Pre-strung fun

Tangles: Bunzo, Ennies, Moon Pies, Pearlz

It's a hashtag, too! #prestrungfun. Have a look on Instagram and Zentangle's Mosaic app.

"Pre-strung" means that there are pale, gray lines provided on the paper so you have a string to start with. Zentangle(R) offers many tiles like this.

This project ("challenge"), the brainchild of three CZTs, is based on one of Zentangle's pre-strung zendala tiles, pictured below. I admit, this is not one of my favorite pre-strung strings, but I had two white ones so I thought I'd do two. Why not?

Sometimes an idea grabs my collar and whisks me away on a wild ride of creativity. Usually when I don't expect it. This was one of those times. I found myself working on one tile while ideas for another one flew at me.

Come along for the wild ride with me...

The first two I did were on white tiles. One is at the top of this post. Here's the other.
I tried using the tangle Kahla as another string, wondering what would happen if I tried to overlay two strings.

Tangles: Kahla (the overlaid string), Moon Pies,
Pearlz, Pepperish, Romanancy, Striping, Tipple, Wud

I wanted to do more! I hunted, and discovered I had some tan and black tiles with this pre-strung string. The first began with smears of copper ink from a leaky pen; the second was going to be the 'mosaic' border and something else in the middle, but you know how things go!

Tangles: Ennies, Pepperish, Printemps, Snail

Tangles: Hmmm... well, it was going to be Seljuk
but it ended up being gradations of gray Moonlight pens.

It worked well with Kahla, so on this tan tile I wanted to try using Within as an overlaid string.

Tangles: Within (the overlaid string)
Apacore, Paizel, Pearlz, Pepperish, Seljuk

Colorful ribbons wanted to play on a white tile.

Tangles: Aquafleur and Tipple

And finally, on a tan tile, sort of paisleys. And more. A lot more.

Tangles: Crescent Moon, Ennies, Purk,
Soul Star, Thumbprintz, Tipple, Within 

I understand there will be another Pre-Strung Fun event. Hope you can join in!

Off-center, but not off-balance

Instruction in art composition always says not to put the center of interest smack dab in the middle. This makes it static, boring, dull. The only case I can think of where this is not true is a mandala.

Today I'll show you some Zentangle tiles that are off-center, a bit wonky, and yet... wonderful!

Tangles: Beadlines, Finery, Paradox, Tipple

In the tile above the main 'square' is off-center but balanced by the 'beads' at the lower left. The empty oval is quite striking and I realized, looking at it just now, that somewhere in that empty oval is a phi intersection of the square. Cool! 

In the tile below, the main drawing is fairly centered, however, the Beadlines and Black Pearlz at the left throw it off. That was part of the string I had drawn, not a brilliant idea I had.

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Knase, Munchin, Paradox, Pearlz

Again, the string I had drawn went off the page, below. This frequently happens when I draw a string 'blind', that is, with my eyes closed.

Tangles: Huggins, Pearlz, Tipple

The string below almost went off the page, but not quite.

Tangles: Beadlines, Firecracker, Knightsbridge,
Krli-Qs, and a Black Pearl 

This gray zendala was done for a Full Moon Mosaic, a Zentangle challenge from Hanny Nura on Instagram. We were to use three concentric circles and the tangle Tamisolo. It struck me that "concentric" didn't have to mean "centered" so I offset the concentric circles to a phi intersection on the tile.

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Icantoo, Mika, Tamisolo

Besides being interestingly off-center, the tile below is also very minimal. A zentangle drawing can be quite simple!

Tangles: Beadlines, Pearlz, Seljuk

Sometimes off-center just occurs as one of those happy accidents, but one way to make it happen is to center your drawing around a phi intersection. You can download Zentangle's "Markus Operandus II" for free here; you can use it to find phi proportions on zentangle tiles.

Project Pack 12 follow-up

My Project Pack #12 all-in-one recap tile.

As always with Zentangle's project packs there are one or two of the projects that really strike my fancy and I want to explore more. This time it was Day 3's Well... with a twist... and extra lines.

I did one very regular and formal, on an eco-dyed tile (above). I think it looks like some kind of medallion.

Then I did a wonky, irregular one on a tile stained with a hibiscus teabag. I think I like it better. 😊

I knew it would be interesting in a group and I'd like to explore this possibility more.

This went a little haywire in the center.

Quite some time ago Chris Titus sent me a few tiles she had eco-dyed. I'd added a bit of gold wash to this one, but it stayed around until now. It was just so lovely and I couldn't decide what to do with it. I had thought I'd round all the corners and do Well in every square, but I didn't want to lose all the lovely texture of the eco-dyeing. I think it has a stained glass window look to it.

1) Chris's tile with a few lines. 2) My finished tile. 3) At a slant trying to show the gold better.

