On the Edge

Dedicated to Suzanne.

Suzanne asked the blogosphere if we'd ever stood "on the edge," no matter how literal we took that to mean. What a great jumping off point, isn't it?

What first came to my mind is "The Abyss." No, not the movie, but that's a good point. There's an overlook by the name that affords a look deep into a portion of the Grand Canyon. Supposedly, you can see rocks 200 million years old or more. If what "they" say about the Canyon that the average person stays a whopping 20 minutes, we're throwing the curve.

Most people must miss the Abyss since you have to either hike or take the bus to get there. Pity.

Even better is the view from Toroweap, mostly because of the effort required to get there. It's 60 miles off-road, about three hours from the last bit of pavement; high-clearance vehicle required. The Park Service suggests that you pack an extra spare tire as most drivers pop at least one and to get a tow truck is $2000, if you have cell service at all.

Badge of Courage

My Lexus (2001 RX300 with over 225,000 miles) performed superbly (no flat tires!) thanks to one very able driver (thank you, Gil!). I wish I had a video to send to the company so they can see what that car can really do, but I wish I had better photographs from the viewpoint. Seems as "the" shot is at sunrise and because of the cliff height 3,000 feet above the Colorado, sunrise in summer is around 3 AM.

Eight PM

Missed that by a MILE!

Erica on the Edge
Can you find her?

TJ on the Edge

Our first glimpse of the Canyon was 20 years ago. I don't know how we did it, but we found a spot where we walked right up to the edge. No sidewalk, no plaques, no guardrails. Just that giant hole in the ground. Took my breath away. That and trying to catch my fearless three year-old daughter from being, well, fearless.

Everywhere we went in Arizona, she would pick up pebbles and drop them into my camera bag. She was particularly fond of Sedona red sandstone. (Shh! Don't tell anyone). I still fish one out every once in a while.

That trip put into action wheels that turned in such a manner that here I am, in the Grand Canyon state. If I wanted to, I could be staring into the Abyss by lunch.

I've been on the edge of my seat.
I've been on the "Edge of Seventeen" (and recently celebrated my fortieth anniversary of same).
I've been hanging on the edge of numerous cliffs in search of Indian artifacts.
I've been on the edge of each side of this continent, staring out onto the horizon in all directions.
I've been on the edge of four states all at once.

I'm on the edge of a new beginning, each and every day.

So, yes, where have YOU stood, "on the edge?" Be sure to let Suzanne know!

On your way to Toroweap (or the North Rim or Lake Powell or Monument Valley...), you can take a quick detour to see Dinosaur Tracks on the Navajo Reservation. Which is a great segue to the EIM, "dinosaur," this week:

Which is also a great segue to the Diva this week. While you are at Dinosaur Tracks, you can visit the little booths set up and purchase a "Dreamcatcher" from the Dine people. Mine is frayed and frazzled. Must've been doing a swell job catching those pesky spirits.

And "Dreamcatcher" by Daniel Lamothe is the tangle focus of the week!

The pattern snuck its way into my twinchie this week, too. This wasn't anything like what I wanted to do! Somewhere I have a sheet of copper I was going to emboss, but where, oh where could it be?

So I went with a collage of Tim Holtz stickers, copper gimp, gold nail polish pen, copper beads on a light turquoise envelope and paint chips. I think I have to revisit this idea. There's still time to make something else. Indeed, if you're interested, submissions to the TwobyTwo are always welcome!

Meanwhile, I'm going to see about finding the copper that I must've put in a great place that I'd remember where. Thank you for stopping by. Have a brilliant day!

Six Degrees of Separation

You've heard of "six degrees of separation?" That we're all connected somehow by a friend of a friend in six or fewer steps? According to a recent poll through a Facebook algorithm, with the advent of social media, it's now even less than four.
If you're visiting here, we're one step apart, although we haven't formally made our acquaintance.
You may know of the party game, "Six Degree of Kevin Bacon?" It's kind of a trivia thing where you start with an actor and by association through movies you get to Bacon, with a capital "B," with the fewest steps.
Mr. Bacon doesn't know me from a hill of beans, but I'm closer to him than he may care to think.

