A Little Zenful Meditation

Like most of my artful expressions, I am self-taught in the art of Zentangle. It's true, I haven't taken a class on it, just my usual method of reading and researching. I know I'm probably missing something (er, a LOT!). But for now, grabbing a book or reading an internet blog will have to suffice. My level of proficiency and my adaptations of the artform are sufficient to me in their current standings amidst my current circumstances.
I got a lot closer to meeting a Zentangle master this week at the Diva with guest blogger Holly Atwater, who provided some audio lessons. I tried my best to slo-o-o-w d-o-o-own, but found I was faster or slower than the instructions. And I listened very carefully...until I heard "draw an orb and fill it in." And I tried again and still heard it that way, so I'm sticking with this:

Tripoli
Filled in Orbs
Sharpie on Strathmore Sketch Paper

Holly offered an alternative route, and considering how much I "love" Tripoli, I went to Plan "B."

A little combo effort. In both instances I went as far as I was happy with all those triangles and I'm happy with them.

Take Care of Amanda

It's Earth Day 2015.

I've been working on an article on compost in my head for a long while. (It's been a longer while since I've been a journalist and what's worse, I have no set deadline). I have been applauded or accused of being a compost queen for years. Since moving to Arizona, I have moved my compost heaps three times (Try explaining THAT to a mover!). I currently have two bins and a heap of leaves just piled up.
I think it's the easiest thing on the planet to do to help take care of it. But that's just me. I'm crazy like that.

There's a song from Genesis called "Land of Confusion." Written by guitarist Mike Rutherford, the chorus is hard not to associate with today:

This is the world we live in
And these are the hands we're given
Use them and let's start trying
To make it a place worth living in.

If you have a spare five minutes, check out the video. It's cold war era and the puppets are kind of creepy. I had to go to the Wikipedia page to figure out all the allusions and all those characters.

I took the Earth Day Footprint Quiz. I failed miserably, but it was assuming things such as my commute would be by car, instead of taking public/mass transportation (while I commute by fuzzy slippers to my desk. Besides, I'm "out there," so to speak) and it doesn't take into account that I'm growing enough citrus for about thirty people, thus adding back into the global footprint. It does say quite clearly that as Americans we enjoy a lot of benefits that a far majority do not, such as clean water and we have electricity available 24/7. It gives me pause.

I've also been following the Reduce Footprints blog. Every Wednesday there's a new challenge to do just that. This month has been about caring for the soil, right up my alley.

A different way to take care of Mother Earth is to promote her care. And that's where Amanda comes in. You can read that explanation on the Diva's challenge this week.

(I've always wondered why our moon doesn't have a cool name like all the other planets moons..It's just a moon. If the earth can be called Amanda...).

Whole World in His Hand
(on recycled paperboard, natch)

That didn't turn out quite as I imagined, but I thought I got my left hand pretty good, including my knobby, arthritic thumb.
I was without my computer all weekend (GASP!), but I did have my phone where I saw a new string on Tanglepatterns.com. Had to do this one:

Flower Fell on the Ground

I wanted to try my hand at Man-O-Man, but the scale was all wrong for this. So I went with only one tile on the tile, instead of the mosaic pattern.
I also tackled the EIM on recycled paper. The word this week is "octopus."

In an Octopus' Garden
Sing along now!

And lest you think I've been forgetting to do my zinchies...!

Recycled printer paper & paperboard

Notice I worked on those pesky triangly patterns, and I think I got them pretty well squared away (Triangles squared!? HA!). I still have the zinchies just in a box. I sooooo need to organize them somehow!

I thank all of you who have interacted with me through this blog. I appreciate all the comments and I attempt to respond to each and every one (sometimes it takes me a bit, but I think I'm all caught up!). And I REALLY appreciate the intrepid artists who are tackling or are interested in my own art challenge blog, Two by Two.  Be sure to check out the amazing artwork on all of these blogs and entertain the notion to try them yourself.

Meanwhile, I'll be working on IAST 89, a fitting tribute to the Queen....

Playing Catch-up

Thanks for checking in on me occasionally. I like that I'm a part of a world-wide community and that you all reach out from afar with lovely notes and anecdotes.
I found spirals at two of the Zentangle challenges I participate in (not so regularly). The Diva Challenge
posed a spiral and I made Bijou-sized with stripes and sparkle:

I thought it was a pretty bold statement. I'll be adding it to my fridge art!
The IAST started with a spiral string:

The spiral is in there; it was getting a little wonky so I called it good rather than overdo it.
This was last week's response to the IAST:

It has a minimalist attitude about it and that suits me just fine. As you can see, I'm upcycling the corrugated boxes that my new kitchen cabinets came in. Sure, I could use nice paper. But I like the mid-tone of the paper. Besides, corrugated boxing machinery put me through college, so I really like it. 

And finally...a big collection of zinchies I've made in just the last two days! If I'm ever going to get through 3,000 of these things, I better get jumping!

Thanks for taking the time to look at my artwork. I really appreciate that you do and your kind comments. And don't be afraid to tell me like it is; I'll just go happily along as I am without some constructive critiques. 

