ZENTANGLE-DIVA'S WEEKLY CHALLENGE #37

This week's challenge is called "Kiss My Grids" and the challenge is to do a Zentangle or ZIA made of only patterns that use a grid.  Mine turned out much tighter than I would have liked.  Since I enjoyed doing it I have a feeling I'll be doing more of them this week and definitely will be trying to loosen up.  But for now here are my challenge attempts so far...  

As always, thanks for looking in and I always appreciate your comments.

ZENTANGLE-DIVA'S WEEKLY CHALLENGE #36

This week the Diva herself, Laura, is back!  It's been fun to have all the different ideas from the guest Divas while Laura enjoyed summer with her boys.  It's hard to believe that summer 2011 is coming to an end already.  Thankfully, the fun doesn't end here at the Diva's Weekly Challenge, though.  This week we're up to Challenge #36.  We're working with the new pattern recently created by Rick and Maria, Assunta.  For instructions on how to do Assunta and to read a bit more about the pattern and it's history you can head over to their web page by clicking HERE. 


And, now here are my efforts for this week's challenge...

And, here I tried to get loose with Assunta and wound up with a strange mess and lots of mistakes.  LOL

Thanks for peeking in and have a good week!

ATC/ACEO-THOSE FUN LITTLE CARDS

About a year ago I discovered a neat way to express and share your art.  You create your art, be it a painting, pen and ink, Zentangle, collage, weaving, and on and on, whatever your little heart desires, on a card (or not) that measures 3 1/2" x 5 1/2".  Yes, SIZE is the only restriction.  Whatever you do it must measure only 3 1/2" x 5 1/2" (the size of a baseball card or a classic playing card).  If you haven't already heard about creating these little gems and think you might be interested, please read further.  The ATC stands for "Art Trading Card" and the ACEO stands for "Art Card Editions and Originals".  The idea of these cards are to either trade them (for free) with other artists or groups of people who also create them or sell the card to people who collect them (and there are many who do).  If you haven't already heard about this you'll be surprised to see how many websites, blogs, Yahoo, Flicker, ETSY and eBay groups there are dedicated to ATC/ACEOs.


Rather than my going on and on about this here I'll provide you with a direct link to a more complete post I wrote on one of my other blogs that will explain all of this much further, offer you additional links regarding ATC/ACEOs and where you can see some examples of my own cards.


Click Here For More Detailed Info and Examples In My Other Blog


It's just another fun thing to do with art.  Enjoy!

WATERCOLOR-DEMO AND A GOOD USE FOR A FAILED PAINTING

There are many ways to decorate a gift box with your artistic endeavors.  Not the least of which is simply doing a painting directly on plain gift wrap paper.  But, here I'll show you a way to decorate a gift box and give a failed painting a new life at the same time.  Before I do that, however, here's a little demo of the painting I eventually wound up using on the gift box.  Hey, we all goof sometimes.  I goof a lot, so I've learned that I might as well make the best of it.  LOL...




Colors Used:
Windsor Newton French Ultramarine Blue
Windsor Newton Alizarin Crimson
Windsor Newton Olive Green
Windsor Newton Aureolin (Yellow)




1)  I was just playing around with a scrap of watercolor paper and wanted to see what it would be like to put shadows into my painting by using an underglaze first.  After drawing the two tulips below I added an undercoat glaze of French Ultramarine Blue in the areas of the painting that I wanted to be the darkest.  Knowing the flowers would eventually be pink I used a blue/purple (French Ultramarine Blue and Alizarin Crimson) underglaze and I used the French Ultramarine Blue under the darkest parts of the green stems and leaves as you can see here below.

2)  Next as you can see in this photo I added my pinks (Alizarin Crimson with lots of water) and greens (mixture of Olive Green and Aureolin Yellow) on top of the underglaze and began to also add further glazes with the pinks and greens as I went along one petal and one stem/leaf at a time.  If you notice you can still see the French Ultramarine Blue underglaze under the green watercolor on the leaves in this photo.  It's especially apparent in the front leaf closest to the bottom of the paper.

3)  By step three shown below I've completed all my top glazes so that the underglaze no longer shows through.  I've been able to keep my colors fresh because I haven't had to put blue/purple glazes on top of my pure pink and green watercolor to define my shapes.  We've hidden them, those blues and purples, underneath our fresh top layers of glaze.  

4)  This step doesn't look much different than the last one, but if you look at the two very closely you'll see that in the photo below there are crisp, well defined edges on all the petal and leaf shapes.  (I haven't been able to capture it as well on the photograph as I would have liked to, unfortunately.)  For me it's a finishing touch that I often use because I like the effect so much.  I do it by choosing edges and darker curves to accent with very sharp Prismacolor pencils in a darker color.  (Perhaps one of these days I'll do a demo on just that alone.)

