Visual Haiku

A while ago I took an online class called Visual Haiku with Serena Barton (through TangleU). Serena uses traditional haiku poetry as inspiration for her non-subjective artwork and she took us through her process.

I was looking forward to bringing in a lot of mixed media elements and trying some techniques I don't often use.

Here is my completed piece, which looks nothing like Serena's work, and was not inspired by a particular haiku! 🙄

ALMOST CLOSE ENOUGH TO TOUCH
8" square • acrylic mixed media

The moon is a blob of dried paint that I'd peeled from the lid of a paint jar and saved. Why? Apparently for this piece! It rises off the surface a centimeter or so. I had fun smearing paint with a palette knife, spattering gold stars with a toothbrush, and collaging bits of my own old artwork onto the hills. I used stencils to create some patterns, then mostly covered them. What do you think?

Three more Book pages

Here are a few more pages from my Book - not a journal, not a sketchbook, but full of wonderful things!

Years ago I did a whole series of work using leaf prints. I wanted to include that idea in my Book. Another thing I've occasionally enjoyed is micrography so I found a quotation I like that mentions leaves.

As a tea lover from 'way back, I decided to do a page of tea labels. I've added a couple of small things since I took this photo.

On this page I used a broken copper bracelet as a template for the spirals. The corners are cut off the page showing the black edge from the following page.

More space junk

More art space junk becomes more interesting.
I received some dark blue tissue paper recently and wondered if it was the kind that would bleed color onto the paper. It wasn't. So I just glued some pieces into my Book. At this point I thought it would become images of water, waves, surf.

Nope. Birds, an airplane, a butterfly: wings things. I glued on a few items and did a little tangling. On the left are things I hoped to add.

More gluing and tangling.

The end result.

Collaged elements: tissue paper, hummingbird, air mail sticker, butterfly,
white dove, Persian tea label with bird, Barcelona sun mosaic chocolate wrapper. 

Knightsbridge and magic squares

I began this page in my Book with the grid of colored squares, a collage of leftover bits from other work.

I thought it might become another "space junk" page, but once that grid was in place it seemed to want a square grid all over. I obliged.

I decided to include a magic square of nine with the numbers are represented by images. That's at the bottom center. Some years ago I did an acrylic painting with this theme (see it next in this post). On this page in my Book I also included a square with the digits.

I'm not happy with streakiness of the grays in the lower right but I wanted to try a gradation where the same gray is the dark gray in the light portion, and the light gray in the dark portion.

MAGIC SQUARE OF NINE PAINTING
During my long mandala phase, I did this acrylic painting of a magic square of nine, except instead of simply writing a number in each square I devised an image to represent the number. The centers of the half-circles at the perimeter are filigree metal pieces.

"Magic Square of Nine" - Sold
24" (60 cms.) square; acrylic mixed media

WHAT IS A MAGIC SQUARE?
A magic square is a grid of numbers such that each horizontal, vertical, and diagonal row results in the same sum. A magic square of nine is one of the simplest, comprising only nine squares. The sum of each row is 15.

There are more complicated magic squares, larger, with more squares. Here's a magic square of four and the rows add to 34. You can learn more about magic squares on wikipedia here.

Space junk in my Book

Space junk. Junk from my art space. This is how the page began.

All collage except the yellow stripe which is Zig marker. Left to right:
Two strips from the edge of another piece.
Part of a flower from a piece I didn't finish.
A strip of holographic ribbon.
A watercolor-y experiment on terraskin.

I had divided the page vertically, and filled some spaces, then realized that the left side was too empty. I hunted down more space junk: a couple of squares from a grid of irises that I never completed.

No more collage but more tangling, and it's coming along nicely.

Here's the finished page. I'm rather pleased with it, considering I had no idea how it might develop.

Main tangles, left to right: Pixioze, Knightsbridge, some flower thing I made up,
d'Uni, Knightsbridge again (in color, and with dots),
Blooming Butter/Crescent Moon/Morse/Tipple/Tridots,
4Fun variation, Tipple, MySwing

How "Treeline" came to be

By now you probably know that I love depicting houses and trees.

Interjection:  About three years ago I had done a series of tiles of the seven chakras. Each of the seven lotus mandalas is on a white Zentangle tile; I used a color wash, pen and ink, colored pencil, and tiny gems. I've searched the blog, and apparently I didn't post a picture of it back then, so before I continue with the trees, here is Chakras.

I had done two or three trees with metal foil in the background. It struck me that the long format would work well for a series of trees, but horizontal this time. It's 6"x36" and I would need nine tiles, so I did more. Here they are, loose on the table.

