She's a Maniac!

Over at EIM the theme this week is "Nymph." Unlike many weeks this past year, I was not at a complete loss as to what to do. However, I learned that there is a tangle called, "Nymph," by Melinda Barlow that I'd not seen before (or was blissfully unawares).
If you have been here before, you may recognize my discontent with patterns featuring triangles.
UGH.
But, I will NOT be defeated!
And as my procrastinator self loves a good distraction; I dove right in!

Nymph Bijoux

Nymphie Twinchies and Zinchies, oh my!
on Waffle box paperboard

Then I pulled out a box of Staedtler Karat Aquarelle, which up to now I had not opened. 

Little did I know what I've been missing!

Nymph
Mixed-Media Fridge Magnets
Aquarelle, Sharpie, Perle Cotton and Sequins

Whew! I even made a French knot with some antique Perle cotton from my Nanna's stash. I could hardly contain myself. That's when I started singing the disco song from "Flashdance," which started out more from the Nymph side of things than the mania. 

Think about it. Uh huh.

But I digress. This is a (mostly) family-oriented venue, after all.

Where were we? Oh, yeah....

I wanted to see what these Nymphs could do in a more traditional setting, so this came about:

Nymph
Before Shading

Nymph
After Shading

Which do you prefer?

Along the way I saw samples of this week's Diva Challenge focusing on simplicity, or at least giving tangles some space to breathe. I enjoy Laura's challenges, but I had not done one in a bit.

So you get this:

Simple Flower
Free!

Totally unadorned, I want you to have this to do with it as you like. If you do decide to use this, please do me two favors: 1) credit me for drawing this simple pattern in the first place and 2) show me what you did with it by link or attachment to:

1xeritas@gmail.com

I'd love to see what, if anything, happens with it!

Thanks for stopping by! Have a brilliant day! 

The Postman Bringeth

This past week has been hectic. It included providing a part-time living arrangement for my son, which included putting a bed in the office and rearranging just about every other room in the house to accommodate the stuff that had been where the bed is now. It's chaotic right now.
Obviously, not a planned-for event.

I was oh, so happy when I went to the mailbox and retrieved some goodies that are perfect fodder for collage and other artsy projects. A much needed distraction.

First, a thank you note from a birthday girl became:

Spring Fashion (1963)
Greeting card, gift wrap,
Duck tape (in glitter!) and a
Rhinestone

It's a bit more "girlie" than my usual, but I think it has just the right edginess to it to not stray into "cute" territory. Besides, the woman's expression just glares at you as if to say, "You can't afford me."

An invitation from the Phoenix zoo had the perfect collection of images to attempt a mosaic for the next TwobyTwo twinchie challenge. Coming up next is, "Nine-patch." Cutting perfect squares was, ahem, tedious, then trying to arrange them?! 

Whose idea was this? Oh, yeah, mine! 

Tigers
Nine-patch mosaic and
Hodge-podge

I don't know if I'll try the perfectly square mosaic thing again. Like, maybe never!.I'll stick to my more typical throw stuff down and see what works methodology, which I also did. I still have a bunch of pretty pictures to play with another time. 

I may go see the beautiful tigers, but I'm not joining the zoo for $179; that I'm fairly certain of.

Lastly, the same mailman left a postbox out in the pouring rain and we found it about three hours later. His job may be to deliver the mail in the rain, but mine is not to go schlepping to find it! The box was soaked and the corrugated paper peeling apart. Luckily the paper scrapbooking supplies inside did not get wet!

But the box provided plenty of fodder for little artworks! Besides, corrugated paper is my favorite (and I still owe you all my story as to WHY!)!
So, I collected some goodies.

The teenie paper has a note from my daughter asking to play with a friend--actually, more of a demand. I remember she had finished her chores, made an accounting thereof and slipped the note to me in the bathroom!

So I glued some of this up after applying some paint and trying to get 400 grit sandpaper to stick (it wanted very badly to curl!). I don't consider it a big success, but it includes my offering for the EIM, "texture."

Texture Inchie in a
Twinchie

You win some and you lose some! I'm going to try working on some more Nine-Patch thingies. Don't you want to join the fun?

It's....

