Box begone! (Diva challenge 110)

Woohoo! Permission to go wild! These tiles don't look wild at all, but I did try something I've been thinking about for a while. It's a technique used by colored pencil artists.  A design is impressed into the paper and when you draw over it with colored pencil the design is left white. Like this:

I wondered how that would work with tangles. I had two ideas. The first was to do it as described. The second was to impress the patterns and then go over the whole thing with water-soluable pencil. I expected the water (and color) would sink into the impressions and be darker. Once the patterns were visible I darkened selected areas.

Tangles: Firecracker, Giotto, Paisley Boa, Paradox, Tripoli, Whyz

Tangles: Coaster, Crescent Moon, Gneiss, Hollibaugh, Munchin, Providence

Well, the water idea didn't work very well! This whole concept might be better with color instead of gray, or in a larger size. The more detailed tangles are less successful.

If you want to try this (probably with colored pencils!) here are two methods:

1. Use waxed paper and a hard lead (white) pencil. Put the waxed paper over your drawing paper and draw on the waxed paper, pressing reasonably hard so that you impress the drawing paper. Remove the waxed paper and, lightly at first, color over the designs on your drawing paper using the side of the pencil. The white pencil is just in case you break through the waxed paper. If you're careful you could use an ordinary hard lead pencil, I'd say 4H or harder. This method is what I used for the colored sample above.
2. Use the pointy end of a compass to impress the designs directly into the paper. Depending on your paper, this may tend to tear or shred. Test first. This method is mainly what I used for the tiles above.

Having tried both I can tell you that it's much easier to do curving lines with the pencil and waxed paper than using the compass point. You could also try your thumbnail, an unbent paper clip, a pointy knife...

Compass with pencil and point, Verithin brand white pencil, and
waxed paper with some impressed designs.

And just for fun, INSIDE these boxes are some of the Zentangle tiles I've created over the past two years.