All have metal foil; one has holographic strips; one has silver sparkles. I decided to continue with the 'squares' theme around the sides. I alternated various acrylic metallics.

Here is Treeline, finished:

Stacked Bijou challenge

This week the Diva's guest challenger, CZT Jane Reiter, proposes something quite out of the ordinary! She calls it a "stacked bijou challenge" and you can get the details here on the DivaCZT's blog.

I didn't like the idea of the increasing low relief of using layers of mat board so I layered paper, in some cases nesting one paper into the next one.

I used seven layers of papers, and I might even add another. Still thinking about that, but I wanted to post what I'd done before Saturday!

These are the layers, beginning with the Bijou (twinchie) in the center:

1. Bijou tile, white
Blue and pink wash; blue and white ink; blue and pink colored pencils

2. Standard tile, Renaissance (tan)
Blue wash; blue, turquoise, brown, sepia inks; brown, blue, white colored pencils

3.  Zendala tile, white, almost finished but disliked
I cut four rounded edges and added a lot of pink/orange color, then stuck the four pieces to the edges of the Renaissance tile.

4. Hand-marbelled paper
(on dark brown paper)
No, I didn't do the marbelling; I bought a few sheets from another artist a few years ago.
I used a brown pen to draw Auras in the shapes of the marbelling.

5. Canson drawing paper
(in a stunning gorgeous blue!)
It had a few black lines on it and I worked them into the design.
I also used a little metalic blue ink, gray ink, and white pencil.

6. Patterned scrapbooking paper

Off-white with an ochre colored design. I added a wobbly brown line all around.

7. Stonehenge drawing paper, 'Kraft' brown

Brown and sepia inks; brown, pink, white colored pencils; a touch of white ink.

The blue wash on the Renaissance tile was my least favorite while I was working on it, but now I think it's my preferred section. Just for interest's sake, here's a detail of one corner.

Night on the Canal

I'd seen pictures of these step-roofed buildings and wanted to try them on my houses.

I began with a random gray wash in a few places, and water-soluble color pencil in others (all light-fast materials). It's a little odd that I left a few places simply black-and-white, but I think it works. I also used colored ink on the houses, and color pencils for some shading.

The moon was a bit of an issue. It's quite large! Originally I used silver leaf but it just wasn't working. I scraped it off. The art sat around for a while as I wondered what it wanted. (I think part of inspiration is patience.)

Then it struck me: I've saved a few bits of holographic papers! I knew they would offer varying colors depending on the angle of view. I cut out the moon shape and glued it on. I liked it! But... it was a bit stark and too obvious. I thought of drawing a little on it, but the paper is very slick. Thank you Sakura microperm pens! I added wiggly lines and now I'm quite happy with it.

Night on the Canal
(c) 2015 Margaret Bremner
Tangles: Bunzo, Diva Dance variation, Flux, Nipa, Pearlz, Sanibelle, Seljuk,

I did it again (ATCs)

More upcycled ATCs from a piece of unsatisfactory artwork. Fortunately I'm involved in two very large ATC exchanges, so I have lots of use for all the ATCs I've been making lately! For one swap I made 47 (I think) and for the next one I'm committed to 106! Yes, really!

I love fractals and encountered the Koch Snowflake design some time ago. It's composed of equilateral triangles and each triangle has a smaller triangle off the middle of each side. It continues like this, with smaller, tinier, ever more miniscule triangles. While the perimeter of the Koch Snowflake is fascinating, the middle is blaringly empty. Paradox (a favorite tangle) seemed like a marvelous thing to put inside the triangles. I didn't like the tiniest stars I could manage to draw; they seemed to make it look fuzzy.

Here's the original artwork, divided in pencil into ATC sizes. I saved the edges for potential bookmarks.

Thirteen cards to play with. Two have almost nothing on them.

Six of them received a background wash in various colors.

 

I also added collaged bits to some of those. Here are the above cards completed, and in the same order as above. Some I've decided I prefer 'upside-down'.

Five received initial collage elements of various sorts.

Here are the five above, now completed, and again in the same order. Little gems were added to the two on the right.

Two were left alone at the beginning but the one on the left got a bit of collage along the way. Finally, here are the last two.

Upcycled lacy ATCs

About three years ago I started this piece using an old handkerchief with hand-done, tatted lace edging. I had tangled on the fabric part and put tissue paper over top of that to mute it somewhat. I liked parts, but it wasn't really going anywhere.