TGIF

I rarely sit to blog on a Friday. I'm usually doing a lot of running around in advance of the weekend, which I try not to do as the freeway is almost always tied up because someone was in a hurry to meet their maker.
But it always seems like I'm doing something when I should just be home.
I'm doing a fair job of keeping up with the zinchie project, making a couple almost every day. My next part of the project will be to get them all in one permanent place--like framing them up or some such thing.

Broke out the black Strathmore and the white Y-K pen today! That was special!

I'm having a fun time reading the blogs and comments that explain how some of these patterns came about. (Gord?! Really?!) Most of them have been catalogued at tanglepatterns.com, where blog-owner Linda Farmer has a collection of wine-themed patterns all her own. (She also has a conversation about how to organize patterns and I really need to do something!)

Gotta get back to what I should be doing. The weekend is fast approaching!

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!

More Leaves Falling

This morning I decided to finish tackling this week's Diva Challenge, to tangle "leaves." I was going to get very elaborate and collect leaves from about the yard--I have pine, olive, orange, lemon, grapefruit, mulberry, palm, palo verde, mesquite (and I know I've missed a few trees) plus the saguaro, prickly pear and agave--but I thought I'd better leave that for another day (get it? Leave? HA!) I haven't even considered the flowers and shrubs...SIGH.
.
I did a little twinchie thing yesterday and posted that on my Flickr page. Very simple and the holly leaves are a recurrent pattern in my drawings from, well, a while ago. There was a holly that grew up to my bedroom window of my childhood home, always colorful with the bright red berries and my father-in-law had one that was going to take over his porch and always poked whoever walked by. And it's not too early to think about the Holly-daze if Costco has had ribbons and bows in their warehouses for a month already!

But, I digress.

This is my Leaves v2:

If it bears any resemblance to the It's a String Thing Challenge #59, it's not coincidental, as I used the same patterns. But, I didn't cheat as I made a separate response as a zendala (see yesterdays post or here).
So, hopefully, the Leaves have fallen where they may and I can get back to summer around here. Have a brilliant, bright and sunny day!

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.

I did it! I did the X-Did Challenge!

This past week's Diva Challenge was a real challenge for me. The objective was to incorporate Annette Carlo's pattern, "X-Did." For the better part of the week it was did-not, with a side order of didn't. We were traveling, so there were many miles and a few hotels in between, so I was scribbling on stationery and sketching on receipts. I wanted to do this thing well and good as Annette is a very talented artist and I was not going to not "do" X-Did.
So at home in my normal environs with some index cards and a very sleepless night, the geometry all came clear to me. And all the practice helped me to be able to draw fairly straight lines when I worked out my "real" artwork, no rulers in sight.  The practice rounds on cards looked like argyle knit, so I'll get back to that, but I like the organic feel to the final product.

Kudos to Annette for a very interesting challenge. Check out her blog for her take in a spiral pattern, quite a work and as always, check out the other talented tangly people at the Diva's blog.

Tangled to a T

This is my answer to this week's String Thing challenge. All the details from Adele Bruno are on her blog. I stuffed all the tangles in this one, even Tagh, which is not a happy pattern for me. No, really, it's there.
There was quite a fabric/quilting feel to some of the other patterns. I was delighted to be able to create a border out of Trivet in macro mode with Ticking, since my new journal/scrapbook is developing a bad case of tangled edges.

I can't wait to see what some of the other submissions look like--other artists really take on these challenges with flair and creativity.

Quartz Inchie

The inchie from EIM this week is quartz crystal. I knew I was going to get all techno over this one. Rocks, chemistry, computers! Today I was mostly focused on the chemistry of quartz crystals. I wanted to get the molecular structure in there and the importance of silicon dioxide in circuit boards (not to mention ordinary glass, but that's a whole other thing). There is also the bright light as clear quartz crystals have to do with the soul chakra and a lot of metaphysical stuff that I don't understand but I don't want to fluff off, either.

While researching, I found some great molecular diagrams that would make some neat tangle patterns, how cool is that?

Did you know there are left- (beta) and right-handed (alpha) quartz crystals? I guess I knew that from chemistry class, but it's buried in the grey matter. It's been awhile since I took chemistry (although not so long that my kids have, and therefore I did all over again!).

Stripes, this time with Sparkle!

I see a pattern here! Over at "It's a String Thing," the call is for more stripes. This time we have a swirly string from Sue Agnew, 055 for week 55 and a monotangle (use just the one pattern) of stripes and apply sparkle liberally. I have been playing with stripes as that was a recent lesson in "One Zentangle a Day," so I have SOME experience under my belt. However, my experience with sparkle...well, suffice to say I shy away from it as it kind of needs some serious planning. Especially in this case, with only the one pattern.

I explored various line widths (which is unusual for me) and assorted stripe patterns.The sparkle was preplanned and set in universal light (all coming from the same direction). I liked being able to focus on one tangle and going for a bold lighting effect. I think the stripes could have used more curves to establish form, but for such a teenie canvas, this is all right. To compensate, I did more shading than my usual work to build depth.