We've been watching the DVDs of Monty Python's Flying Circus, the preeminent British comedy from the Seventies. I think we have made it through the fourth of sixteen tons. You know the beginning? Where the guy who looks like he has lived under a rock for twenty years goes through some sort of difficulty to just be able to say, "It's...."?
A very important line he has, to introduce the show. Then it's the full complement of collage images that include flowers popping out of heads and not just a couple naked ladies....

I think that's where my fascination with collage began--the vintage photographs, the sometimes silly juxtaposition of images. Everything is fair game.

The word of the week at the art challenge I host, the TwobyTwobyTuesday, is: "IS." I know it's a bit of a stretch, but there it is. It's a concept I've wanted to pursue for awhile, at least since Bill Clinton was in office and that whole mess with the blue dress. I try not to venture into the territory of "Mature Audiences ONLY," as my kids like to see what I'm up to. I'm not attempting censure on their part but while they are adults, they are still my children.
Yet, when I pulled out my collage goodies, I pulled together this cuteness:

Is
Magazines, dictionary definition and
Greeting card

My daughter LOVES sunflowers. I have many fridge magnets that I have made with sunflowers on them, but this one is specifically for her.

I put together this one starting with a tough challenge over at EIM. Every Monday can be challenging, but what do you do with this week's, "yogurt?" Well, for starters, you empty a container! Lately, my favorite is a Greek-style plain with honey and Grape Nuts, which is what I'll probably have for lunch. In my collage stash I found a Yoplait lid for Breast Cancer awareness. It promptly became an element in yet another fridge magnet!

I'm all for that, and I think it's a stitch that our football players are running around with pink accessories this month (those shoes!!!) to draw attention to the cause. But it's not the leading killer of women--coronary disease and accidents far outweigh cancer deaths. And it's not even the leading cause of cancer deaths--lung cancer is, all the way around.

I bring that up as a friend of ours recently went under the knife suspecting lymphoma and found he is in very good health and another who was the image of perfect health, was diagnosed with liver cancer just a month ago and died last night. We are saddened; we're to go to New Jersey to see him next week. Right now, we're still going....

Life is precious. Enjoy dessert NOW! One of my favorites: pound cake covered with dollops of Yoplait lemon yogurt and whipped cream with sliced strawberries on top. Mayoe I'll have THAT for lunch!

Meanwhile, see what all the lovely ladies are doing over at EIM and please check out the TwobyTwo. Everybody's welcome to join in the fun! It's....

Life is a Circus

This is monsoon season. It's hot and steamy and I'm not used to it. Lived plenty of years near the shore with plenty of humidity, but it's not what the desert is usually like. Except for this time of year. This is what "siestas" are for--work early in the day or late at night and rest in the middle.
Otherwise, you have no energy.
Funny that the word of the week for  EIM is "energy."
The first thing that I thought of was the notation, "NRG." It litters my science notebooks from school, a shorthand of sorts from the seventies. From there my brain went to the Kreb's cycle, or how we generate energy on a sub-cellular level. I wasn't going to try to cram that diagram into a square-inch or even try to wrap my way-past-academia brain around it. (I'll leave that to my sister, the Professor--she gets paid to do that).
I have a bunch of other ideas, instead:

Solar Flare from pcmag.com, Turning water and sunlight into food and oxygen from science.jrank.org and
"IVY MIKE," the first successful hydrogen bomb, 1952 from CTBTO

No original work amongst the choices thus far, so I reached little further...

I've been reading about solar power. In Arizona we have a wealth of it (330 sunny days per year!); it's just a matter of turning it into usable power. It would be fabulous to live off-grid! However, the electric company has instituted a nasty surcharge on homes with solar panels and solar companies are not keen on mobile-home installations. Federal tax incentives have expired and the value of solar homes is less than comparable homes without it. I found this in the venerable Arizona Republic Saturday (Valley and State, p. 1F, "Rooftop Solar: Does it add Value to your Home?" by Ryan Randazzo and Catherine Reagor).
The accompanying photograph was a riot of patterns just waiting for me! (You just never know from whence inspiration may come!) Now we're getting somewhere!

Solar Roof Installation
Rachael Le Goubin/The Arizona Republic

Let's start with some zinchies!

Then move along to a bunch of twinchies!

SOLAR

Still have that SOLAR theme going on!
Then on to other ideas....

