All Crescent Moon

This week's Zentangle challenge from the Diva is to use only the tangle Crescent Moon. It's a classic, well-known tangle and one of my "go-to"s. I love these monotangle challenges because they make me think more and not simply do the pattern the same way I always do it. I just wonder why the concept doesn't stick, and I go back to doing it the same way I always do it.  :P

I went to town with this one. Every tile I did gave me more ideas so I did another one. You may be hard pressed to identify Crescent Moon in some cases, but I didn't cheat, it's all Crescent Moon (well, except for a tiny bit of Tipple in the third one).

The little 'petals' in the top middle gave me the idea
for the larger ones at the top right.

I tried a different shaped 'moon' (lower left), and different fills
for the 'moons' (lower right, upper left). I like the tunnel-looking one!

See that interesting bit at the mid-right with the small dots?
It's the result of trying to change something I started and didn't like.
I think this ended up too cluttered.

I did no string here, just three huge 'moons'. I wanted to try the idea of
a fractal tangle, where I started very large and used the same tangle inside
parts of the larger one, then smaller again inside parts of the second one...
Quite interesting! I'd done the white highlights in the 'moons' on the left and right, so I did a
huge highlight in the upper right and filled it with Crescent Moon.

(A fractal tangle...? Hmmm... there's an idea for another monotangle challenge!)

Some tiles for Monday

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Flez, Flux, Jalousie, Phuds, and Knightsbridge Auras

Tangles: Betweed, Dansk, Miranda, Tipple, Tri-dots

Onion domes

Ever since I first saw a picture of the St. Basil's Cathedral complex in Moscow I've loved onion domes. I've been doing a lot of tile-sized ZIAs with houses and buildings that, for lack of a better idea, I've been calling 'house tiles'. Occasionally I'm incorporating color and other types of ink. Lately I've had a run of onion-domed buildings (such fun!). Here are some of them.

TRIO
Tangles: Ambler, Copada, one Croon, Tortuca,
stripes with highlights, and a diamondy thing
©Margaret Bremner, 2012

FESTIVAL
Tangles: Beadlines, Copada, Paradox, Posh, stripes with highlights,
and something with a lot of cheerios
©Margaret Bremner, 2012

MOONSTRUCK
Tangles: Black Pearlz, Croon, Jalousie, Screen, Tipple, stripes with highlights,
elements of Ambler, Emingle and Tortuca.
©Margaret Bremner, 2012

BRIGHT EVENING
Tangles: Ambler variation, Black Pearlz (I do love those), Copada, Florz,
Knightsbridge Aura, stripes with highlights, and something with
a lot of circles.
©Margaret Bremner, 2012

COPADA, a new tangle

ZIA "Early Morning"
Tangles: Copada, Demi, Knightsbridge Aura and more
©Margaret Bremner, 2012

Copada runs along the top of this ZIA tile. I find it creates a lovely echo of the onion domes.

I've collected quite a number of possible tangle names from those strange 'words' that proved I wasn't a robot, before the 'words' became seriously peculiar. From that list I had half a dozen possible names for this pattern, so I polled my household. Here's Copada. Have fun!

Zendala dare #6

Erin, the Bright Owl, has another dare this week. You can see the dare, templates, and her tangled offering here. I agree with her that a five-pointed thing on a square just doesn't seem to fit properly, so I used a blank Zendala tile. While I was tracing the template I suddenly wanted to add another star at the back, making it even more circular.

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Bilt, Jonqal, Lotus Pods, Parabola

First, I put down an orange wash with water-soluable pencils. This Tiepolo paper is wonderful to use with water! It's a printmaking paper so it expects to get wet and dry at least once and it dries beautifully flat. I think I'll be doing this again. I used mainly an orange pen, but also red, brown and yellow. I'll admit, that's my least favorite combination of colors. Shading was done with two orange pencils.

Thanks Erin!

Monday tiles - partial biggify

Sometimes the string creates sort of a band through the tile. I had the idea recently to 'biggify' tangles through that band, and do the same tangles small in the other sections. My first attempt was not very successful. The big Rosé in the middle is too weird-looking and Jonqal doesn't have enough difference between big and small.

Tangles: Jonqal, Knightsbridge, Rosé

Second attempt was more successful, but still not quite what I had in mind. The 'big' section is more of a triangle or a mountain, which is fine. I think Tipple doesn't work very well for this idea because there are necessarily large and small elements in the pattern.

Tangles: Flux, Knightsbridge, Munchin, Tipple, Tripoli

Woohoo! Success! Well, pretty much. Let the bells ring out and the banners fly!

Tangles: Knightsbridge, Paradox, Tripoli

Thought I should have another go at it. This time I did the larger versions of the tangle on the 'outside' and the small version in mid-section. One thing I like here is that the band I notice first is all Finery, not either the smaller or larger tangles.

