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!

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.

Deco 'Dala

This week Erin at The Bright Owl created a Zendala template that reminded her of art deco design.  After I looked at it for a while, I had to agree.  I really do like the art deco style.  While it isn't a style that I would normally decorate with, I enjoy looking at examples and studying it.

I took the idea of art deco and tried to apply it to my Zendala.  I spent hours on Saturday looking at images on my computer trying to find patterns that I could adapt to the challenge.  In the end, I didn't create anything new but the top of the Empire State Building did give me some great ideas for the future. But, like my wanderings on the Internet, I digress.

Deco 'Dala in black and white

For this Zendala, I started in the middle.  I used Hi-C's here.  I really love Hi-C's because here it looks so art deco to me.  Here it looks like a lily, but if you put the pattern in back to back squares, it looks totally different.   It is a wonderful pattern because it looks so different in different places.  I used the arches on the triangle.  Does anyone know the name of this pattern in Zentangle?  It pops up a lot in art deco design.  I opted to keep the semi circle sections the same all across.  I just couldn't divide the space in a way that I liked.  I used a variation of Hibred.  It is kind of a blending of Hibred and Knase.  The black "columns" are a copy from an incredible art deco door I saw.  I wasn't sure that I liked them at first, but they came to grow on me.

After I got this Zendala done, I wanted to play with color a bit.  What I didn't want to do was to draw a second Zendala though.  I was really quite happy with what I had already done so I just kept it.  Taking some advise that Genevieve gave here at Amaryllis Creations, I photocopied the unshaded drawing onto watercolor paper.  I bought some inexpensive pearl watercolors a month ago and got them out to try.  I thought pearl would lend itself to art deco.  Lots of shiny in art deco.  :)

Deco 'Dala with watercolor

I used the silver, gold, blue, green and yellow pearl watercolor and added it right over the top of the photocopy.  The photocopy didn't smear or run with the water nor did it rub off with the brush.  After I finished painting, I let it dry for a few hours.  I noticed  that the black of the photocopy was not as dark as I now had a nice shimmer over the top.  I took my micron this morning, and went back over the lines were and the black popped out again.  I could have left it where it was but I wanted a blacker black.  I guess I ended up drawing the Zendala after all.

I hope you like them and welcome your comments and feedback.

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!

Working with Color

Last month when I was working on an Illuminated Letter, I toyed with the idea of adding a water color wash to the piece to add just a little more to the design.  In the end I decided not to because you can't remove the color once it is there.  I still want to explore the idea some, but there are a few kinks for me to work out.  The most important is: I don't know anything about watercolor painting.  A pretty big hurdle don't you think?

The day that I bought watercolors, I spent an hour or so exploring them.  I wanted to see how the paint worked with the water and the brushes.  In the end, I had a sheet covered with brush strokes and puddles of color.  When I looked at the sheet by itself, it looked like just what it was, a test page, or maybe some of that "abstract" 1980's paintings that were popular in doctor's offices.  I didn't toss the paper though.  I figured that I could always use the back as a scribble spot for pens, practice space or whatever. 



This weekend, I decided to cut the page up into different sizes and tangle over the watercolor and see what happens.  It was fun.  The watercolor paper takes the ink a little differently but not in any obvious way.  The paint on the paper didn't seem to affect the micron at all.  I wondered if the paint would be picked up my the pen and cause a problem but it didn't. 



First try. Watercolor paper, watercolor, micron pen and pencil.

I started with 2 3.5" squares that I cut like a tile for Zentangle.  In the first one (left), I wasn't sure if I wanted to tangle over the paint or not.  Should I let the color stand alone or use it as a way to enhance the design?  In the end I did both.  I kept some patterns on the color, as if the color was the string.  On the left side, I drew a small string to determine the space, but chose not to cover the paint.  I really love how the variance in the paint color gives the tangles depth and light without shading.  After finishing, I went in with a B shading pencil and a blending stump and added in a little shade here and there.  The pencil shaded very nicely over the paint.  I didn't have to press as hard and the shade was more even. (It seemed so anyway.)




Second try

There was more color in the second tile, so there was no choosing where to draw.  This time, I let the colors be the string.  I used the B pencil again for shading and kept the shade to the patterns alone for the most part.  My favorite part of this tile is the way the orange and blue paints mix to create highlights.

Just in doing these two tiles, I already have ideas on how to paint the next time.  I don't think that I need to have a full page of paint.  I think having unpainted spots will be nice.  I also think blending dark colors into lighter ones will be a nice touch.  I have the whole first sheet I want to use first.  I am on a third and larger (5X7) and have found more fun things to try. 

This is a new direction for me and a fun one.  I am excited to see where it grows from here.  In the last few weeks, I have been really productive (for me) and these two tiles were finished really quick.  I'm not sure if it is my excitement for something new, the simplicity of the patterns, or maybe the both, but I surprised myself at how quickly they went.

Thanks for stopping by and taking a look.