Calgary mud

In my post for the Diva's challenge this week I mentioned that many of the photos of Calgary, High River, and elsewhere in Alberta looked more like mud than water. I did a follow-up piece in browns and tried to think of flowy, oozy tangles to use. I used the same pre-strung zendala tile that I used for the first (watery) one, and both brown and sepia ink.

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Bunzo, Crescent Moon, C-Scape, Diva Dance,
Kandysnake variation, Künstler, Lamar, Magma, Paisley Boa, Verve

Calgary

In our part of the world - Laura the DivaCZT and I live in the same city - but further west, there has been some terrible flooding recently. Downtown Calgary, Alberta was essentially closed and deserted for a couple of days. A friend with whom I spent a weekend two years ago (giving a Zentangle workshop!) lives near High River; they're 'high and dry' but friends of theirs have probably lost their home. Another friend reported on family members: "They were rescued from their floodwater-encircled apartment building near downtown High River by a front-end loader and a dump truck." Recent clean-up and restart estimates are between five and eight billion dollars.

When I started reading the challenge I thought we were going to have a water theme, but in fact it's an open challenge. I was already thinking water, so I went with that. I used a pre-strung Zendala tile, blue pens and pencils, and tried to think of some water-related tangles. Seeing some of the photos recently, maybe I should have thought 'mud'.

Tangles: Aura, Beadlines, Black Pearlz, Bunzo, C-Scape,
Kandysnake, Lamar, Opus, Tipple,

Calgary and other parts of Alberta aren't the only places with lots of water. Perhaps the most severe are the monsoons in Uttarakhand (a northern Indian state); the rain is the heaviest in nearly 80 years. Besides the Ganges River, climate change is likely to worsen floods on the Nile and the Amazon rivers.

Dot stencil zendalas

A while ago I purchased Geneviève Crabe's trio of dot stencils for starting mandalas. I finally got around to trying them!

I did my first effort on a tile I'd washed with purple. It was lighter on one side, which I decided to enhance rather than try to even out.

Tangles: Black Pearlz, almost Bunzo, Paisley Boa, Providence, Purslane, spirals

I wanted to try a calligraphy pen I bought recently. It has both a large and a small end and makes lovely thick/thin lines, but the black is more like a very dark gray so I needed to go over a lot of it with a black Micron! I also wanted to try the tangle Birds on a Wire (I missed the challenge that week) and thought it would work well in a circle.

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Birds on a Wire variations

One good way to use these stencils, I think, is demonstrated in the short video How to Grow a Mandala. You might not use many actual Tangles, as this works well simply adding lines, dots, squiggles, spirals, etc..

I decided to try using the dots to create a string, and then tangle it. The pencil didn't scan well, so here's a rough pen version of the string I came up with. I expect to use some of the leftover dots as guidelines.

And here's what developed from that. I recently purchased some lovely colors of brush pens at an art store's sale and tried some on this piece.

Tangles: there aren't many really... Tipple, and some spirals and stripes.
Maybe I was still channeling the Diva's challenge not to use actual Tangles!

Is it Zentangle?

The challenge this week from the DivaCZT is an interesting one. She was asked, "...can you do a Zentangle without using existing patterns or tangeleations of them?" Can we? I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure I would even try it.

I had a penciled template (#40) from Erin at the Bright Owl blog. I'd already put a gray wash on it and had an idea of something I might do with it, until I realized it has seven rays, not six. By then I was already thinking within this form and saw bands ending in small triangles, a vaguely Navaho weaving look. I realized that that might be something with no actual Tangles and off I went. I added red, and used gray ink too. Here it is.

Zentangle and chocolate

Need I say more?

Well, I will.

After Christmas I picked up some chocolate finger cookies at half price. Got the last two boxes.

Yum!

I sometimes fight against wanting to keep everything because "it might be useful someday". I didn't want to just throw the box out. Then a lightbulb went on. I fetched a tile and tried it in the box. Ta-da! Whoopeee!!! Tile storage!

I even made file dividers: Border, Full Tile, and so on. All my tiles didn't fit, of course. I'm going to have to eat the other box of cookies. Then maybe I'll need to hunt down more chocolate finger cookies.

