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!

Two Weeks of Inchies

Somehow, the easier the subject matter, the tougher it gets to wrap my head around it. The Inchie word last week was "vegetable." How hard could that be? Making a living won out, so I passed on it until today. Doing a little de-cluttering of my to-do list.
For the vegetable, I chose to take a photograph of the last harvest from my garden. While other Arizona gardeners are gearing up for a fine season of cool vegetables, I have to put mine to rest. Shade and gophers are my enemies. Thus, these hot, hot, hot! peppers!

This week's inchie is "violet." I saw that another artist chose a perfect little violet  from her house and this is mine. It's a houseplant I acquired with my house and it likes to be outside, surviving through the heat of an Arizona summer. Every part of it is purple. I found a seed company calling it "Purple Heart," while the botanical name is Tradescantia pallida. What a mouthful for a tiny little flower:

OK, those weren't so hard, right?! Well, then there's the twinchies. I went a little farther afield with these. Last week was "pumpkin." Follow me here...there's pumpkin and then there's...

Oh, boy! That's a stretch, huh?! 

This week it's "fire." Right this minute I think a cozy blanket, coffee, a good book and some logs burning in a fireplace would make a great combination (We're having a bit of a chill here in AZ today and I'll be dipped if I turn on the heat!). But that's not what my teenie art brain had in mind at all. I've had onomatopoeia on my mind (that'll be my next post...but I'm getting ahead of myself), so this roughly translated into:

I think gets me all caught up on these things. Until next week....

Check out all the inchie ladies; they are a diverse crew with talents that spread the galaxy. Beads, thread, paper, paint, oh, my!