Tangles: Finery, Shattuck, Spinners

How to grow a mandala

This lovely, short video shows one way to draw a mandala using a series of simple shapes. I find the tone is very akin to that of Zentangle: go with the flow, don't agonize about it, there are no mistakes, see what happens.




I tried this using a standard 9 cm. (3.5") Zentangle tile and added some shading. Of course, you could add color. Or do it in colored ink. Or not bother with the shading (although it adds a lot!). Or... all kinds of things!

Zendala in browns

I was saving this for a post about Zendalas in color, but the Diva's challenge this week is to use sepia (or brown) and I like this piece! So, darn it all, I'll just have to do more zentangle-inspired mandalas. Aw shucks.

I used mainly a brown pen on this one, but sepia for a few areas I wanted darker. Shading is with three different brown colored pencils.

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Chebucto, Fife, Mi2, Rounding

Monday tiles - in color

I used the standard Zentangle tile for these, but because I used color they're really ZIAs (zentangle-inspired art), not zentangles. Doing zentangle-inspired art in a single color like these pieces is really quite easy. Simply choose a colored pen instead of black, and tangle away. The challenge may be to find a pencil that matches your ink color so you can do the shading!

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Posh, Tipple, Tortuca, Unyun, Wud and elements of Munchin

This brown one began as a possible 'house tile' but it went elsewhere. You can still see the roof lines.

Tangles: Emingle, Jalousie, Shattuck, Shing, Spinners,
Tagh, Tipple, Tortuca, Wud, elements of Tripoli

Green is nice. Unfortunately I couldn't find a pencil that was a good match to do the shading. And many of the ribbons didn't go over or under where they "should" have. But there are no mistakes, right?

Tangles: Assunta, Black Pearlz, Blake, Crossview (intended), Fife,
Rouche, Tipple, stripes with highlights

SHING - a new tangle

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Huggins, Mi2, Shing, Zedbra

 
Ah spring, when people's fancy turns to thoughts of... roofing? This tangle was inspired when I noticed some shingles!

Tangles: Knightsbridge Aura, Phuds, Shing, Socc, Tipple and more

Bright Owl's dare #4

Erin, the Bright Owl, posts a zentangle-inspired mandala dare every Friday here. She provides the options of doing the dare on a standard tile, a zendala tile, or full page. This one was supposed to have a 'Mexico' feel to it, but I didn't get there (phooey).

Here it is on a standard 3.5" tile. I felt compelled to make it more circular. I wanted to try it on a zendala tile too, but I can see that I'm not going to have the time.

Tangles: O-bob, Prestwood, Stoic, Tripoli and more

Mandalas by Jung's patients

This short news item from CNN explains a little bit about mandalas from Carl Jung's psychological perspective.



If you haven't already, try out Zentangle's new round paper tiles. You can see some that I've done here and here.

Movie Gran

I mean... Groovy man!

The Diva's Zentangle challenge this week is to use the tangle Groovy from Eden Hunt. This is  a beautiful, wavy pattern and I can't believe I didn't know about it before! In my square tile I combined it with another tangle I discovered this week, Rouche from Rose Brown, also lovely.

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Crescent Moon, Groovy, Rouche, elements of Tripoli

I wanted to use a round tile. I also wondered if the Rounding technique might give Groovy more of the groove-iness that Eden mentions in her explanation of the origin of the tangle. Rounding gives it quite a different look, and I don't think it really did what I hoped it might, but it's interesting nonetheless. This is almost a monotangle; the only thing non-Groovy is the hints of Finery in the center.

Tangles: Groovy and elements of Finery

A few more 'house tiles'

I've really been taken with this idea of tiny house-scapes on Zentangle tiles. Here are a few more.

Tangles: Caviar, Flux, Hibred, Mi2, Paradox, Sanibelle, Tagh
and a Knightsbridge Aura

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Krli-q, Sanibelle, Shades,
a Tagh variation and a Knightsbridge sort-of-Aura

Tangles: Caviar, Drupe, Flux, Hurly Burly, Opus, Phuds,
Sanibelle, Tagh, Tortuca, Wud

Hibred and Strircles

I'm getting in under the wire for this week's challenge from the Diva: use only the tangles Hibred and Strircles. I really like these duotangle and monotangle challenges because they make me think a little more and be a little more creative. Of course, as I'm doing one of these I start getting all sorts of other ideas! Here's my offering.

360 degree Escher

I've always enjoyed the work of Dutch artist M. C. Escher.  Here is his work "Relativity".

Someone has taken this piece and created a 360 degree video. Have fun traveling around it!

 http://www.360cities.net/image/tribute-to-escher


Tribute to Escher in Barcelona