My Book is filling up

I'm nearing the end of this not-a-journal/not-a-sketchbook that I began in the summer of 2018. There are only a few pages left. 

I used the retail sock hanger in which I always see an elephant...

...to do an elephant page.

I had purchased this book at zenAgain 2016 and had stamped the first page with the logo. Recently I added a two-pencil string. I was going to add a tangle to the ribbon, but decided I like it simple. I might change my mind.

I had begun a picture of a table for four viewed from above. I planned to use (for the first time) some interesting colored pencils with three colors in each pencil. What fun! But... I didn't like it. I quit. I did other pages. Much later I came back to it. I had another idea! 😄

The beginning, and the pencils I planned to use.

The result! I'm calling it Al Fresco. And I want those plates.

Tangles: Circfleur, Gingham, Kuke, Sprouts, Within

I've been seeing examples of "map tangling" and it looked like fun. So, I gave it a try on the inside front cover, right-hand page. Next time I'll leave a little more white space.

*********

For previous Book pages, check these posts:

1. How it began
2. Next steps
3. Inserting an eco-dyed paper
4. Back cover, an alphabet, gems and paisley
5. Hexagons
6. Celtic-style tangles, and W2
7. Frontispiece and photos of my grandmother
8. Space junk
9. A sunflower, and the flower of life
10. Knightsbridge and magic squares
11. More space junk
12. For now
13. Mongolian roofs
14. Cubine and Fassett
15. Nautilus
16. Notanical - combining Notan and botanical imagery
17. An 'oops' page
18. Inspired by Project Pack 7
19. Four more pages: twisted striping, and borders
20. Three more pages: leaves, tea, and spirals
21. A month of joy
22. A few more pages in my marvelous book: a dragon, neurographic drawing, and BrixBox/Cantire
23. Five more Book pages: Salt, Morrisseau, found text, flowers, and more

Need string ideas?

Are you ever at a loss for a string to begin your tangled tile? And you've exhausted tanglepatterns strings ideas? Then check out these previous blog posts for some inspiration!

First is a simple idea I call a flying birds string, and an example using variations of Tipple. It has a lot of possibilities.

Flying birds string

Try using a tangle as a string. Choose a tangle, draw it large and in pencil. Here is Crescent Moon as a string, filled with a variety of other tangles.

A tangle as a string

I often like to close my eyes and draw a blind string. It always offers something different to work with! This post shows using blind drawing based on a tangle, like the tile below using the tangle Apacore.

A blind string

This post is about using (blind) contour drawing to create strings. In the tile below I had done a very simple contour drawing of our coffee machine, then tangled it, and turned it sideways.

A rope string is another idea I had some time ago.

A rope string

Choose a fragment, draw it quite large, and use the fragment as a string. Here's an example using Flukes.

Fragment as string

Something I did a lot of at one point (hmm, I'll have to revisit this) is two-pencil strings. Wow, that post's from almost ten years ago! I followed with a few more posts about two-pencil strings. Go to these posts for more fun and wide apart.

Two-pencil string

And last, but not least, something a little different, hotel strings! You'll have to go to the blog post to understand how this final tile relates to that idea!

A hotel string

Pink ribbons

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Pearlz, Wud (with ribbons variation)

The Diva's challenge this week is to use pink, in honor of her grandmother and everyone who's dealt with breast cancer. October is breast cancer awareness month.

I used a two-pencil string to get the main ribbon. (You can search the Labels in the sidebar for more posts about two-pencil strings.) I wanted a very pink ribbony look for the whole thing so I began with a pink wash over the entire paper, then pink, black and white ink, and shading in pink.

PIA - a new tangle

Late this past summer I taught some Zentangle classes at the 2012 Paint in Alberta convention. This interesting and simple pattern was the wallpaper in one of the rooms.

 Here's how to draw Pia.

You can vary Pia by changing where (and if) you fill with black or with thin stripes. Here are some possible variations and a tile (using a two-pencil string) with some of them.

Tangles: Beadlines, Knase, Pia

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!

AEDM 25 - Golven

Golven is a tangle from Mariët Lustenhouwer, a Dutch calligrapher. I may have done it last year during Art Every Day Month; if so, I had almost forgotten about it. I also haven't used a two-pencil string in quite some time so I did that too.

