Rainy Tuesday

Well, it's my favourite weather today - rain!  And yes, I am serious! [can't you see my serious face?].  I really love the rain - blowy, blustery, wet and wonderful, misty and delicate, torrential - however it comes it feels GOOD.  I like the moisture, the sound, the delicious scent of the air once it's been well-washed, the strange light in the sky before it breaks open and even the crashing of a midnight lightning strike!  I am blessed to live with protected parkland for my backyard neighbour and it's wonderful the way the critters respond to the weather.  It's fun to see who comes out and who goes into their den, who flicks their fur/feathers/tail and gets on with business while another creature cannot be found for love nor money if there's any type of precipitation in the air at all!  In honour of this wild wetness, I am showing you two tangles today - LEAU and AGUA.  I used them in my ZIA here, and this is only the second time I've shown original tangle patterns.  I hope you like them!

Happy Tuesday!

Happy Friday !

Happy Friday, everyone!  In celebration of the end of the work week and anticipation of the weekend, I've decided to start rolling out the tangles my fellow CZT, Ruth Howell, and I have been devising.  Since it's proven so popular with a number of artists (seen here, for example) I've decided the first one should be ORGANZA, designed by Ruth.  It's a pretty and fun tangle that is also delicate and variable - somewhat like Ruth, in fact! *G*

You can also see it used as a tangleation here, and here and here and here.  I think I'll stART a Tangles page to collect the directions together in one central location for ease of reference.

Happy Friday!

Open Hearts

Time constraints have limited my opportunities to check out the responses to Laura's latest challenge, but I've been thinking quite a bit about her baby boy, Artoo, and the hearts and minds around the globe bending their will to help him heal... what a wonderful world we have!  I have always said beaders are the nicest people around, but now I realize that it's ALL creative souls.  Not the art snobs, not the insecure people who only feel confident when they can run someone else down, but those who feel a genuine internal NEED to create.  Here are all these wonderful artists, some professional, the majority squeezing art into lives already ridiculously busy with work, family and community, and yet they lay aside their own challenges to send love and hope to a tiny child they will (probably) never meet.  I was inspired by these thoughts to offer up a second take on this challenge - a heart made with a combination of two previous challenges (simplicity and double-string) - and dedicate it to all those fabulous, thoughtful, decent, considerate people who make this world worth living in.  In short, this one's for you!  I hope you like it.

Happy Wednesday!

Sunday in Colour

Today was fun - all afternoon spent beading and then all evening spent tangling!  In such a great environment I felt the need to bring out the pencil crayons and play a bit in colour.  This is actually a tiny little tangle - it's done on an ATC (2.5 x 3.5 inches).  This made for a challenge - to make an interesting string in such a constrained space, fill it with some pattern without overwhelming the tiny dimensions of the shapes, and then add colour, again without overpowering the entire composition.  I found my brain blanked out (I do have an excuse - I was the teacher this afternoon!), and had my friend, Ruth, give me the name of a tangle and that's what would go in the next open space.  It was actually a really fun way to fill a string.  I made the string and did the artwork, but Ruth chose each pattern.  It was like a collaboration with only one pair of working hands.  Fun!  Do you think it worked?

Happy Sunday!

A Balloon All To Myself

Today I am answering Sandra Strait's challenge - Tell Your Story, Be Part Of The Art.  When I needed a break this evening, I picked up my Zentangle journal and created a quick, simple string.  I tried to fill the spaces as quickly as I could with the first tangles that came to my mind; not too much forethought or planning.  When done I enjoyed the shading and sat down to consider.  Hmmm - what is it?  What is it telling me?  What memory does it summon or thought provoke?  I am in the unique position of being the middle of four children (older brother, two younger sisters are twins!).  As a child treats were rationed carefully (all the love we could handle, as long as it was free!) and something as silly and short-lived as a helium balloon was seldom seen.  In my mind's eye I can see a young girl in her sixties summer jumper, spinning in the park, eyes to the sky, arms wide, watching her balloon twirl above her - I can feel the warm sun, smell the grass, experience the building dizziness... what do you see in this?

Happy Saturday!

Friday Affirmation

Another crummy day-job day (I know, "same old, same old"... *G*) with four unpaid hours of overtime.  Arriving home at bedtime, tired and hungry, I ate and turned to my computer where I found an email from an online friend.  Susan (http://arts-4-all.blogspot.com/) was continuing a conversation about the necessity to find time to be creative and how a friend of hers could benefit from Zentangle.  Zentangling is pretty much the perfect creative pursuit for the harried lives we sometimes lead.  With very basic and minimal supplies, a few moments of stillness - waiting in line, sipping a coffee, riding public transit - is really all that is needed to nourish our creative souls.  Every act of creation I commit is my connection to the greater universe, a touch of the divine in my mundane life, an opportunity to rejoice in possibility.  I really appreciated the reminder from Susan, and so I got out my Zentangle journal and tangled away.  While I don't think this is necessarily my best work, I now feel content, peaceful and satisfied.  NOT how I returned home today!  In fact, I may just fall right asleep after I sign off! *G*  So here is my very simple, very quick, very helpful (to me!) little tangle du jour:

Happy Friday!