5)  If you happened to notice in any of the demo photos above I did a very careless thing.  I originally sketched the tulips so close to the top and left edge of the paper that I couldn't possibly frame this painting.  It was a good painting lesson, however, and I had fun doing it so no harm done, really.  Luckily, it occurred to me that I was getting ready to send a very good friend of mine her birthday gift.  It's hard to send boxes with bows on them through the mail unless you put it in a larger box with lots of protection around the bow, etc.  So, I was looking for an easy alternative.  Knowing she's always loved the color pale pink I decided to wrap her gift with plain pink wrapping paper.  I then cut out and added my tulips and a butterfly to the package and viola! 

I could have added a paper lace doily under the tulips etc., but I decided to leave it plain because the contents were not plain in pattern at all.  In this case the wrapping set the tone for the gift inside which was a set of four very busy pink floral cloth place mats with matching napkins and napkin rings.  She was delighted with the whole thing and seemed especially happy with the handmade gift wrap and greeting card that I'd added to it.  I was happy to have found a use for my failed painting and would probably purposely do this again on a gift box, maybe adding a handmade card of the same motif to it.  Well, I hope I've given you an idea for turning a painting "mistake" into something useful.

ZENTANGLE/ZIA-A BUSY WEEK

I had a relaxing week while recuperating from a summer cold.  Thank goodness for tangling to keep me sane!  Here are this week's doings...


First, I played around with my sepia pen and used a colored pencil for shading.

Sepia Pen/Sepia Colored Pencil 

Here I used my initial "J" as my string

Sepia Pen/Terra Cotta & Indigo Pencils

And a ZIA...

Sepia Pen/Terra Cotta Pencil

And now for a few classic Zentangles 

A Tiny Sampler

Thanks for looking in.  Comments always welcome and appreciated.

ZENTANGLE-DIVA'S WEEKLY CHALLENGE #35

This week our challenge was to make a tile within a tile.  I quickly found out that it's not as easy as it sounds!  Here are my efforts...

...and a Zendala tile in tile for good measure

Thanks for looking in!

GOOD MORNING WORLD

I couldn't resist adding this picture I took of our little girl, Gemma, this morning to my blog...

Good Morning Sunshine

ZENTANGLE-TODAY'S TANGLES

I'm learning as I'm going along.  Today I tried a few tangles done over colored pencil.  Here are the results...

I'm finding it difficult to choose how to feature the Zentangle, how to choose which is top and which is bottom.  Something will look nice to me after I finish it, but then when I look at it at a later time holding it a different way might look better to me.  Maybe I shouldn't commit  to which way to feature the tangle by putting my initials on the front so early on.

THE DIVA'S WEEKLY CHALLENGE #34

This week's challenge was to create 1.) a Zentangle with angular string lines and curvy patterns.   2.) a Zentangle with curvy string lines and angular patterns.  It was a fun challenge and here are my results...

Angular String/Curvy Patterns

Curvy String/Angular Patterns

ZENTANGLE ODDS AND ENDS

Thought I'd just post a few Zentangles that I've done in the past couple of months, no particular order, no particular reason...


Here I wanted to try doing a few multi colored tangles and at the same time try doing Zendalas (a combination of a Zentangle and a Mandala):

Colored Ink, Staedtler Triplus Fineliner Pens, 0.3mm

Prismacolor Pencils

Pitt Artist Pen, Sanguine (Sepia)

Greeting Card

Prismacolor Pencil Background

And, a few basic black ink Zentangles...

This is the Pattern "Mooka"

Thanks for looking in!

ZENTANGLE-THE DIVA'S WEEKLY CHALLENGE #33

I found this pattern to be very challenging, but I forged ahead anyway.  LOL  And, here is my entry into this week's challenge.  Thanks, Diva, for the opportunity to learn a new pattern!

Pendrils

ZENTANGLE-I TOOK MY FIRST OFFICIAL CLASS!

Yesterday I took my first official Zentangle class from our local CZT, MaryAnn Scheblein-Dawson, here on Long Island in NY.  It was very informative and lots of fun.  MaryAnn was a wonderful teacher who also sells Zentangle books and supplies.  She is willing to teach Zentangle classes at learning institutions, craft groups, and private parties given in living rooms--and anywhere else there may be a group of people who would like to learn how to Tangle.  


MaryAnn can be reached at her email address, PaperPlay@hoflink.com  


Yesterday we were originally taught four basic patterns and here is a picture of the amazing combinations all of the students came up with using just those four patterns...

Student Combination Zentangle

And here are the two I did in class...