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Golven, Zewm, a spiral and a zigzag thing

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Golven, stripes.

 You can read and see more about two-pencil strings by clicking that topic in the blog labels list at the left.

More 2-pencil strings

Recently I got out my stuck-together-pencils again and did a few Zentangle tiles with two-pencil strings. You can read other posts on this topic by clicking the "two-pencil string" label in the 'Labels' box down on the left. I find these often end up being more intricate than usual, probably because there are many more sections to work with.

Tangles: Black Pearls, Caviar, Chebucto, Cubine,
Finery, Flux, Hibred, Hurry, Msst, Perfs, stripes and dots

Tangles: Caviar, Chartz, Circfleur, Daggerly, Gneiss,
Keenees, Krli-q, Lotus Pods, Sanibelle, Striping

Tangles: Caviar, D'Uni, Hibred, Jonqal, Knase, Prestwood,
Rain, Shattuck, Striping, Xyp, plus auras.

2-pencil strings

I've been using that 2-pencil string idea I posted about a while ago. That's what gives the ribbony effect in these tiles. In the first, I tried Marasu with dots in the stripes, but I don't like it much. I think the coiled spiral effect is largely lost.

Tangles: Diamond Panes, Florz, Marasu, black Pearlz, Strircles

I really like this next one! I think it looks like a tunnel or a vortex of some sort. At one point I was trying to coil a dark and a light spiral together. It didn't work, but I like it anyway. Notice Marasu in the center. It looks different with just stripes, doesn't it?

Tangles: Coaster, Coil, Finery, Hollibaugh, Marasu, Strircles, Zander

I'm finally getting around to using white on black! I also tried out something I've seen a few times recently. Here, it resembles Daniele O'Brien's Zen Buds, but this is less floral and looks more like paper scrolls.

Tangles: Crescent Moon, Inapod, Puf, Tipple, paper-scrolly thing

DUTCH HOURGLASS tangle instructions

It's been almost a year since I was in Whitinsville for the Zentangle teacher training seminar. One of the other participants was Maria Vennekens from the Netherlands. One day she wore a shirt with a lot of patterns, and I noticed something like this among them. To me, the initial 'X' with the filled-in top and bottom looks like an hourglass.  Thus "Dutch Hourglass".  If the pattern is big enough I like to put tiny black dots in each of the white dots, but - of course - it's your choice. Here's how to do Dutch Hourglass:

Here are some tiles using Dutch Hourglass.

In the first, the tangle is used as a field in two sections of the string. If you do this tangle, be sure to make the stripes/diamonds/triangles a good size. You need room for the three circles.

At the top left of this tile you'll see a "tangle" that I'm calling Botched Dutch Hourglass Resurrected.  :-)  I didn't make it large enough and had no room for the white circles, so I filled the triangles with black, which was too bold so I added large black dots in the middle of the diamonds which toned it down but was still rather bold so I gave it lots of shading.

Tangles: Dutch Hourglass, Facets, Parabola, Rick's Paradox, Striping (and, in the interests of thoroughness, Botched Dutch Hourglass Resurrected)

In the next tile, I used a single row of Dutch Hourglass in one of the 'ribbons' of the string. All these tiles began with wide two-pencil strings. To do a wide two-pencil string I place an eraser between the two pencils. (Ha! There IS a use for erasers in Zentangle!)

Tangles: Dutch Hourglass, Crescent Moon (with a highlight), Inapod, Yincut and a Knightsbridge Aura

Here again I've used it in a ribbon. I think it's those 2-pencil strings I started with. Another interesting thing in this tile is two slightly different effects with the tangle Tidings. In the top right it's done with only lines. In the lower right I've filled the tiny extra spaces with black.

Tangles: Dutch Hourglass, Beadline, Munchin, black Pearlz, Tidings

Overnight on April 26, I'll be winging my way to Halifax to visit my recently-married daughter and her husband for ten days. After that it's Bermuda for a week to visit my husband's sister and her husband. You bet I'm taking lots of Zentangle supplies with me! I'll need to do some creating myself, and who knows, maybe I'll get a chance to share it with others. Interspersed with visiting, whale-watching, board games, Peggy's Cove, snorkelling, restaurants, and touring of course!

