All the Posts fit to Print. Maybe

Thank you so much to all you tangly and artistic people around the globe who have been leaving some sparkling comments in this space. I can't tell you how wonderful you all make me feel. And a special thanks to Zoe, who seems to share a peculiar and twisted mind!

It's been a crazy busy week. First, I helped out H2ohphoto.com with a photo session at Aqua-Tots Swim School (North Phoenix) Sunday. That's a cool thing I help with, being part-owner, mostly for post-processing of the images. Keeps my hands busy. Alas,keeps me away from my doodles.

It's a lot of fun, really.

Then my daughter wanted to try some wine. She's a recent graduate into adulthood, so it's a rite of passage, I guess. And there are some decent wines to drink here in the desert. Really! We ventured to Oak Creek Winery in Page Springs. Seeing her face crunch up was priceless! We know she doesn't like dry sherry, that's for sure! Lunch was in Cottonwood at the Tavern Grille. They keep "Plungerhead" available, and that's a good thing. It's the official wine of plumbers everywhere!

In between all that I've been trying to keep up with this week's challenges. So, here goes!
First up, "wheat" at EIM:

Health and Happiness

 Semolina

The first one is utilizing folk patterns from One Zentangle a Day, Day 41. The second is a pattern in Zentangle 8. 

Next, the Diva Challenge. I chose String 109 by David Rae at Tanglepatterns.com and I think I followed all the instructions (which can be found here).

THX

I got very frustrated with the IAST, for whatever reason. It could be trying to do it when I really should be sleeping. I was kind of fighting with the string, which I thought should be an "e," to go with the theme there. Thus, my contribution for this week's IAST is a modified string to make an "e." (My daughter regularly just signs, "e," lower case like e.e.cummings, so I'll get back to this another day) With all due respect for Anne Marks who created the original string--

"e"

Lastly the twinchie thing. The word of the week is "home." I really wanted to paste this up with lots of glitter, but that just didn't happen. Like the "e," I'll get back to that!

That pretty much covers what I've accomplished so far this week. There's some oddball stuff, but I'm just going to launch those to my Flickr feed as they don't need much explanation. Back to the photo processing....Have a brilliant day!

Onomato Pea Yeah!

This week has been one long, strange stream of consciousness. It's hard to jump in and find where it all started, but see if you can follow some of my reasoning.
I started the weekend working on Paizel. it's kind of a paisley pattern on Day 31 of my imprisonment...er, ah, of "One Zentangle a Day." I keep trying to get through that book! It is a fabulous reference on zentangly things, but I'd be broke if I tried all the different media. Thus, I'm trying to stick to the methods, not the materials. This is a square using "paizel:"

On one of the other days, the direction was to mix up the strings a little bit to bring fresh air to my style. I woke up that day telling myself that I hadn't used "Hollibaugh" in a while (ever have days like that?!), so I knew that was a prerequisite for that day's tangling. So I scribbled a string that had straight lines, sharp angles as well as curves and drew in the "hollibaugh" on some of the string lines. This is what I accomplished on Sunday:

I carried over the B'tweed from last week and got a very art deco feel for this one. I like how the "Onomato" gives the piece contrast and movement. I looked at it and thought that part looks like peas-in-a-pod, and then it hit me: onomato-pea-yah...ononmatopoeia. It was like I figured out a joke someone told me months ago and I finally got the punch line. [And THAT lent itself to my twinchie for "fire" as a VERB on yesterday's post]
Then I woke up Monday morning to the Diva Challenge for the week with guest artist Cris Letourneau. Her illustration of her tangle "Seton" had lots of onomato in peapods. (Another book I'm using for Zentangle, #9 by Suzanne McNeill has other patterns quite similar to Seton--Poin and Quartered). I immediately saw the pattern as a string (gotta bring some fresh air to my style!) and wanted a very high-contrast result. Since onomato gave me a lot of contrast, I was going for more.

That's how my teenie art brain traveled through the past week. WOW! What a ride! Now to get back to my regularly scheduled life. But before I do, I'll be checking out some of the great artwork in response to this week's Diva Challenge. You should too!

