Ten tangled houses

A few months ago a customer approached me with the idea of doing a piece of zentangle inspired art for her 10th wedding anniversary in July. She wanted ten houses to represent the ten years they will have been married, and something to represent her family of four. For that we decided on four birds in a tree. She also likes yellow.

Below is the finished art. Well almost. I added a tiny amount more shading after this photo was taken. It's all done with a Sakura Micron 01, mainly black but with a wee bit of green in the tree on the right.

Here's how I went about it. We decided on a general size for the completed art. I settled on 14"x24" with approximately a 1" border.  I drew a few possible roof points in pencil, then added a wash of Payne's Gray acrylic and let it dry.

I added random pencil strings to divide the space further. I use the brush strokes as well as the strings for inspiration/guidelines. I started tangling. Here all the roofs are in place and most of the lower edge is complete. You can see where I've pencilled in an arched window.

Then I started adding color with Derwent water soluable colored pencils. The arched window has been added, as well as several others. There are two chimneys with smoke, and I've indicated the branch where the birds will perch. There were two, paralel, vertical lines in the lower left (just above the Lilypads tangle) that I was a bit concerned about; I didn't know what to do with them. You can see below that they've become a lamp post!

More tangles and details. I've added some gray pen in a few places and some more yellow. Some doors are present as well as some wisps of sky and the birds in their tree.

Finally, all the ink drawing is done...

...and it's time to add shading. I used Prismacolor's Verithin colored pencils which have quite a hard lead. At this size I didn't want any unintentional smudging! Scroll back to the top to see the finished piece, with shading.


Here are a few detail photos:

Roofs and sky (top middle)

A few little rain clouds (top left)

Door with stained glass window (lower left)

Funky lamp post (lower left)

Picket fence and curly tree with four birds (lower right)

For those interested, here's a list of the tangles used (48 if I counted correctly!):
Aura, Bales, Bevia, a brick pattern, Cadent, Caviar, Coaster, Coil, Cornerz, Cubine, Dex, Finery, Florez, Florz, Flukes, Flux, Gingham, Gneiss, Hibred, Hollibaugh, Huggins, Hurly Burly, Knightsbridge, Lilypads, Miranda, Mooka, 'Nzeppel, OoF, Opus, Puf, Purselane, Rain, Rick's Paradox, Sampson, Sanibelle, Shattuck, Skaylz, Soo Flowers, Strircles, Tidings, Tipple, Unyun, Up and Across, Verdigogh, W2, Xyp, Yincut, Zanella.
Plus the usual dots, circles, stripes, spirals, curlicues, and so on.