DuoTangle: Jonqal & Opus

It's often a good idea to place limits on yourself. It encourages creativity. Necessity is the mother of invention and all that. This week's zentangle challenge is to use only two tangles, and only Jonqal and Opus, two very different tangles. I thought it was going to be weird. Wrong again! Their very diffent-ness makes them work well together. Harmony in diversity and all that.

I just had a very busy three days (one at an art show) and was hardly home at all. I was quite happy to get back in the studio and just draw for a while. I was so pleased with my first effort for this challenge that I really went to town with it.  I've done five tiles so far and may do more. Here are three of them.

I didn't put anything else in the stripes or spaces. I thought that would be 

using other tangles so I tried Opus in Jonqal's stripes, and Jonqal stripes 

in Opus' spaces. Later, looking at examples of Opus I realized that 

it would be okay. I remembered that varying the scale can 

have interesting effects. I tried it on a full tile.

I looked up Opus on Zentangle (to see about what's in the spaces) 

and noticed that the ends are droplet shaped, not the tiny circles 

I've been doing. I tried that next. I even did doubles. That shape 

has a lovely elegance to it and think I'll do it from now on.

Thanks again Laura! You're always full of good ideas!

PARCH tangle instructions

Earlier I posted instructions for DIAMOND PANES, a tangle pattern based on a design I found in a Bargello pattern book I got from the library. This is another pattern from the same book. It's a series of two points and one arch. The Bargello name for this one is "Points and Arches' which is how I arrived at PARCH for a name.

I found it helpful to imagine a line across the paper as I was drawing. That helped ensure that the tops or bottoms of the points and arches line up (more or less) and don't get too out of whack as the pattern develops. The stripes can be filled in different ways for variations. Here are two tiles with Parch.

Tangles: Dust Bunny, Finery, Paradox, Parch, Prestwood

Tangles: Florz, Gewgle, Hibred, Parch (x2), Spinners...
and something Jane Monk does that I really like!

Art at Agar's weekend

I spent Saturday at an art show at Agar's Corner about 30 minutes from my home in Saskatoon. I talked to a lot of people, sold some artwork, sold some Zen Mandalas books, and have several more people interested in Zentangle classes! My new display panels and slipcovers served well. Here are a couple of photos.

A painter, a mobile maker, another painter, and a Shaker box maker.

Me, writing price labels, with a lot of Zentangle-inspired art.
I was near a door and in the 30+ degree heat
the occasional breeze was appreciated.

There wasn't a lot of down time (good!) but still, I had a tile and a pen handy. More than once I overheard, "Oh look, she's doing it now!" :-)  Here are the two tiles I completed that afternoon.

Tangles: Assunta, Beelight, Black Pearls, Caviar, Florz,
Flux, Lotus Pods, Miranda, Rain, Striping, Strircles, Yale

I love the little egg that made an appearance in this one!

Tangles: Bales, Caviar, Ogen, Parabola,
Paradox, Prestwood, Rain, Wud

Pinwheels for Peace

A glorious, sunny, autumn day and a big bowl full of garden tomatoes!
Zentangle weekly challenge number 40!
Pinwheels for Peace on International Peace Day, September 21 - imagine whirled peace!
A new favorite tangle: Gewgle from Sandy Steen Bartholomew's book Yoga for Your Brain!
Lovely weather predicted for Saturday's art show, Art at Agar's!
Does it get any better?

Tangles: Beadlines, Beeline, Black Pearls,
Crescent Moon, Gewgle, Ixorus, Ogen, Tipple

Tangles: Chebucto, Combs booboo... no, no... I mean "variation",
Cubine, Finery, Gewgle, Shattuck

All you need is LOVE

Zentangle weekly challenge 39 involves the possibility of a prize! Laura Harms, a.k.a. The Diva, is offering some pocket pages that are just the right size for storing Zentangle tiles. I bought some a while ago from Crop Stop and they're great if you want to keep your tiles in a binder so they can be easily viewed. Type "zentangle" into their search box and you'll see some other supplies too.

I'm rather enamoured with writing in other scripts, like Sanskrit, Arabic and Chinese. For a few months I've had the idea of using a Chinese character as part of the string. The character for 'heart' (xin) is quite simple and this seemed a good opportunity to try it out. Love could also be lots of hearts, so I did another piece for the challenge. I tried to work a spiral into the mix, but maybe it's a bit too much, and there are probably too many different tangles too.

Tangles: Assunta, Black Pearls, Caviar, Florez, Flukes,
Prestwood, Puf, Striping, Tripoli, Zedbra

Tangles: Bateek, Black Pearls, Caviar, Echoism, Finery, Flukes,
Flux, Keenees, Knightsbridge, Lotus Pods, Parabola, Paradox,
Prestwood, Spinners, Striping, Tidings, Tortuca, Triral, Tripoli

Last February I participated in a Valentine themed ATC swap. You can see my contributions here. Valentine's Day is one of my favorite holidays. It has so many things that I love: hearts, chocolate, roses, the color red. I used black and red inks on white paper and liked the effect, so I used it again for this challenge. The ATCs all looked so good together that I had the idea to do a series of nine 'heart' tiles that I could frame as a group. I'm in no hurry. I won't use the first nine that I do. Here's one of the good ones thus far.

