Diva Challenge #360: "Duotangle Shattuck vs Tripoli"

This week' challenge is a duotangle which featured two tangles that I enjoy doing.  Shattuck was one of the first tangles that I learned and Tripoli was released shortly before I became a CZT.  Although I use to use Tripoli a lot, I realized when I started doing it, I have not used it much lately. The things I have been doing lately have been more organic. I used a Renaissance tile as it was what I had with me at the time.  Here is what I came up with. I hope you enjoy it.

Tangles used: Shattuck, Tripoli, 

Highlights done with white Gelly Roll.

I never to much shading or highlighting on Tripoli,  I just let the different patterns develop.  I have not had a chance to look at what others have submitted. If you have not either, would highly recommend that you to to I am the Diva and look at the other pieces submitted.

Thanks for visiting.  As always, comments are welcomed, encouraged, and appreciated.

Go Tangle !!  

Diva Challenge #327: " The Diva Dancing in Lisbon"

This week's Diva Challenge is courtesy of Henrike Bratz. She is from Germany and attended one the recent CZT seminars after tangling on her own for a couple of years.  She had recently been to Lisbon and took some pictures of different patterns that she saw. One she entitled the Lisbon fragment. You can see her step outs and variations here. You can see more of  her work on her block at this link. She coupled it with Diva Dance as that tangle was one used in the first Diva Challenge that she participated  in.  She gave the option of doing a duotangle or adding other tangles to the tile. The Lisbon tangle is one that is nice to look at but for me, it requires a lot of concentration.  Maybe it is because it is new to me but it is probably not one that I will use when I just want to get focused and lose myself in the repetitive strokes.  I also think that it is a tangle that looks best when your lines are very consistent.  Mine usually are not but it turned out okay.  Here is what I came up with. I hope you enjoy it.

Tangles used: Lisbon fragment, Diva Dance, Finery

Shading was done with HB pencil and Sakura white Gelly Roll pen.

This is the first time that I used the dots like this in a tile. I had seen others use it and wanted to try it. I think that since my line work was not as consistent and some of the grids are a little wonky, this helped with the overall tile.  I usually do little shading on Diva Dance. 

If you have not all ready done so, would strongly recommend you visit I am the Diva to look at some great pieces of art.  I have not had a chance to look yet but am hoping to do so over the next couple of days. You can go there directly by clicking on the link above. 

Thanks for visiting. As always comments are welcomed, encouraged, and appreciated.

Go Tangle !!

Diva Challenge #195: "Turning Old into New"

This week's Diva Challenge is courtesy of Sandy Hunter, whose blog is tanglebucket.blogspot.com. I first became aware of here blog through my sister. Sandy had developed some tangles but she also had a knack for combining two tangles into one pattern. She labeled this as her tangle remix. Was interesting. I cannot say that I tried to do too many, but I think I did try a few. They were fun but my brain does not think that way. This week's Challenge is to take favorite, or go to tangles and do them differently. If you picked a grid based tangle, do it free form and if you picked a free form tangle, use it a grid. I did the best I could with this. Not sure I was totally successful with this with both of the tangles that I chose. One tangle I chose was cadent. I use this a lot and like it. I usually use it in a structured way. It is not really grid based as I would define it, but I usually use it much like a grid. The other tangle I chose was Antidots. Here is what I came up with. I hope you enjoy it. Oh yeah, I used a Renaissance tile as that was the only tile that I had in the kit that I usually carry.

Tangles used: Cadent, Antidots

The shading was done with a white Prismacolor pencil and a Zenstone.

I did not get last week's Challenge, "Embracing the Yuck", done in time to post it. Am including it in this post only as it was some work. This is the second challenge I did using the non-dominant hand. I had started it and felt like I needed to finish. I have to admit that I did not really enjoy doing this. My idea was to start out with Knightsbridge to get a little practice. After I started it, there was such a large time gap before I could continue that it was not of much help. Here it is. I hope that somebody enjoys it.