Lavender Fields
My first set of four Somethings
Found papers, 
Acrylic paint and beads

Based on an idea from
EIM and ICAD

And onto all the Zentangly choices I can muster:

TM3 No. 005

Singing in the Rain
DIVA 226

Fried Eggs
IAST 102

I was still trying to muster that "enoughness" idea from last week. It took everything I had to NOT fill in that white space for the "String Thing." In fact, in disclosure the Diva art is my second attempt. The first one was so absolutely crazy it was a real circus. I may post that over on Flickr, but this has been a week and I'm done for now!
Thanks so much for dropping by! I appreciate the company as much as I appreciate the individuals that put the effort into creating the various challenges and prompts to get the creative juices flowing.
Have a brilliant day!

In Living Color

We ran off to visit family in Colorado last week. "Run" being a relative term as it was 11 hours each way, but if my sister, the Professor, could travel 2000 miles to visit her daughter, we could go 700, right? I'd never been in that part of the States, among these massive granite peaks. I was not handling the altitude well or this weird time warp sensation as they're just now having spring weather, and we're well into the throes of the season I call, "Inferno." Lupines and columbines are for February. Snow?!!! (Sorry we missed the skiing at Breckenridge on the Fourth of July. NOT!)

And a happy belated Independence Day to my stateside friends! We are blessed with the Freedoms hard won on the battlefields many moons ago. We are free to use our creative voice to say how we feel or what we deem important. We can love, run, pray, sleep, eat and just be.

Me? I'm glad we're not travelling anywhere this week and I can just be--and not sitting in a car! I'm glad to be resuming my regularly scheduled programming--I started this creative week over at EIM. I like the challenge of working on just one teenie inch and it's a fun group of women from around the planet. (I don't know why there aren't any men in this group to create inchies). The prompt for the week is "yarn." I always have plenty handy, but I really wanted to illustrate "spinning a good yarn," as in telling a story. I couldn't really squeeze that into an inch so I went kind of old school (with a tip of the hat to Chrissy who loves her bling!). While I was looking for some materials, I found an advice column and on the reverse was a picture of a ball of yarn and thus a twinchie was born!

The other thing I've worked on is the Diva Challenge, with guest blogger Jen Crutchfield. Her challenge this week to all tangly people is to use color, but limit it to two or three. I typically limit it to two--black and white, with shades of grey in between--so anything outside of that is a stretch. I also try not to peek at what others are up to until I get mine finished. You know? No cheating!? But I stole a look at the work of one of the ladies who does both of these challenges--Jean Chaney. (She's a CZT here in AZ! She also typically thinks WAAAAY outside the box for the EIM. Endearing quality, that!). Jean drew a tangly piece based on a process called "Zentwining," created by Lynn Mead.
I like drawing twisty turny ribbons so I thought that'd be an interesting way to go. I even cracked open a package of artist tiles instead of just opening my journal. I can do this! Well, I made a few attempts and it wasn't anything like I figured it would be, but my teenie brain saw a similarity to the ribbons and well....

Collection of some bracelets
Including a new agate one
from the Professor

Materials--Some Colors!

I ended up collecting two Pitt pens, one conte pencil, eight colored wax pencils, one graphite, one Y&C gel and three Sakura glaze pens, way more than just two per the instructions. I was very excited last week to have actually FOUND my colored pencils, which have been packed away for a few years and left unused for much longer than that, so I may have gone overboard! I practically forgot how to use these things, especially all together (such as how useless a conte is over a wax pencil and if I'm going to go all out, use the good stuff and skip the leftover kids craft supplies).  I'm much happier with this result than what I had going on, but I'll have to try hand at Zentwining another time.

Only next time in black and white!

Thanks for visiting my twisty turny world. Be sure to check out what these other creative types are making!

Such a Slacker

I've been...RIIIIGHT!
In between the demolition and the sanding, staining, procuring (SURELY a day without The Home Depot is like a day without sunshine!), finding out we can't quite do what we set out to do, and now! The wine chiller arrived and that SURELY requires more procurement.
And that's besides being self-employed, doing some parenting of adult children, entertaining friends (who better to understand that this is a construction zone!).
Plus four days of rain in sunny Arizona?!
I still managed a couple zinchies, including the one for this week's Every Inchie Monday:

The word for the week is "love," so I picked the heart pattern Love Line.