Tangles: Caviar, Coaster, Lotus Pods, Munchin,
Paradox, Perfs and dots

“Love gives life to the lifeless. Love lights a flame in the heart that is cold. Love brings hope to the hopeless and gladdens the hearts of the sorrowful. In the world of existence there is indeed no greater power than the power of love.”  Abdu'l-Baha

KRLI-Q tangle instructions

(It's pronounced "curlicue". Just sayin'.)

This is something I occasionally add as a little extra flourish. I think it's rather elegant and pretty. As I was drawing the instructions it occurred to me to try it in multiple in a section of a Zentangle.

I tried filling a tile section with several of them and I think it worked quite well:

Tangles: Beadlines, Combs variation, Crescent Moon,
Hollibaugh, Krli-q, 'Nzeppel, Ogen, Unyun

Here's what I've done with Krli-qs before now.

This is a very early tile!
Tangles: Chartz (sort of), Flux, Krli-q, Msst, Munchin

"Hundred Petalled Lotus" © 2009 Margaret Bremner

--> Tangles: Chartz, Flux, Krli-q, Munchin, Paradox, Shattuck, Sporz, Tipple

Yard sale tiles

Last weekend, while sitting at a yard sale I came up with some new tangles. I posted two of them, Dancet and Yale. This weekend I tangled. Here are three tiles I did while following the shade in the driveway.

Tangles: Assunta, Black Pearls, Chartz, Chebucto (with a couple of booboos),
Knightsbridge, Lotus Pods, Striping, Tipple

Tangles: Combs, Crescent Moon, Keenees,
Lotus Pods, Ogen, Spinners, Tipple, Yale

At one point the shadow from a bamboo screen was falling on the little table I was working on. It struck me as an interesting thing to use for a string so I penciled around the shadows. I needed to use tangles that work as lines or borders rather than filling 'fields'. I really like this one, perhaps because it's rather different from my usual string/tile.

Tangles: Black Pearls, Caviar, Chebucto, Coaster,
Knase, Prestwood, Vega, Xyp

With Zentangle, you never need to waste time!

CHEBUCTO tangle instructions

Halifax from the air (Wikipedia)
The Atlantic Ocean is at the top.

In 1749 King George II of England sent ships and settlers across the Atlantic to Chebucto Bay in Nova Scotia, Canada. The name comes from the Mi'kmaq (first nation) Chebooktook or Jipugtug meaning 'big harbour''. 

Today it's known as Halifax Harbour.

 

Chebucto Coffee Halifax, NS, Canada

While visiting our daughter in Halifax
last May we visited a lovely coffee shop on Chebucto Road a few blocks from her home. Of course, it was called Chebucto Coffee.









In that coffee shop there was a pattern on the wall, a pattern that I really liked and quickly sketched, but I couldn't get things to line up properly. I worked on it a bit, then moved on to other things. Recently I took another shot at it and a lightbulb went on!

Here's how to draw Chebucto, in its simplest form.

Here are some tiles with Chebucto. It's nice with a final line (or two) from point to point on either side of the pattern. Doesn't it go nicely beside Diamond Panes?! The second tile shows several of the variations possible.

Tangles: Bateek, Chebucto, Demi, Diamond Panes, Prestwood, Xyp

Tangles: Beadlines, Black Pearls, Chebucto

YALE tangle instructions

YArd saLE. Yale. Here's another tangle I designed while sitting in the sun last weekend. I think the pattern looks more interesting on an angle, but it's easier to draw if you do it straight. In step four you can add one or more arcs beside the spirals, whatever gives you the space you want between the spirals.

Here is a tile with Yale. I filled the small central circles thinking it might work well beside Lotus Pods.

Tangles: Dancet, Keenees, Lotus Pods, Paradox, Yale, Zedbra

The next has an earlier version of Yale. One of my 'dream tangleations' of Assunta had two spirals out from a small circle so I was working with that idea initially. The Yale tangle is simpler but the effect is still there.

Tangles: Dancet, Lotus Pods, Unyun, Wud, Yale

DANCET tangle instructions

This past weekend I had a yard sale. There are a lot of different names for that; we also say garage sale, although neither yards nor garages are sold. Apparently some in California call it a Meet Swap, which I and a friend initially understood to be a Meat Swap and pictured people arriving with lamb chops and sausages and chicken legs saying, "I'll give you four of these for six of those." :P What do you call it?

I awoke Sunday morning, having dreamed of two interesting tangleations of Assunta. (Obsessed? Who? Me?!?) I decided to draw them while sitting in the glorious late summer sun at the sale. Well, as often happens, something that makes perfect sense in a dream makes no sense whatsoever in the light of day. I tried this and tried that and tried other things, but no luck. The lovely dream tangleations weren't going to happen. And they were so pretty!

BUT... I DID come up with a few other very nice new tangles!!!

Cadent is a lovely tangle with a scroll-like look. It lends itself to lots of variations, some of which you can see here. I sometimes like to use two lines rather than one. Although it looks nothing like Cadent when finished, this new tangle reminds me of Cadent the way it begins and it looks somewhat dance-y. I mixed up the letters of Cadent and came up with Dancet. Here's how to draw it.

Here are two tiles. One shows four variations of Dancet and the second uses Dancet with other tangles. More yard sale tangles coming soon!

Tangles: Coaster, Dancet, Finery, Ninja Stars, Prestwood