Seconds and Thirds

There's a lot that is going on this month.

There's St. Patrick's and Easter is early this year. Spring has officially sprung, though we've had almost summer weather for a month already! Temperatures have regularly passed 90 degrees or 30 Celsius. [NB: To me, Summer officially starts when the temperature passes 100, late April. We have a fifth season, Inferno, when temps break 115 in June or July, before the rains arrive].

But there's one (unofficial) holiday that dares not to be missed: Pi(e) Day! This year is the only time this century that the date, March 14, 2016, matches Pi, the mathematical construct, to 4 decimal places (3.1416).  Of course, pi has been calculated to million places and beyond, but hard to imagine.
So, let's have pie!

That's the rationale behind the IAST this past week. When I saw Adele's choices for tangles, I immediately knew where this was going (sometimes you just KNOW):

I suspect I'm not going to be the only one who sees it this way, but I hope it's an original thought. I really took my time to color it, vowing to sit still more than a few minutes. I think it paid off.

I saw a Zentangle blogger that mentioned she needed a lesson in composition. Now, I think Zentangle is supposed to be without preconceived design, quite unlike the example above. That said, there are some concepts that contribute to "some are better than others." I found this rather concise description of the elements and principles of design (there are twelve parts in all, so it's hard to make simple).
It's a start, anyway.
As a photographer, a fine composition can be gained by following the "rule of thirds." Think: tic-tac-toe. (It's the same concept that posits that you NEVER put the horizon in the middle of a landscape, although rules are meant to be broken once you learn them).
For an intellectual pursuit, I decided to apply this "rule" to this drawing.

X's Mark the Focal Points

Where the grid marks meet is a focal point and creates a dynamic composition when something is placed there, and the idea is to have A focal point, just one. It just so happens that a cherry landed on that mark. The other mark shows the end of the garden path, creating MOVEMENT into the drawing. Additionally, there is CONTRAST--the black background area, the complimentary COLORS of red and green and the REPETITION of the little squares, a pattern I call, "Confetti."

Did I plan all that? Not intentionally. Do you think it works? 

Does this little tutorial make sense, help out or just confound?
There's one other element of composition that every artist needs to learn and nobody talks about because it defies description: that moment when the artwork is finished, the materials are layed down and no more fussing.
It is "done."
Putting a signature on it helps, it's a signal of sorts. (I need to do that!)

I put the pen down after signing the Diva challenge this morning:

I was attempting to be very deliberate and almost too elaborate and suddenly veered into cartoony mode.
OK, step away from the journal pages...!
Well, it made a good segue to the Inchie challenge, which continues with themes from the "Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy" with the prompt this week of "door."
I have a very important door, one Door out of The Doors, our front door (on the inside, covering up an old mail slot) and "Would you like to trade your prize for what's behind Door number 2?"

DOORS

Did you know Jim Morrison had a song titled, "Hitchhiker?" Strange coincidence?
Perhaps, not. Life can be like that, right?

Life and Art, a Juxtaposition

This past week was a whirlwind and as usual life can be, well, very lifey. I won't go into details, but if it's in you, pray for my brother and pray for my son. God will know why and take care of the rest. Particularly my brother, Craig, as thoughts of him weigh heavily on me this week and I can't be near to him right now. My son, Terrance, moved nearby this year and I can keep closer tabs on him.
In fact, last week he asked if we could do a little road trip together (before his recent troubles fell into place). It's not unusual for us to go to Prescott or Sedona, a mere hour away, when the opportunity arises. But, he had much grander plans in mind. Real Grand.
Grand Canyon Grand.
And away we went on a DAY trip to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. I've done it before, I can do it again, right? We had breakfast at the Cameron Trading Post and afternoon coffee at Hermit's Rest and he took me for a lovely dinner at the grand old El Tovar Lodge. (oooh, fancy!)

Brr. The East View from Desert Tower

On the walls in the Dining Room (I told you it was fancy. Capital Letter fancy!) are paintings of various tribes of Arizona. Our table was in front of the fire, a view window of the sunset over the canyon and the paintings of the Hopi and Navaho. TJ remarked that they chose the phonetic spelling rather than the commonly used, "Navajo."

I was rather amused when I set out my plans for my zinchies this week and I saw the pattern, Navaho. I just HAD to do that one. I also had to do Amoeba as my teenie brain thought there should be some such pattern and come to find that indeed there is one of those already. 

I had to try Pinch with my brand new Spectrum Noir markers as I saw a tutorial in a zentangly book where the shading of that pattern was done with markers and with pencils. (If I remember which book, I'll be sure to make a note of it). 

I hardly know what to do with those markers; I'll get to that sometime. 

And I thought I'd better give the patterns for this week's Diva Challenge a go before I actually tried an honest attempt at it. I really found Margaret Bremner's "And then some..." blog entry on Cubine to be very helpful. I like grid- and geometric-based tangles, but she goes a LOT farther with it, so check that out. 

I found Slices on Banar's Flickr feed. (I find her work to be very inspirational). It's similar to Kuke, which I tried out last week (Slices is based on half-rounds while Kuke divides a circle in thirds). I'll be trying out some investigative work on those two patterns and a third I found that follows a line. Could be interesting. Perhaps.

Without further ado, here's my attempt of tangling up Cubine with Pokeroot. Could there have been a more disparate pair?

Over the Cliff

Diva Challenge 208

I actually drew a string line and did some massive shading, all at 3am. As I was saying, I have a lot of corrugated boxing materials from the construction project, so I used some for my drawing this week, including this entry.
NEWS FLASH:
I created a Flickr group for Zinchies! Check it out here! I thought maybe, just maybe, it would be a way to create a wall full of zinchies, a virtual library of patterns and designs from intrepid tanglers who make inchie-sized ZIAs. 

I appreciate your checking in on my ramblings, my drawing and your prayers. We all could use some extra help and inspiration now and again, right?

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!

Drupe Flower

Adele Bruno of Tickled to Tangle put out her challenge of the week to use string 056 by Jill Dobis and some tangles that start with the letter "D." At first, I thought there was too much going on as there were a lot of loops in the string and some fancy patterns to chose from. I started to take some out of the picture then added some favorites for a high contrast image.
I like the official "Drupe," which forms a blossom. At the last minute I added some "dust bunnies," a pattern by Margaret Bremnan, in pencil to carry through the garden theme.

If I try this again I think I'd place the "drip drops," a tangle by Debbie Purdue, a lot closer together to create a definitive pattern. What do you think?
Make sure to check out how all the talented artists responded to the challenge! I always look forward to seeing what everyone else was up to.