I don't know about you, but that Phroz is a real bugaboo. It seems to me I cannot wrap my head around those patterns based on triangles. How hard can they be? Yet, it still took me FOUR tries to get to that one. 

The upside is I have plenty of materials for doodling (cartons from HD and paper--Enhanced matte from Epson, a personal fave for photographs)! 

I also made some fridge magnets and worked on what could be almost construed as a traditional Zentangle (save for the fact I use Sharpies and drew on a a corrugated paper box. Other than that, it's for real, right?!)

Thanks so much for visiting! Can't wait to see what everyone else has been up to this past week.

Awaiting the Storm

Hurricane Odile is due ANY MINUTE and I'm busy...solving puzzles. I should be gathering supplies and making sure we survive another flooding, but I'd rather be playing with a growing collection of art supplies and just generally exercising some grey matter.
For your viewing pleasure I have selected some of this weeks' art blog challenges. First up is the Every Inchie Monday word of the week is: Schedule. My first thought was, "Who has time for that?" Then I had to rethink the concept as I always have to squeeze in time for making art. It always seems to be the LAST thing I do each day, and that's not necessarily a good thing for a self-employed artist. HA!
Then, the Twinchie thing this week is "Teddy." I love my teddies, yes, all of them. But I digress. I've even made a few teddy bears and don't really want to do that again anytime soon. My son has one that I made many moons ago, packed away. At 24, he's not really into that kind of thing, but I'll save him for his son (His name is Carlton Ritz, as he used to be dressed up in a bowtie, very formal, but I'm not sure which box he's stuffed into or I'd take his picture for this exercise). So, I went with Teddy Roosevelt and one of his famous sayings. And a teddy bear.

Lastly, my boyfriend is a big fan of Neil Young. He understands Neil's language and speaks Canadian quite well, right, eh?! Neil's not a great singer, but his lyrics are profound and moving. Listening to "Helpless" the other night I challenged myself to create an image that illustrates the line about the timeless, "Blue, blue window behind the stars..." and the yellow moon rising. The moon and the window images are from my new friends at the Morgue Files, a collection of FREE photographic images; the stars are from NASA. If you haven't been to those sites, what are you waiting for?

As always, have a brilliant day and thank you for your kindnesses, wonderful comments and just generally being in my corner as cheerleaders!

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.

Bonjour, Bijou!

C'est fantastique, n'est pas?

While i've been working on some fridge magnets to decorate a relatively new fridge (it replaced a 41-year old harvest gold charmer that came with the house. Know anything that has lasted 41 years? And still WORKS?) and was thinking, wouldn't it be great to do a bunch of Zentangles about two-inches square? The black fridge is just demanding to be decorated!
Of course, somebody had already figured that out, that "somebody" being those tangly people at Zentangle [NB: I had nothing to do with it.]

So, this week's challenge from the Diva was to break out the Bijoux, work on those "twinchies."

While I was at it, I worked on another challenge I found along the way (another idea I got scooped on!), to use my name as a string, but went with my "art signature" as it's kind of loopy (like me!), and some other ideas that my brain's been playing with.

I also finished a project I started on yesterday and finished in Photoshop (gotta keep the digital muscles flexed, too!). I'ts not perfect, but supposedly no mistakes, right? I had onions on the brain as my daughter was visiting and one of her favorite meals starts with caramelized onions, goat cheese and bread. Today I'm putting onion sets in next to my roses (I read they make roses smell sweeter, crazy, huh?) and tomatoes (to keep pests away). And dinner? French onion soup! Tres magnifique!

Check out the how-to for "Allium" by JJ LaBarbera here.

With gracious thanks to all you tangly people for inspiration and encouragement. And for also checking out My Flickr Page. Merci beaucoup.

Fridge Magnets

This is not a new idea, certainly. I've helped out the Sonoran Arts League with their "mini-masterpiece" fundraising that artists make on two-inch canvas. These are just on foam board, so they're lighter and well, easier to work with.

The first one was to just stretch those Zen-tangly muscles. The other was prompted by a) Every Inchie Monday's suggestion for "orange," even though it's two inches square, b) a collage suggestion to use single-source materials and c) some leftovers from another project. It's a bit off-the edge and intended to be tongue-in-cheek. (If you dissect the cooking instructions for those round waffles, that's what you get!)

I like the simplicity of scale. I like having new magnets for my new house! You can never have enough fridge magnets!