Four Elements

Another ZIA for you (Amy, this is a recently-coined short form for Zentangle Inspired Art; I like it as it's so much faster to type!*G*).  After yesterday's post I was feeling really grounded and positive and happy with how things were going.  Then work happened. *sigh*  I needed to find my feet again and my play journal drawings seemed to help.  The early works seem so free when seen after a gap of some months.  I like the patterns and linework.  Even the lack of shading is somehow appealing to me.  Looking backward seems to be soothing.  Hmmmm.... every night I pray - not a traditional prayer, perhaps, but more of a thought conversation.  Invariably when I begin to "talk" about the present stresses, asking for guidance / tolerance / forgiveness, I find myself led by the hand, back to the things of real worth - family, friends, relationships, the absolute wealth of gifts we all overlook every day.  I've called this ZIA "Four Elements" as it seems to embody four precious gifts - Air, Fire, Earth, Water.  I've always been drawn to water and I'm never happier than when I'm near it.  The earth and its many forms is an ongoing fascination - clay, metal, stone... it's endless.  Fire is an atavistic connection to my very soul and I've felt the need to "touch" it as long as I've had a memory.  Air is not only essential, but invigorating or soothing, compelling or repelling and always, always changing.  With these gifts we are able to survive and thrive.  Without them we cannot continue.  And yet, these four elements have been present for aeons prior to us and will exist long after.  Maybe looking back is what provides the perspective to appreciate the now.  Maybe the real appeal of my early tangling efforts is the challenge they represented and how far I've travelled since beginning the struggle to master this new expression of my art.  Maybe it's knowing that the journey has begun and promises to last... I hope you like this drawing, and I hope you enjoy your own journey.

Happy Thursday!



Double Strung - REDUX

Gee, I'm having a lot of fun revisiting previous challenges from the Diva (http://iamthedivaczt.blogspot.com/).  Today I played with the double-string concept again.  I made this voluptuous, twisting string and got stuck.  I liked the string, but what to do with it?  Since my imagination tends to follow a bent (not TWISTED, just BENT! *G*) path, I decided to fill in the spaces with only grid-based patterns.  Then I took yet another bend in the path and decided that all the grid patterns also had to be CURVY (see what I mean? okay, maybe twisted is possible...).  Once I was happy with this, the "ribbons" formed by the string needed to be filled.  This time I decided that only lines could be used.  Not only that, but STRAIGHT lines to fill the CURVY ribbons (yes, twisted is showing real possibility here....).  When these were completed the overall design felt a bit like a roller coaster, but somehow lacked life.  Life?  Let there be life!  I "grew" some lovely vines from the indentations of the form and voila!  I finally liked it.  In fact, I liked it a lot - do you?

Happy Tuesday!



Floomp!

I have no idea where this word came from or why it decided to land with a thud upon the picture I'll show you today but art hath no reason... I was idling through my Zentangle journal, wondering if I felt like creating a picture just for today or if I should post something already in existence when the following pic yelled "Floomp!" at me and insisted on being made part of the parade.  And so, in deference of a power much pushier and more confident than I am, I present to you "Floomp":

Happy Friday!



Monday Night In The Emerg

Sorry for the no-post Monday, folks.  My lovely daughter ended up in Emergency in the city where she attends University and I had to dash out there (three snowy hours cross-province!) to check on her.  I ended up staying overnight to be sure she'd be okay (and she will, thank you - one of those "women's issues" some of us face) then race back in time to book the boss' ORs for this week. Phew!!!!  Enough stress.  On the other hand, I reminded myself that a) my daughter WANTED her mommy (yay! - that'll carry me for awhile!), b) she is going to be just fine and c) she does go to school in a particularly lovely area of the country.

As a result, although I plan to use it more and vastly improve on this quickie version, I did pass some of the time between tests playing with Ixorus, as per Laura's Challenge of the Week (http://www.iamthedivaczt.blogspot.com/).  I'm not very pleased with this particular piece, I think you can see how scattered my mind was and how poorly I selected the patterns to tangle - also how dark the overall piece became - but I present for your critique "Monday Night In The Emergency Department".

Happy Tuesday!

Life's a Frill !

I started to say "thrill", then had a second look at the image I am posting today and realized that Life Is A FRILL (*wink*). 