Rainbow Vertigo

In order to get to this week's posting for the Diva Challenge, I need to get up to date on some older work. I got bogged down trying to follow "One Zentangle a Day," when it came around to drawing a feather. That and doing a little traveling, I got off the Zentangle train for a few weeks.
Here are days 27 and 28:

Then it was time for Day 29 and this feather pattern, which I've been avoiding. Until now.

I decided to tackle it along with this week's Diva Challenge. I didn't want to play with rainbows and bright disparate colors (as my collection of color pens is paltry) or to have to explain my politics.

So I stuck with a fairly straight forward Zentangle drawing and drew little compartments full of B&W rainbows. It's a little dense overall, but I think the verdigogh pattern still stands out.

I hope I did that project proud.





Lastly, for the week, it is "The String Thing" challenge using a bunch of tangle patterns I've not tried before and one, called river, that is reminiscent of doodles I've done since high school. I think the result looks like a mummy in the center, an attempt at Halloween, perhaps?

Check that blog next week to see what others have done, always beautiful work and nicely curated by Adele Bruno.

After the Rain

It's been clean-up on our little farmette, tons of mud and yard refuse, so no surprise that all that found it's way into my doodling. The first attempt was just way too chaotic; the second string same as the first just seemed very visual--the pinecones, the single daisy blooming in all the yard and a penny from 1964.
Funny. My brother was born in '64 and will be shortly celebrating his 50th birthday. I have to clean the mud off of it, but I'll send it to him. It's also the fiftieth penny I've found in my yard since I bought the place. Life is funny that way.
That I can't draw my own thumb, not so much.

Paper Batik

I took some time away from the Zentangle a day with Beckah Krahula. I just had to. Her book is great and was my first introduction to the drawing method. BUT, as I've found with EVERY book on the subject I've read so far (and it's a LOT. I like to read how-to books, inspirational and art books. I like to read, I guess)...EVERY book so far has a chapter on color theory. Don't get me wrong, there needs to be an understanding of color by every artist, but it needs to be theory for the particular type of color an artist applies. Oils are different from watercolor and different from Copic and computers and on, and on....I like that she separated the warm from the cool colors and in particular, showed how to 'make' purple from different primaries.

But, I got my back up and got bogged down by yet another color wheel to study, an exercise I totally skipped. Besides, how many different sets of art materials do I really need? The paint, pens, paper, pencils, brushes...I can't find most of my vast collection of stuff and a good bit of the paints have all dried out. Then I see that I'm not all that excited about the tangles-of-the-day. Sigh.

So I did all those tangly challenges instead. And there's the flood mess to clean up which I'm also avoiding, for now.

But I tried her paper batik technique with what I have, including a new clear glitter gelly roll. The first go around, the glitter disappeared and the colors of watercolor were just too precious, too cute for my taste. So I dunked the whole mess in leftover coffee and tried it again, with a different glitter pen. Better, but the glitter still smeared.

I'll give it another try, perhaps with the exact complements of art supplies, especially a clear pen so the paper shows the design, like it's supposed to. I really appreciated that I had to slow down to get the pen to put ink on paper. Thank goodness it was a very small square of paper.

Day 21 Repetitive Patterns

I've been working on the daily exercises in Beckah Krahula's book, One Zentangle a Day, and today is for transforming repetitive patterns. At first, I was a little intimidated by the patterns for the day, but I just took my time with it. And I was going to cram a lot more drawing into this one, but left a swath of white space as it was getting too busy. I drew circles to help tone down the angles. The end result has an Art Deco feel to it, don't you think?

This is also on my Flickr page here. Thanks for taking a look!

I need to get busy as we have guests for dinner, the always entertaining Robert and his lovely wife, Michele with one "L." He's usually busy managing his gallery and painting his landscapes, but in summer the pace is a lot slower (as in, open by appointment only). So, we can relax on the patio with snacks and frosty beverages and perhaps, just perhaps, watch the rain. If we're lucky.