opted not to fill in the spaces in there and to me it feels like drift wood.  I used the chalk pencil to add a little highlight there.

I hope that you like this as much as I do.  I am really proud of the shading and highlights on the phicops.  I was thinking of it as a sea creature but then a friend said it looked like a meringue so now I'm conflicted.  :)

Thanks for stopping by today.  Have a great weekend!

Earth Day!

Guess what?!  I finally finished one of the Diva's challenges in time to post it!  Shocking I know, as it has been a long time.  I've been checking in every week, and I've even started some, but I've either not finished them or not finished in time.  So, I tried really hard to get mine completed this week.

Following The Diva's example, I too chose to do a zendala.  I don't have any of the nifty tiles though, so I made my own.  I used my circle cutter and cut out a 4" circle on watercolor paper.  I then traveled over the Erin's site The Bright Owl, and pulled my template from Challenge #52.  Being Earth Day, I wanted a template with circles in it and this one jumped out at me.

4" watercolor paper, micron pens and pencil

I knew that I wanted some blue and green on the zendala, so I decided that I'd use them in the middle.  I picked Diva's Dance in blue to be my "water".  For my "earth" circles, I just kind of made it up.  I wanted to have something that looked like fields from above.  I started with squares and then just filled them with rotating patterns or filled the space with just green.  I'm not sure how I feel about the design as a tangle pattern, but it works here for what I was aiming for.  Now, I needed to do the outer sections.  Again, I wanted to have patterns that felt organic or earthy to me.  I used Beeline because, bees!  The other sections are Zin, mostly because I messed up my Beeline set up.  But hey! There are no mistakes in Zentangle.  I had these lovely triangles and Zin fit in perfectly.  The outer edges I used Verve and Tipple.  I thought that Tipple looked like gravel or a rock pile.  After that, I added a little shading and BOOM! I was done.

I really wasn't sure how it would turn out when I got started, but I am pleased with the final result.  As is often the case, shading helped a lot.  The blue and green felt really flat as I opted to not shade the patterns in the circles.  Just the little shade on the edges where they overlap really popped them out and away from each other.

While I have your attention - if you've made it this far- I wanted to share the tile I did for last week's star theme.  I did get it finished in time, but I did not blog it in time.  So without chatter and more words, here are stars!

Well, a little more.  I used watercolor for the blue, micron pen to draw and a little silver sakura gel pen for the lines.  I wanted to give the impression that the stars are shooting stars.  Not sure it works as zooming but I tried!

Thanks for stopping by!

A New Challenge, A New Tangle

As it is the beginning of the month, it is time for a Use My Tangle challenge over at the Diva's page.  This week the tangle is Dansk from Margaret Bremner.  I cannot belive that I have not seen this one before.  Or if I have, I confess that I don't remember it.  Dansk is a fun and wonderfully easy pattern.  Mine look more like tree rings but there's nothing wrong with that.  I'll have to remember this one when I am looking for nature inspired patterns.

I managed to keep this tile really quite simple.  Somthing that I have been trying to keep in mind.  White space is ok and can even be your friend.  I borrowed the string from tanglepatterns.com.  Nothing was coming to me as I stared at the blank tile and then I remembered that Linda is collecting string ideas so I clicked over and found one.  I also used Diva Dance for the first time.  Well, for the first time in a completed drawing anyway.  I wasn't sure about this at first but I have come to like it.  All the patterns I ended up picking out all remind me of tree rings, at least they do here.  Maybe Spring is trying to work its way into my brain.  I know it's ready for some sunshine.

I also wanted to share with you the photo mat that I complete for the swap over on Facebook.  It was quite a challenge to do but once I got going at it, I was able to get some bits that I am really proud of.  I still need to spray it against smudging (not that there is a lot of pencil on it) and pop it into the mail.  Luck for me the deadline is in March.  I am HORRIBLE about getting stuff into the mail.  Well, I should say horrible when I need to go to the post office.  If I can print postage and mail it from home then I am not so bad.  I tried on a few new tangles on this as well and that was a lot of fun.

I hope you have a great day!