Do do do do Feeling Groovy!

It is a new month and a new tangle!  The Diva adds to the challenge on the first Monday of the month to try out a tangle that one of our fellow Zentangle enthusiasts has come up with.  This month the tangle is Groovy by Eden Hunt.  Check out her blog and the pattern here.  Since this tangle was posted to Tangle Patterns, I have admired Groovy but not had a chance to try it out so I was excited to see it as the tangle to use.

I must confess that I did not practice groovy before I started my tile.  I just jumped right in with both feet and let the lines fall where they may.  I am pretty sure that I didn't make groovy quite right but I am looking forward to getting better at it.  I really like this pattern.  The look of it is really quite lovely and it looks far more complex than it really is.

I used on of my watercolored tiles for this challenge.  I am still toying with this idea so I thought I'd work on the challenge of the color along with the challenge of the tangle.  To start, I penciled in my lines of groovy.  Sometimes my wavy lines take on a mind of their own, so I wanted to be able to erase any wild curves.  I think that my being so careful kept my curves too small.  Groovy wants to be a bit bigger than I made it I think.  There needs to be more space.  I don't dislike my attempt, but I did learn what I need to do differently next time.  I also learned a neat thing.  If I lightly erase over the watercolor, some of the color rubs off giving the color added variation.

Again, I used the color as the string.  This was a little of a challenge in a few spots as the color fades out and I sometimes stopped the pen before I should.  Stiricles makes an appearance in this tile.  Last week wasn't enough I guess.  As I wanted the color to be visible, I didn't black out where I normally would but used lines instead.  I like how it came out.

Thanks to Eden for a great tangle.  I really look forward to using Groovy in the future.  Thanks Laura for all you do for this challenge!

Duo Tangle Challenge

I love the challenge of a limited tangle choice.  Sometimes I get so overwhelmed with the many tangles there are and/or with the idea of finding the "right" tangle pattern, that I end up sitting and thinking instead of just drawing. In a duo tangle challenge, the choice of pattern is decided and I can turn my mind on to variations, string and shading.  This week, the challenge from The Diva is to use only Hybrid and Strircles, two official Zentangle patterns.  I recently rediscovered Hybrid and have been using it again after a break.  Strircles is a tangle that I have used before but not a lot.  Using these two for the challenge has refreshed them for me and I am sure I will have them back in my work again.

At first, I wanted to see if I could find a way to combine the two patterns into one but I gave up on that idea. After looking at some of the tiles in this challenge I'm glad I did.  There are a lot of you out there that were much more successful at combining them than I would have been.  I did try to bring a little of Strircles to Hybrid in the lower right side.  I don't know that Hybrid echos Strircles here, but I do like the black on white coupled with the white on black.  This is the first time that I put highlights on the "bubbles" in Strircles.  It's funny, I have never seen the circles as bubbles before.  More of just a way to vary the black and white in the pattern.  This is why I love the weekly challenge, it forces me to look at patterns in a whole new way.

I really like this tile.  It has been a while since I finished a challenge piece and thought to myself "Hey! That's some good work you did there!"  Thanks to Laura for this, and all of the challenges.  Thanks to you visitors from dropping by and being an inspiration to me.

Time Lord Tangle

Another blog post, another gift!  This, as the title may imply is a Dr. Who inspired tangle.  I have a very dear friend that is a big Dr. Who fan.  She has turned me into a fan as well.  I'm not as versed on the lore as she is so I was walking a bit in the dark with this one.  I kept checking my self though so I hope that I didn't get anything wrong.

The symbol in the middle is the Gallifreyan symbol for either Gallifrey or the symbol for the head of the Time Lords.  (For anyone who doesn't know, Gallifrey is the planet that Dr. Who comes from.)  I found several different notes on the internet as to what it is exactly.

The language of the Time Lord is most often shown as being circular.  It is quite steampunk looking and really cool.  Because of the circular language, I decided to use a lot of circular patterns as well as other patterns that look "spacey".
After I got Rain done and took a look from a far I was so excited that it reminded me of bow ties.  The angle that I made the triangles look like bows to me which is great because the current Dr. often wears a bow tie. (Bow Ties are cool!)

I hid a TARDIS (Dr.Who's ship) up in the top with Strircles. You can't have the Dr. without his TARDIS so I wanted it to be there but to blend in as it were.  :)

Over on the right side, I wanted to further involve the TARDIS but from the inside.  In many versions of the TARDIS, there are the great panels on the sides of the wall that have circles in them.  So I created a pattern to call this to mind. My 11 year old says that it reminds him of the Daleks body (the villains in many an episode).  I confess that it does a bit so I guess this pattern will have to pull double duty.
To frame the finished piece, it is 10X10 (I think.) I picked out some scrapbook paper in "TARDIS Blue", mounted the drawing, and then put it all in a 12X12 frame. 


I am happy to report that Kara got it all in one piece and is quite happy with it as well.