Tangles used: Knightsbridge, Tripoli, Betweed, Ixorus, Paradox

I have not looked at many entries from either week's challenge. Not sure now much I will be able to look at #194 but definitely want to look at what people have done in this week's Challenge. Encourage you to go to I am the Diva and look at what others have done. Would also encourage you to try it yourself, even if you do not post it. Would encourage you to post it though if at all possible.

Thanks for visiting. As always, comments are welcomed, encouraged, and appreciated.

Go Tangle !! 

Playing with Betweed

This week's prompt on Square One is Betweed. I all ready did a tile but wanted to play with it a little more. did not really want to do it on a traditional tile. Saw some great examples of Betweed and wanted to try some different things. Used black and white but in this case I used a black Zendala tile with a white pen. Still did it more symmetrical. If I have time may try something that is with more random spaces. I just wanted to try different ways to do the lines. As is sometimes ( read most of the time), the case it did not turn out exactly the way I envisioned it in my head, but that is okay. Gave a chance to get some practice highlighting and shading the black tiles also. Here is what I ended up with.

This ended being a exercise with Betweed and Indy-rella. The shading was done with a Zenstone and a white Prismacolor pencil. The more I look at it the more comfortable I am with it. Have not used my white pens for a while and they seemed to be a little sticky. Did not cover quite the way I would have liked. Had to go over a number of the lines. I used the Uniball Angelic white gel pen and the Sakura white gel pen, medium point. The string is random radii. Then filled in the spaces with Betweed. Was not anything special.

Thanks for visiting. As always, comments are welcomed, encouraged, and appreciated.

Go Tangle !! 

Experimenting with Black tiles, White gel pens and Mooka

Was impressed, and inspired, by some of the Mookas that were part of the Diva Challenge. Like a lot of others, I can look at what I have done and am not totally satisfied with the results. Had some time so decided would work on a couple of  things. One was Mooka and the other was practicing working on the black tiles with white pens. Did not post this in the Diva Challenge as it is not a Duotangle. Did not include Auraknot.

This tile is really "out of the box" for me. When I have used Mooka, I have generally been pretty conservative. I wanted to push this a little and see what happened.  It really was an experiment in different ways that I could embellish Mooka without totally eliminating it. There was not anything original in my embellishments. I am sure that you have seen them in others work. They were however not things that I have tried before.  The only thing I was really conscious of as I was doing the Mooka was to make enough of a curve on the end. I did try to keep them a little consistent in width. I have always tended to put a larger "bulb" on the end of mine than some folks.

I remembered to take  at least two pictures of the process. Did not take pictures of what the original Mooka looked like. Figured that most people could make this out. It is one before shading and one after shading. This was done on a standard black Zentangle® tile.

Here is the one before shading

Not sure why, but to me this has a little bit of an aquatic feel to it. Was not intended.  

May have gotten a little carried away with the shading. I will let you decide. Most of the shading was done with General white chalk pencil. I also used a Fabrico grey marker in a couple of places. I wanted to go back to the Sakura to compare, as I have been using the Insignio more lately.  I used the medium nib for the basic lines, weighting and fill. I did not have any problems with it globbing. Like the Insignio, there were a few times that the ink did not flow as well and I had to go back over a line. I really was conscious about how I was using it. I do not remember if it was something that I heard from Rick & Maria, or someone else that mentioned it in a blog, but they said that you had to "tickle" the paper with the pen. This seemed to work well. That may have also caused some of the lighter cover at times if I had too little contact. I did not feel much pressure at all from touching the paper. 

Here it is with the shading. 

Over all I am pleased with the way that this turned out. There are a couple of embellishments that I am not thrilled with, but I figure that is the purpose of practice- to figure out what works and what doesn't.

I appreciate it if you have made it through this post. It is longer than what I usually do. I hope that some of the information I provided was useful as you experiment and work with black tiles, white gel pens, and of course Mooka. 

Thanks for visiting, As always, comments are welcomed, encouraged, and appreciated.

Go Tangle !!