Tangled up in blu-u-ue

Yes, I'm married to a Bob Dylan fan.

The diva's zentangle challenge this week is to use some color, specifically blue. In my first attempt I used my trusty Sakura micron pen - blue of course. I tried Coil (by Sue Jacobs) and have been enjoying Finery lately. I looked up the name of Marasu, having done it a few times but not knowing what it was called. This tile initially had a bit of Payne's Gray acrylic wash. I finished with some shading in blue pencil.

Blue challenge 1: Betweed, Coil, Finery, Marasu, Pearlz, Tipple, Xyp, checkered Aura, dots

On the second tile I used a heavier paper. I did a string in blue watercolor pencil and brushed all over with water. It was kind of pale, so I added more pencil lines. They were too prominent so I brushed more water on and let it (almost) dry. I drew some lines on the damp paper with an aging black Brush pen. They were rather dark; I'd have to deal with that later. I tangled away.

It wasn't developing particularly well and I made several rescue attempts. I tried one pattern and then another behind Gneiss. Neither worked and I filled it all with black. But then the star-point halves were too dark so I used a metallic blue pen to lighten them. The Finery at the bottom was too much so I got out my envelope of Saved Bits of Failed Art, found some blue snippets and stuck one on between the blue and black Finery. It looked better, but it wasn't enough. I glued on more blue-and-black bits. That was a definite improvement, but the initial wash had left some not-particularly-nice-looking color out to the edge of the paper. I did blue and black shading outside the border to disguise it.

I'm not sure yet what I think of it, but it certainly holds the title of the Strangest Zentangle Tile I've ever created!

Blue challenge 2: Betweed, Finery, Flux variation, Gneiss, Perfs, Pearlz and something I might call Ashbee.