Grid (un)locked challenge

The DivaCZT's challenge this week is to use square grids. There are so many tangles based on square grids! This could be the challenge for a few months and there'd still be more to experiment with. I didn't really pursue the seed square idea; that's a wonderful idea I'll keep in mind for later.

I decided to use some of my own square-grid tangles: Moving Day, Ninja Stars, and Screen.
Paradox, one of my all-time favorite tangles, found its way in too. I did something interesting here, an idea I had some time ago but hadn't tried yet.  See the Paradox section in the lower left here? Going from the point in the center, there's a Paradox triangle (sorry, not a square), a Paradox square, and a partial Paradox. In the square section I did Paradox until about halfway in, then, I reversed direction! Cool! I'm going to add this idea to my Paradox tutorial post.

Tangles: Moving Day, Ninja Stars, Paradox, Screen

Then I decided to use the same string and use other square grid tangles. I wanted to try a couple of new tangles, Sindoo and Maelstrom. In the smaller version of Maelstrom here, I got the lines all going the 'wrong' way, which ended up being a really neat variation.  Gingham is another of my tangles.

Tangles: Cheesecloth, Gingham, Maelstrom (and variation), Sindoo

Enthusiastic techno-peasant artist

Hmm. Yes. Well. It seems some of you have been unable to post comments here lately. I've received e-mails. (Thanks.)

A while ago I enabled Google+ Comments, thinking that it would be an easier way for some of you to post comments. Unfortunately, the techno-peasant who does my blog and doesn't read everything through before pressing buttons (that would be yours truly) didn't realize that enabling Google+ would disable the other comment system.

So, back to the old method. I hope. I pressed more buttons.

Another unfortunately: if you commented using Google+ in the past few weeks, your comment - so they tell me - will evaporate. If you feel inclined to post it again I won't mind at all.

By way of apology and thanks for your patience, here are a few recent zentangle-inspired pieces to cheer your eyes and hearts.

"Blooming Rainbow" (c) 2013 Margaret Bremner
Zendala tile mounted on canvas, acrylic paint.
I've posted this piece before, but recently mounted it
and added the series of colored dots.

"Outside the Crazy Kitchen" (c) 2013 Margaret Bremner
Zentangle tile, will be mounted on canvas and painted, later.
Have you ever visited a science center with a 'crazy kitchen'
where everything looks normal, but the floor - in fact the entire room -
is tilted and you have to hang onto railings in order to make your way through the room?
This is outside that kitchen.
(If you've never visited a crazy kitchen, find one! So much fun!)

"Riverbank" (c) 2013 Margaret Bremner
Zentangle tile mounted on canvas, acrylic paint.
I kept trying to center the tile, and it always looked so boring.
Then I realized that the tree had to be OFF-center.
And yes, the 'sky' is a dark gray while the 'earth' is black.
Tangles: Black Pearlz, Coaster, Diva Dance, Emingle, Florez, Flux, Hollibaugh,
Hurly Burly, Lamar, Leaflet, Opus, Sanibelle, Tipple, Wud

Life's Little Ups and Downs

That's what I'm calling a piece of zentangle-inspired artwork (ZIA) I've almost finished using the tangle Schway. It's a fun tangle to draw! I used black ink, colored ink and colored pencils, and other tangles in many of the arrows. There are four tiles, each done individually, and they'll be mounted together on canvas to hang. I wish all of life's little ups and downs were this fun!

Tangles, besides Schway: Black Pearlz, Bunzo, Camelia, Drobbles, Flux,
Knightsbridge, Paizel, Palrevo, Tipple, Tri-dots, and maybe more.

Two zendala dares

Here are two more mandalas using templates from Erin Olsen's weekly Zendala Dares. Both are done on round zendala tiles.

Dare #24

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Going Down, Knase, Pearlz, Verve, Zedbra, Zewm.
The four corners were originally Crescent Moon but it just looked too busy.

Dare #34

Tangles: Bales (sort of), Black Pearlz, Lanie, Pearlz.
In fact, now that I look at it, there aren't many actual tangles!