Cartouches

Cartouche (pronounced car-toosh) is an old term for decorating around something that's the main focus. Often that's a photo, but it could be a piece of memorabilia, or whatever you want to draw attention to. Zentangle recently  offered Project Pack #05, all about cartouches (still pronounced car-toosh). You provide your own 'focus items' but the other supplies are provided in the kit.

I had done a page in my Book using old photos and decided to do another using this 'cartouche' technique. I chose three from my old-photos-to-use-in-artwork file. They all feature me in 1961!

Here I am at a tea party, a birthday party fashion show, and selling Kool-Aid at a sidewalk stand with two friends.

I included everyone's names and the dates (thanks to my mum for penciling that on the backs!). I also did an "embedded" 7 because that's how old I was that year. I admit, I overdid it a bit with the cartouche-ing!

Here's a close-up of my birthday party fashion show. I'm at the back right, in white.

In my Book: frontispiece and old photos

There is a page at the front of the book with a few pale gray lines and a pre-strung border box. I filled it with black and gray tangles, then decided to add a color border at the edge of the page. The very last thing I did on it was to write my name.

The colored tangles are muted with a pale gray brush pen.
The name was written with a calligraphy marker pen.
The dark 'blob' at the bottom isn't. It's metal leaf and really rather bright!

I've seen some lovely artwork using old photographs and wanted to try something similar. I have collected some old photos and chose a few that seemed to go together. I didn't realize it at the time, but whaddaya know?!?! all the photos I chose include my father's mother!

Tangles: Jonqal, Scena, Wunderwall
In addition to pen-and-ink I used washi tape and scrapbook ornamental bits.
Along the left edge you can see the previous page under the scalloped edge.

How "Palazzo" came to be

I was shopping for a frame for a piece I'd just completed (Ribbony), and the one I liked best came with glass, which I didn't need (but it can be saved). Because there was glass, there was a sheet of paper with a photo and frame information. The photo struck me for various reasons.

I like the large, Corinthian column capitals. The columns remind me of the tangle Romanancy. I like the sense of being drawn into the distance. I like the strong light, and that it's a black and white photo. I like the row of lamps and the pattern on the balcony railing.

I thought it would be an interesting picture to turn into a piece of zentangle-inspired art (ZIA), partly because so much of it is very plain surfaces. What would it look like crammed full of patterns?

I managed to trace the image reasonably well onto some art paper. It's 15"x13". I started with some masking fluid for the very white areas, and did some ink washes. The masking fluid was not one of my better ideas and I'll save it for canvas or another type of paper!

Here it is, partly done, pattern-cramming in full swing:

Next step, almost all the tangling done, but no shading yet. At this point I thought it looked like quite a jumble.

Oh the wonders of shading! I had to darken some areas and lighten others, then re-lighten and re-darken, trying for the right tone. Lots of darkening in the upper left; maybe more is needed? Here is the (almost?) finished "Palazzo".

Create your own path

I wish I could credit this photo but I don't know who created it.

One of the things I like about this image is the fact that the path (or road) isn't there until after you've passed by, much the way it works in real life.

Nick Veasey's X-ray photography

Nick Veasey produces wonderful x-ray photographs of insects, fashion, toys, and more. The x-ray technique, resulting in layers of transparency, gives the works a great delicacy, even for an image of a backhoe.

All the images on his site are locked so I can't show you a sample, but go here to have a look. Click on the 'Projects' label in the upper right corner to see the images.

CONTEST UPDATE

Wow, there are some great ideas and connections flowing in! I now have about a dozen favorites, up from five not too long ago.
You have until midnight Sunday wherever you are to send entries to the metaphor contest. You can enter as often as you want and you might win art!

More fun with blind strings

I really enjoyed Laura Harms' challenge to do a zentangle tile having done the string with your eyes shut. For one thing, it sometimes creates wobbly lines to work with. I also find that it usually places the string off-center - and occasionally off the page! That was the part I liked best. It sent me right over the edge! :-)

It reminded me of when the technology of photography arrived on the scene and artists started playing with it. It produced some interesting compositions with off-center subjects. Sometimes the subjects were only partly in the picture. Sometimes the images were even blurry. It gave painters a whole cartload of new things to think about! Gustave Caillebotte, a French painter working in the late 1800's, is one artist who was quite taken by this new way of conceiving the picture plane. Here are two of his paintings.

"The Oarsmen", 1877

"On the Pont de l'Europe" 1876-77, Kimbell Art Foundation, Fort Worth, USA

It looks perfectly ordinary to us now, but 140 years ago it was quite bizarre.

Okay, so coming back off that tangent, here are some of the blind string tiles I've done recently, admittedly much less impressive than Caillebotte's paintings.

with Zedbra and droplets

This tile includes a tangle pattern concocted by myself and Laura Harms, CZT, also in Saskatoon. It's along the left edge and it's called Zedbra.

Laura said about Zedbra: "...it was created by Margaret, but named by me... it's a little inside joke.  Margaret and I are both Canadian and in Canada "Z"s are pronounced zed not zee..."

Click here to see one of Laura's tiles (from her weekly zentangle challenge number 2) using Zedbra including highlights along the middle.

I'll post a how-to page on Zedbra soon (although you can probably figure it out yourself).

 This tile
includes a pattern
I discovered recently on
stART's blog. There are two
bold  stripey edges in this tile,
and two delicate rolling edges.
The delicate tangle is called
Organza Pleated Ruffle
and was designed
by Ruth Howell,
a friend
of stART's.
Ruth's tangle has dots
around  the curved parts,
so perhaps this is a tangleation!?
It works nicely with Lilypads.

Saskatoon in January

For my readers in different climates, I thought you might like to see some pictures of Saskatoon in mid-winter. These were taken on January 19th, 2011. There was a cloudless sky and a full moon. It must have been the middle of the night because the temperature was -33C with a windchill of -43C. We have a river through the middle of the city and these were taken from the east riverbank looking west across the river.

I like to give credit where credit is due and asked the person who sent me the photos if she could identify the photographer. She e-mailed her source who e-mailed... you get the picture. BD told EC who told my friend MH to "Just use it!" At some point someone provided this information: "Those pictures came from a former city policeman - I emailed back to ask who took them - if it was him & all he emailed back was 'would I lie?' -  & he is a jokester, so I really don't know who needs credit."

UPDATE, 2014 August 7 : these fabulous photos were taken by Bruce A. Johnson. You can see more of his work here.

The "fog" you see is vapor rising from the river and from various heating systems.

Looking at part of the downtown section of Saskatoon from across the South Saskatchewan River.

The Bessborough Hotel, the grande dame of local hotels, a castle on the prairies.