A final tile, with some texture from a glue spiral and gold wash.

Color words

I have a long-standing interest in languages and linguistics and in color, so of course I'm curious about how various languages refer to colors. Here is a bit of what I've learned, paired with some more-or-less appropriate artwork!

Primitive languages have only two color words
and they are for black and white,
or - more accurately - dark and light.

If a language has only three words for colors,
they are for black, white, and red.
This is because red is so closely associated
with life and death.

Color terms are added in a fixed order
as a language evolves.
Next to arrive are words for green and yellow,
one or the other, and then the other. 

After yellow and green is blue.

All languages distinguishing six colors have terms
for black, white, red, green, yellow and blue.
I wonder if this is why a basic crayon or paint set contains
 those colors and is missing orange and purple?

As languages develop they next add
a term for brown. 

Brown is followed by orange, pink, purple and gray,
in no particular order.

Finally a term for light blue appears.
Russian makes this distinction with 
sinii (dark blue) and goluboi (light blue).
These are as separate and distinct for Russians
as red and pink are for English speakers.

(No, this isn't my art, but it gets the point across nicely!)

Irish apparently has two words for green. 
Glas denotes the green color of plants and the gray-green of the sea,
while uaithne describes the artificial greens of dyes, paints, and such.
Apparently this distinction is made even if the hues are identical.
It seems it's not so much about the color itself,
but about how it came to be.

And there you have a brief history of words for colors.

2020's Twelve Days of Zentangle

Zentangle's Project Pack 12. The annual Twelve Days of Zentangle. This year, Zentangle Renaissance. It's taken me quite a while to find the time to do this project but all in good time. Aaand... here we go!

DAY ONE - Bronx Spear, an interesting tangleation of Bronx Cheer. My little pot of gold gouache was hard as a rock, so while waiting for it to reconstitute I used gold acrylic paint.

DAY TWO - In my book you can't go wrong with Crazy Huggins, and I love the idea of double DooDah in the horizontal ones.

DAY THREE - This took a wrong turn right from the start when I did the four fragments all the same rather than turning them as I went. I kept going, wondering what delight would appear out of the 'oops', and it's one of my favorites! That's the first tile below. The second tile is my second try, and how it was "supposed" to go; I really like this, too, and hope to experiment with it more.

DAY FOUR - The idea was to do three of these, with a gold border along the entire bottom, then bend them at the center, glue the sides together, and have a lovely tiny conifer tree shape. My gold ended up in a corner, and I only did the one.

DAY FIVE - Aura'd Fife, "tethered" Auras, a coffered border, and more. I realized that Fife with the inner Auras is a lot like Double Double without the initial square grid. I like the idea of white chalk rings but mine didn't work well.

DAY SIX - We used four bijou tiles, four overlapping hearts and the tangle Scena.

I like doing (almost) the same thing on four bijou tiles 

and then seeing the various ways they can be placed.

DAY SEVEN - We began with a light gold wash over the entire paper (gorgeous!), then added Paradox, Pearlz, and Flux. I also used Paisley Boa immediately beside Pearlz.

DAY EIGHT - We started with a pre-strung zendala tile, and then completely ignored the string to create the border! I wanted to preserve a little more of the pre-strung design so I left the star points visible. My gouache still wasn't smoooooth so I used a lot of different metallics in the center: gold acrylic paint, copper acrylic paint, gold gel pen, copper gel pen, and clear star gel pen.

DAY NINE - On a phi tile, a Purk/Festune mashup, Pearlz, Stiritup, and more. I really like the phi tiles.

DAY TEN - On a 3Z tile, some paisley-like, moon pie-ish shapes. and a gold border. My gold gouache is somewhat reconstituted so I used it, but it's still very grainy.

DAY ELEVEN - The tangle Drawings on a zendala tile. I couldn't get the shadow as dark as I wanted even with a 6B pencil so I added tiny wavy lines in black.

DAY TWELVE - On a square tile, we began with Mi2. Then we added Auras,"capes" :), and "therefores" (AKA Tridots, or cinta marta?)

Many thanks again to those at Zentangle HQ for another fun project pack!

Have you noticed hubcaps?

I was out walking the other day and noticed an interesting hubcap. Then I noticed other hubcaps. What wonderful inspiration for mandala designs! Simply plug "hubcap photos" into an image search engine and you'll find lots of inspiration! Here are five, along with the hubcap that inspired them.

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Doodah, Fife, Hibred,
Prestwood, Skyesil, Zewm

Tangles: Dewd, Icantoo, Mazorito, Snail

Tangles: Crescent Moon, Fohbraid, Gewgle,
Tipple, Zewm

Tangles: Apacore, Cubine, and elements of
Moonwaves and Tripoli, and more.

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Prestwood, Slowpoke, and more