First, my ex' brother played Drew Pigeon opposite Bacon in the movie, "Mystic River." I still haven't seen the movie, but I read the book! Second, my friend's son was producer of the very moving HBO special, "Taking Chance," starring Bacon. Thirdly, the crazy drunks that came up with the game went to my alma mater, long after I graduated, so I've not met them nor have I played their game.
I just know these things.

Sally, I dedicate this post to you because you like to know things. And you have relatives in Maine.

So do I. My parents live there. I visited many a time, long before they retired there.
It's a big state, with a lot of wilderness. Logging is big business and so are potatoes. But the best thing is Acadia National Park, which is celebrating its 100th birthday, as is the whole of the National Park System.

The view of the Atlantic from Cadillac Mountain is awesome and one of the first spots in the US of A to see the sun rise. The crashing surf, the rugged granite rocks, the scent of salt air and spruce.

Lobster! Need I say more?!
Oh, and it's home to the ONLY fjord in the lower 48, Somes Sound.

This is important information because "fjord" is the word of the day at the EIM. I've only seen Somes Sound once; I remember the family driving alongside one summer. Tall spruce and firs, granite rock, clear blue skies. (And more lobster).

Not far from there is Mount Desert Rock lighthouse. It literally sits on a rock.

There is also a Mount Desert Rock lighthouse here in Arizona. On Lake Havasu are fully functional scale models of famous lighthouses created to aid navigation on the lake. (Lake Havasu is also home to the London Bridge. It migrated).

You can walk right up to this one, I guess. We have a boat trip on Havasu on our bucket list, to see all the little houses.

In the meantime, we're watching 16 Tons of Monty Python. We're up to the 10th ton. Or, if we're somewhere with television, the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Are you? There must be a few tangly people watching as the theme at the Diva this week is the Olympics. I squeezed three out of the five rings into a square.

It's more Venn diagram than modern athletics, but I'm not minding it. Consider it a visual representation of just three degrees of separation.
I guess we're not really separated at all.

So Where DID Molly Go?

Over at La Casa Diva, the challenge for the week is to get to know Molygon, a brand new official Zentangle tangle. My attempt could have been straight out of my high school notebooks which were littered with eyeballs, a doodle I drew all the time. Fast-forward 40 years and I haven't progressed??

Where is Molly Going?
Diva Challenge 253

I think it's surprisingly free-floating considering my teeth were chattering while I drew it (and the underlying string almost entirely ignored!). The art tent I've been working was a balmy 46 degrees INSIDE yesterday. I was threatening to write a blog post entitled, "Fifty Ways to Rock Thermal Underwear."
Mind you, that threat is not quite over.
Has it snowed where you are? We got a smattering earlier in the week. Ah, life in sunny Arizona! I am freezing!

The theme at EIM this week is bulldozer, which unleashed a bunch of ideas, not the least of which was a drawing of wait! get this! a bulldozer!

From top left: Bulldozer, Bobcat, Feather Headdress
and a Triangle

A bulldozer, got that, right?! Next, we have a leading manufacturer of heavy equipment: Bobcat. Bobcats, the animal, are much cuter, especially with those tufted ears. The bright yellow triangle is from the corporate logo for Caterpillar. And the Indian feathers? Well, they have nothing to do with this; I drew it for last week's theme of village. I didn't want you to think I totally cheesed out on that and just borrowed a photograph! And I didn't want to try to draw a caterpillar, the insect. Another day, perhaps?

Thanks for stopping by. I wish to extend a big thanks to the individuals who post these challenges and make them work. Check out what's happening at EIM and the Diva and perhaps take a moment to visit the TwobytwobyTuesday challenge. This week it's "sweater."
Ah, maybe THAT will warm me up!

This Fish is a Gold Mine!

Here are some variations on "Goldfish," for the TwobyTwo art blog. I didn't want to do just one and I had the luxury of trying different media. Indeed, I want to tackle each word this year from various perspectives. We'll see how successful THAT is!

I like the look of watercolor but have no formal training in it and my results can best be described as elementary. This one was done with Staedtler watercolor pencils:

He looks quite mean, doesn't he? You should see my other attempts, but I'm not showing them. This guy should be happy he's the best of the bunch.

Then there's a pencil sketch. While he already outgrew his fishbowl, I used it to contain the composition, unlike the first guy's blank canvas:

I really wanted to try to draw a koi in a fish pond, but he looked more like a drowned rat getting gobbled up by lily pads that resembled Pac Man, so forget about seeing THAT.
To try to just get to know some colored pencil colors, I downloaded a coloring page of Cleo from Disney's "Pinocchio."

