Friday, June 28, 2019

Spliced tiles

I often enjoy working on spliced tiles. It's both fun and challenging. With the three colors of zentangle tiles you have three possible combinations.
One of the first places I saw this idea was on Day 9 of the 12 Days of Zentangle 2017. The video is on YouTube here.

You can create a spliced tile...

...with a knife:
  1. Place one tile on top of another, both facing up (or down). Take care that they don't shift.
  2. Giving yourself an interesting dividing line, use an X-Acto knife or scalpel to slice them in half. Pencil a light line on the top tile first if you want a little more direction. 
  3. Swap halves.
  4. Tape the halves together at the back.
...with scissors:
  1. Cut a tile in half (with an interesting dividing line, of course).
  2. Place one half on your second tile.
  3. Lightly trace the dividing line in pencil.
  4. Carefully cut the second tile in half.
  5. Swap halves.
  6. Tape the halves together at the back.
Here's a black and tan one. I used colored pencils (white and various browns) to create a gentle transformation from one color to the other. Several of the central 'seeds' are gold ink.
Tangle: All Stars
More black and tan, this time it became houses. I used both black and brown inks, as well as white.

Here's a black and white spliced tile. Part of the moon is metal leaf, part metallic ink.

You can bring even more color into the mix if you want! In the tile below I also used metallic inks.
You can see more of this type of work in a post from a while ago about notanicals, a hybrid name I invented to combine notan and botanical imagery.

Oh, those three blank tiles at the top of this post? Here's what became of them:
Tangles:
Black and white tile: Crusade and one Dex
White and tan tile: Bosch and Lamar
Tan and black tile: Molly's Sprouts (that's what I call it!)
The black/white tile is in the same position as above. There is a hint of colored pencil, and clear Glaze ink in the center of Dex for more depth.
The white/tan tile is turned 90 degrees counterclockwise from the image at the top. I decided to ignore the color division and do the tangles across both colors.
The black/tan tile is upside down from the tile above. I tangled in black, white, and gold inks and I used brown colored pencil as well as the gray graphite.

5 comments:

  1. I love what you do with your split tiles. My favourites from this hoard - the black and white leaf piece - it makes me think of a few moments of warmth in the middle of a winter's day. And the Crusade tile - that tangle is mind-bending at the best of time but you've rocked it!

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    1. Thank you! It took me a loooong time to master Crusade. It seemed so very complicated. I realize now that it’s not so much. 😊

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  3. This is wonderful and lovely! I especially like the houses and the leaves, so pretty! :-)

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  4. LOVE IT! thanks for sharing, jane

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