I had a fabulous day today - my buddy owns the best bead shop in the world and I spent the day teaching interesting, fun people to do Viking Knit with fine wire; a day of good company, surrounded by beads and creativity - yahoo!  Another buddy was sweet to note my loss of voice in the morning and managed to restore it in time for the first class.  She then had me over this evening for tea and doctoring (Ruth is not only a gifted artist but a Homeopathic Practitioner as well - check her out at http://www.schedulewellnessnow.com/) and I think I may actually be able to get to the office in the AM.  Don't I have the best of friends?

We did some Zentangling this evening as well and I'm going to post a drawing I finished last fall.  It's not in my regular Zentangle journal, it's in a little square orange journal Ruth gifted to me last Christmas and I reserve for my "experimentation".  If I'm not sure of a new technique or how something will work, I like to test it out privately and see how it works for me before adding it to a known repertoire or body of work.  I had just begun to loosen up with my Zentangle patterns and shading.  I'm pretty happy with the tactile / textile effect of the patterns and the looping (again! - no giggles, Shelly!) string.  What do you think of the balance?

Happy Sunday!

Another Week Gone By

Wow - what a crazy busy week!  Soon to relocate at work (day job) and today was registration where I teach beading.  A bit too much stimulation, all told, but hey - I can take it! *G*

Today I'm going to share a peek at the very first Zentangle done by a friend of mine, Tiena H.  She had heard my friends and I discussing Zentangles and received a gift of art supplies for Christmas with a Zentangle intention.  Whether she realized it or not, I forgot to ask, but she fit the challenge for Orbs!  This is her virgin Zentangle, with the technique figured out totally on her own, and I think it rocks!  Got a few good words for me to pass on to her?

I would also like to thank everyone for their wonderful encouragement and generous comments.  You make my day EVERY day! 

Happy Saturday!

Needed a Bit of Colour Today...

...so I decided to post a piece I did at the end of the Fall.  It's one of the first I've ever employed colour with and I'm STILL not sure how I feel about it.  What do you think of it?  Any helpful suggestions?

Happy Friday!

Sunday, Sunday....

I love Sunday afternoons!  I got chores done, worked on some metal clay sample pieces, spent a bit of time tangling - suddenly realized I didn't post yesterday (sorry 'bout that!)... Sundays are the best day because they are LOOOOONNNNGGGGGGG.  I don't know how, but Sunday afternoons can easily expand to contain about twice the time of any other afternoon during the week.  Elastic time.  Einstein should've worked on this!

Anyhow, here's a tangle I enjoyed doing.  I used my own fabric swags and was thrilled by the way they turned out in this drawing.  Sometimes things just come together, you know?  I also used a number of fun tangles and variations of others.  The mix-and-match aspect of tangle patterns is seriously seductive - I could spend a lot more time drawing these than I have hours in the day!



Happy Sunday!

Day Two and Already Playing Catch-Up!

I was thrilled, shocked and delighted to log in today (love that lunch break!) and see that I already have four followers (thank you!) and umpteen views... how do y'all find me, anyhow?  Since the short period spent responding to Laura Harms' Challenge #3, "Eyes Wide Shut", was such a delicious break in my day yesterday, I decided I might as well take a few minutes to respond to Challenge #1, "Simplicity", and Challenge #2, "Double Strung", and be all nicely up to date!  Collections of things are always a delight and keeping up with each weekly challenge should also be quite inspirational, so voila!  Here are the fruits of today's labours.

First up is my take on Challenge #1, "Simplicity":

I found I really enjoyed this.  I've always worked with diagonally curving flourishes (some atavistic symbol must be calling to me) and I chose to tangle it with only one, repetitive yet free-form element.  Rather than shade the tangle, I also made the choice to simply lay the "shadow" on the "ground" of the illustration.

I like the open airiness of the finished piece and yes, it did please me with what I view as its simplicity.

What do you think?  Did I interpret the challenge well or would you advise something different?  What does simplicity mean to you in your own artwork?  Do you find it a positive or negative descriptor?  Do you respond or back away from it as a challenge?  Do you know why you react the way you do?

Always food for thought.....

Next up is my response to Challenge #2, "Double Strung":

By drawing the string with two pencils, you "double your pleasure, double your fun!" (with apologies to Doublemint gum!).

I used to do this for calligraphy and illustration purposes years ago and had managed to forget just how much fun it can be!  I liked being able to use more patterns and adaptive shading.

Have you tried double stringing yet?  I do recommend it as a wonderfully fun way to shake up your art.

You can check out the challenges on Laura's website at http://www.iamthedivaczt.com/ where so many talented artists have shared their work.  It's both inspiring AND challenging - a double-header, Laura; way to go!

Again I apologize for the poor quality of the materials used and the photos.  I hope to improve both shortly.

Happy Wednesday!