The colors are all wrong, the yellow in the scan is too dark. I have no delusions that I own the copyright to that image, since Pinocchio came out in 1940 and Disney's lawyers are everywhere. I colored it, I'll take the blame.
This one is a photocollage of several digital images. As I was playing in Photoshop, I wanted to create a sense of movement, which is why some of it is blurry. It was intentional! Do you think it worked out?

The tangly woman at Tickled to Tangle is up to challenge #126. I haven't done one of those in a while and this one worked out better than okay. Thanks, Adele!

IAST 126
Phroz, 4Fun and Pop Clouds

As per usual I had one idea on how I wanted it to end up and it had its mind made up on how it wanted to go. Some of the geometry is off, but it's not a real distraction to none other than myself.

So that was soooooo last week. Now to work on THIS week!

The Other Ear

I just had to try another ear; the concept just begs to be heard, doesn't it? HA! Spurred on by yesterdays comments, I had to work through this one. It's a twinchie, not an inchie!

LOGIC is the new SEXY

Zoe, this one's for YOU! Whaddya think?!

And I got busy with some Zentangles and finally scanned in some "stuff." Oh, boy! What a day!
First was the Diva's Challenge to use the new Can T tangle. It vaguely reminds me of a bunch of other choices, but...let's stick to the plan, shall we? [NB: I am what happens when AD meets OC; an alphabet soup of disorders!]

Diva 234
What CanT Can do!

It didn't really do what I was willing it to do, and you know what happens when you even ATTEMPT to make a tangle do your bidding! At least I was willing to show my work, just like I had to in Calculus class. Talk about back to school!
Then it's the String Thing:

IAST 109
It's a Bug's Life

In between, I drew one JUST FOR FUN! Whaddya think about THAT?!

Standing Room Only

And the crowd goes wild!

(If you can't get enough of this, check out the rest of the work I've posted on my Flickr page.)
Thanks for spending some of your very valuable time here with me. It's always appreciated.

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.

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!

It's a String Thing #52

While I was wandering the rabbit warren of the web, I was introduced to the "It's a String Thing" challenges by Adele Bruno, CZT. This week's challenge is a string (outline drawing) of a birthday candle to celebrate her one year of presenting challenges to all those tangly people with a list of allowable patterns. Here's my answer to the call (and I used up all the tangles!):

I wanted to do a more traditional Zentangle, so I chose to keep the candle as white space and work around it. The result looks to me like a woman in a long dress with a cape fluttering in the wind, like Little Red Riding Hood or something the Bronte sisters could conjure on the Scottish moors. Perchance, I might think too much!
i've included it on my Flickr photostream; perhaps we'll see this on Ms. Bruno's blog next week!

Neuron 1

While I viewed all the awesome submissions for this week's Diva Challenge, I made note of some new patterns (to me) and rather than work on any specific assignments, just go with the flow. Over at
Tangle Patterns I found instructions for Neuron by Beth Snoderly and Roscoe by Vicki Bassett. My Mom would just call this doodle a "stained glass window," a method she would use to keep me focused at church, so this is a grown-up version:

There're some design challenges in this piece, so I'll revisit this idea again. I used to enjoy making those stained glass windows and still do, I guess! Maybe I need to break out the old crayon box?!
This is also over at my Flickr page here
Thanks to everyone involved in the Diva Challenge this week for the creative input. They are an awesome bunch, so take a look around there!

Brand new blog!

I have been thoroughly enjoying being engaged to the Zentangle community and the many permutations and off-shoots I have found. I have found much joy and collective creative spirit that has overflowed into all spaces of my life. Thus a new blog is born!

There are also my other pursuits that will hopefully show up: photography, gardening, needlework of all flavors, travel and family. I will extoll those who are virtuous by protecting the identity of the innocents and blatantly flaunt those who make me proud!
[Disclamer: wait until I become a grandmother! I'll be unbearable.]

I've posted some art here:

My Flickr Doodle Gallery

and some great artists and tanglers have already found me there. I thank everyone for taking time to view and critique my work. I hope to channel some of that creative energy for bettering my crafts and inspiring others (now there's a tall order!)

Have a brilliant day!
c