Two pencil strings, wide apart

In an earlier post I mentioned placing an eraser between two pencils in order to have a more widespread double string. One of the first I did this way is the last tile shown here. Below are three recent tiles using this string-making method.

Gneiss, Hibred, Hollibaugh, Tipple, Pearlz sort of

Crescent Moon, Ixorus, Rain, Pearlz sort of

Beadlines, Hibred, Paradox, Striping, Pearlz sort of
(I really like those white circles in a black band!)

 CONTEST UPDATE

Thanks to everyone who's sent contributions to my metaphor file. I wonder if someone who loves metaphors is a metaphorphile?

I've been reading a lot of wonderful thoughts - some metaphors, some not - so many that my brain goes fuzzy and I can't be sure anymore! I enlisted the assistance of my eldest daughter who works as an editor, and my husband who is a writer, poet, editor and translator. My daughter sent me this definition of a metaphor from Abrams Glossary of Literary Terms: 

"A comparison or analogy stated in such a way as to imply that one object is another one, figuratively speaking. When we speak of "the ladder of success," we imply that being successful is much like climbing a ladder to a higher and better position. Another example comes from an old television ad from the 1980s urging teenagers not to try drugs. The camera would focus on a close-up of a pair of eggs and a voice would state, "This is your brain." In the next sequence, the eggs would be cracked and thrown onto a hot skillet, where the eggs would bubble, burn, and seethe. The voice would state, "This is your brain on drugs." The point of the comparison is fairly clear."

There are still two weeks left! in the Contest.

More fun with two-pencil strings

I've been having a lot of fun with this two-pencil string idea I discovered recently, so I thought I'd share some recent tiles I've created using this method.

(box)

(large bobble)

(roundy)

(with Krli-qs tangle)

(machine)

In this one I put an eraser between the two pencils, making them farther apart. I didn't like the string at all. The two pencil lines seemed too far apart for the size of the paper. However, I decided to see what would happen and I quite like the result! The lesson: Persevere.

Weekly Challenge 2: Use a two-pencil string

Laura Harms, CZT, issues a weekly challenge to all zentangle lovers. This week's challenge is to use a two-pencil string, a fun technique I discovered and posted about earlier.  I've been doing a lot of two-pencil strings recently so the challenge was more, 'Which one to post?' On this tile there were three rather round areas, so I used Drupe, Daggerly, and Hurakán to fill them. And I DO seem to like doing stripes on cylindrical shapes! (Must remember that simplicity idea though.)

'Simplicity'

Laura Harms, a fellow CZT here in Saskatoon, has initiated a weekly zentangle challenge. It's open to anyone who wants to participate. How 'bout you?

Some months ago their basement flooded and they've been fixing things. Laura also has a two-and-a-half year old ball of energy and a pre-mature baby just come home. This week, amidst the hoopla of Christmas busy-ness, the challenge is to do a simple zentangle tile. I decided to use the two-pencil string I've been having fun with lately.

'S' for Simplicity.

Fun! Two-pencil strings!

Now here's a fun idea! 
I used an elastic band to hold two pencils together and drew strings with a double pencil. I found that - with curving, and changing angles - often one or the other pencil would skip, so I'd have to add that bit of the string once I'd finished the main part.

In the two tiles below you can see that I also did the initial border with the double pencil. The double pencil gives a really interesting ribbon effect to work with. The tile on the left has a 'loop' string; at the center is my Lotus Pods tangle. The one on the right uses the familiar 'Z' or 'N' string -  much of it is filled with Tipple - and the center has my Ninja Stars tangle.

Here are a tile and an ATC I did using a two-pencil string. On the tile I used two '8's for the string, overlapping at right angles. It's an interesting string, although it can make the center a bit crowded. You can't see a lot of the ribbon effect of the double pencil, except that there's a lot more string than there might normally be!









On this tile I used the double pencil twice. I drew a two-pencil trefoil string. Then I placed pencil-tip-A where pencil-tip-B was on the first go-'round, and drew the same string again, following the first string's pattern. Clear as mud?