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!