Margaritte

It's Hallowe'en here in North America and I want to show you my costume this year. I think it's one of my best!

That's me, dressed up as René Magritte's "Son of Man" painting. If I tilt the hat a little more I can actually see out of my left eye. Negotiating stairs is tricky though. Here's a picture of the original.

Red Square

I couldn't resist the play on words. This reminds me of the cathedral complex in Moscow, and it is actually a red square.  :D

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Diva Dance, Finery, Flukes,
Lamar, Pearlz, Printemps, Shattuck, Tagh, Zewm

Wheee! Color!

I've been having fun with some watercolor-y additions to my zentangle art. I use colored pencil for extra shading.

I call this one "Ararat Village" because to me it looks like where Noah's family might have settled after the flood, what with the rainbow colors and all. :)

Tangles: Crezn't, Florz, Flux, Knightsbridge,
N'zeppel, Opus, Sindoo, Tagh, Zedbra
"Ararat Village" (c) 2013 Margaret Bremner

In "Block Party" I barely used ink on the buildings. I wanted to keep them soft with just wash and pencil. I used hearts instead of half-circles in Ixorus, and also used white ink and gray inks.

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Dex, Ixorus, Opus, Tipple
"Block Party" (c) 2013 Margaret Bremner

I think I may have overworked this one; there's something that's still not satisfying about it.

Tangles: Afterglo, Black Pearlz, Knase, N'zeppel,
Paisley Boa, and a brick pattern
"Arabian Nights" (c) 2013 Margaret Bremner

At first I thought this might be three rooftops, but it just wasn't saying "roofs" to me. Then I realized it looked vaguely like church windows. Well, that's different! This is another 'leaky pen border' tile.

Tangles: Dex, Diva Dance, Flukes, N'zeppel,
Pearlz, Snail, Tagh, Wud, Zewm, and a brick pattern
"Old Church" (c) 2013 Margaret Bremner

Hearts showed up again in this tile that began as pen-testing and brush-cleaning paper.

Tangles: Bunzo, Diva Dance, Pearlz, Printemps, Puffle, Tipple, Zedbra
"It Takes All Kinds" (c) 2013 Margaret Bremner

Zendala dares 53 and 29

Here is dare #53. I really like the curvy lines of this template and have already prepared another tile to do it again.

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Pearlz, Yew-Dee

I've used the template for dare #29 before. I find it appealing for reasons I can't explain.

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Daggerly, Emingle, Tipple

Stippled mandala

Jiminy. That took a while!

Stippling (similar to pointillism) is time consuming, but what a lovely effect. To learn about the difference, and get some pointers about using stippling, read Linda Farmer's post Going Dotty on tanglepatterns.com.

The Diva's challenge this week is to do a zentangle using stippling. Stippling is not a zentangle technique per se, but tangles can certainly be drawn using stippling rather than line drawing and filling. I decided to use a pre-strung Zendala tile.

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Lamar, Opus, Pearlz (not in a row),
Phuds, Printemps (but it's hardly visible anymore), Tripoli

I used a 01 and a 05 pen, and no pencil shading. It's a little tough to get dark enough darks; I think I need more real black here. I think it would be an interesting effect to use some stippling in amongst regular tangles.  Hmmm...

Printemps spirals

Here's another in the series I seem to be doing using a spiral template. I used all spirally tangles here too: Snaylz, Paushalöv, Lamar and Printemps (which I've decided to use as a title). In a few sections there are even spirals on top of spirals!

I adapted this design from a design I found at freetattoos.org. If you'd like to try using the same template I've posted a PDF here. Note that this is my working template, not tidied up at all! The original design wasn't an exact circle so I traced around a zendala tile, extended some lines, and eliminated a wee section. More info is on the template I've posted. (Interesting how the original design uses something akin to Shattuck in the background.)

You can see previous work using this same template here and here.

CREZN'T - a new tangle!

Tangles: Crezn't, Drupe, Fleurette, Going Down, Sindoo

Here's how to draw the basic Crezn't. The tile above also shows it with the addition of circles. The background can have the thin lines as shown, or you can fill it in black.

It also makes a good roof!

Tangles: Crezn't, Flux, Knightsbridge,
Paisley Boa, Seljuk, Shing, Snail, Tagh

BTW: It's getting harder and harder to keep track of tangles and names. If this pattern has been presented elsewhere, or if the name has been used earlier, please let me know! 

'8s parte dos' challenge

Now that's an odd tangle name!

The challenge from the DivaCZT this week is a UMT (use my tangle) from Jane Eileen. You can find her step-outs here. This is a tangle that I had noticed earlier, and printed the how-to, and never got around to trying. Yaaay for diva challenges!

My first attempt went haywire. That's it at the top left. But, no mistakes right? I kept going and I quite like the 'not-8s-parte-dos' tangle that I ended up with! Try again in another section; this time success. This tangle is closely related to Huggins (small circles and curved lines) and W2 (small squares and straight lines) so I included them in this tile too.

Tangles: 8s-parte dos, Huggins, Tipple, W2

Now that I had the hang of it I thought I'd try leaving some of the small circles white. I think black is better; it looks more as if there's space behind. Then oops! See that section at the lower left? With the interesting curved lines filler? I did that because I curved a line in the wrong direction way back at the beginning. But I like it!

Tangles: 8s-parte dos, Knase, W2

This is a tangle I definitely want to experiment with a little more. Thanks, Jane and Laura!

Houses and mountains

In "Starry Evening" I  used an acrylic wash for the deep blue sky and gold ink on the largest stars. I added all the color after the black-and-white tangling. I decided to do very little ink drawing on the houses and instead use mostly shading. The blue isn't as dark as I had envisioned but I rather like it. It seems as if the stars are brightening the sky! I was thinking of calling it "Starry Night" but I changed that to "Starry Evening"!

Tangles: Demi, Flukes, Flux, Gneiss, Pearlz.
"Starry Evening" (c) 2013 Margaret Bremner

Recently, Tangle Patterns posted string idea #64 which looked a lot like mountains to me. Here is 'Misty Mountain Moon'.

On the suggestion of an art critic who visited a few months ago I've been mounting some of my completed tiles on canvas. Sometimes I simply paint the canvas black all 'round. Sometimes the work asks for something a little more.  Here are these two pieces in their final incarnation, mounted on canvas, with a little more. (Note that both have the same black background. Blame my scanner.)

Borders

Weekly challenge number 138: borders. Somehow, not that interesting, I thought.

I looked around where I was (a small gymnasium for my weekly Artists Workshop gathering) and frankly didn't really see anything that wowed me. Or even interested me much.

So I went on to other art projects. Got out my pens. Opened a 08 black micron and, wonder of wonders, this is a first for me, it had leaked! Ick. But wait. I could wipe off the leaky ink onto a tile and... what might happen? I did that, on two tiles - it was quite leaky - going around the edges. That created interesting, kind-of-messy border possibilities! When it came to do the shading, I also shaded in the border areas.

Tangles: Lamar, Opus, Paisley Boa, Pearlz, Tidings, Tortuca

I recently won a beautiful tile created by Maria Thomas. You can see it here. It's one of my treasures. I love the delicately colored center and must have had that in the back of my mind when I colored this one. So, borders. More interesting than I thought!

Tangles: Knightsbridge Aura, Hibred, Zewm