I've been wanting to try doing some Artist Trading Cards with more materials than paper, pen and pencil so I thought, "Aha, I'll cut it up and go to town!" The border is mottled tan and brown and gold which doesn't show up very well. The little holes in the lace are quite a shiny gold, which also doesn't show up very well. Too bad.

The original, partially done artwork.

I measured and sliced and had 12 ATC-size cards ready to play with.

There were two with no lace. I used one of them immediately because I wanted to send an ATC on the theme of 'wings'. Here's that one. The hummingbird is from a magazine. I coated it, rubbed the paper off the back, and stuck it on the card.

Here are the four corners. They all have small round brads stuck through the cards. In the lower left card the brads are not the large brown 'pearls', those are ink; there are two smaller dull gold brads.

Next, some of the side pieces. Two have small brads. The colored one happened because I glued on a colored strip at the top and then tore off most of the tissue paper, leaving very clear brown tangling which I didn't really like.

And here are the last three. The third one has just a wee strip of the lace on the right edge. It was one of the 'waste' slices from cutting up the original large piece.

Mandala rescue

Last week I showed some zendala tiles done with a template that looks like a sphere. I didn't like the last one I showed, so I cut out the middle and promised to show you what I did with it.

On the left is the zendala tile with a white border. I thought the sphere was
too dark (and messy) at the edges so I cut out a smaller circle, shown on the right.

I've been working on this mandala for some time. It's 14" square. I'd made three rescue attempts already but I think this last one is working! I've added some collage and a fair amount of white ink.

I had started drawing a center (shown above), but found I preferred the cut-out from the zendala tile there and so did my daughter and husband! Coincidentally (really?) it was within a millimeter or two of the size of the middle of the mandala! But I also liked what I'd already drawn. This mandala is on illustration board, so with an X-Acto knife I carefully cut around the circle and peeled it off. Now I have another lovely little tangled circle to do something with.

Mandala with the original center peeled off.

I glued the new center on, and also changed some too-dark-reddish areas towards the corners. (Now they're too light! Oh well, I can deal with that.)

Mandala with its new center, still not finished.

It's not finished  yet. There's still a bit more collage, some fine-tuning and some touching up to do.

Twitterpated

On the second tile I did for the "blue challenge" (remember the Strange tile?) I used a bit of collage. What a great way to hide something I don't like and take the work in a slightly new direction.

I thought you might like to see a piece of zentangle inspired art I finished a while ago that also uses collage. It was done on a six inch square of beige mat board. The collaged bits here are beige paper-punch spirals that I used to tone down the very bold black-and-white pattern (Jitterbug) at the top, bottom, and sides. This piece also has some very small, round black and dark copper brads.

It will be going in an exhibition I'm having in June and July. I call it Twitterpated. Have a great weekend!

TWITTERPATED - 15 cm (6") square, (c) 2010 Margaret Bremner
(Tangles: checkered Aura, Beadlines, Daggerly, Hibred, Jitterbug, Rick's Paradox, Striping, Up and Across)

Tangled up in blu-u-ue

Yes, I'm married to a Bob Dylan fan.

The diva's zentangle challenge this week is to use some color, specifically blue. In my first attempt I used my trusty Sakura micron pen - blue of course. I tried Coil (by Sue Jacobs) and have been enjoying Finery lately. I looked up the name of Marasu, having done it a few times but not knowing what it was called. This tile initially had a bit of Payne's Gray acrylic wash. I finished with some shading in blue pencil.

Blue challenge 1: Betweed, Coil, Finery, Marasu, Pearlz, Tipple, Xyp, checkered Aura, dots

On the second tile I used a heavier paper. I did a string in blue watercolor pencil and brushed all over with water. It was kind of pale, so I added more pencil lines. They were too prominent so I brushed more water on and let it (almost) dry. I drew some lines on the damp paper with an aging black Brush pen. They were rather dark; I'd have to deal with that later. I tangled away.

It wasn't developing particularly well and I made several rescue attempts. I tried one pattern and then another behind Gneiss. Neither worked and I filled it all with black. But then the star-point halves were too dark so I used a metallic blue pen to lighten them. The Finery at the bottom was too much so I got out my envelope of Saved Bits of Failed Art, found some blue snippets and stuck one on between the blue and black Finery. It looked better, but it wasn't enough. I glued on more blue-and-black bits. That was a definite improvement, but the initial wash had left some not-particularly-nice-looking color out to the edge of the paper. I did blue and black shading outside the border to disguise it.

I'm not sure yet what I think of it, but it certainly holds the title of the Strangest Zentangle Tile I've ever created!

Blue challenge 2: Betweed, Finery, Flux variation, Gneiss, Perfs, Pearlz and something I might call Ashbee.