Blog Archives

Testing Testing

7/31/2019

This one is my first try at the tangle called Windmill, by CZT Hiroko Matsuo. That's where the "Testing Testing" title of today's post comes from.

Done on a Renaissance (tan) tile with Micron 01 in black, graphite, and some light chalk pencil. This one has so many possibilities. I did it in one of my Bitty BookZ™ I'd made last month--this book is nearly full now.

I ran the same photograph thru an iPhone app, Painnt, and got this.

Maybe my creative mojo is starting to sneak back? I would love to get some textile projects going, especially a rug.

Enough Mojo for a Book

7/30/2019

Yesterday I managed to get it together enough to create ONE full-sized tile Bitty BookZ™ which you can see below. I experimented with some new untested techniques which might mean that the book will fall apart eventually. But right now, it's ok.

Just below is the back cover on the left, the dark blue spine, and the front cover on the right; you can see how flat the book is when lying on the counter. Below that is the book opened to the only page that has a completed tangle on it. All the other pages are blank.

This should be fun to work in. I'm glad I managed to get enough mojo back to create SOMETHING after days and days of nothingness.

The tile on the right is from 2014. Tangles are henna drum and punzel.

Maybe a Break

7/28/2019

The tangle is Travistar by Jenny Peruzzi CZT. This was my first try at this tangle. I did it on a Renaissance (tan) tile with brown and black Micron 01s and plenty of chalk pencil. I used the tangle itself as a string and put some other tangles (such a Betweed) inside.

I've lost all my mojo! All my creative mojo, that is. No textile work of any kind is underway. I've barely been able to tangle at all. I am uninspired. This has been going on all month. Mercury Retrograde? The sticky weather? A less-than-pleasant though not at all serious recent medical adventure? All of those things? I dunno. But I sure hope I can find some mojo soon.

At least I managed to get this done today.

Some knots can only be resolved and undone with relaxation and patience. (Sridhar Ramasami)

The great advantage of being in a rut is that when one is in a rut, one knows exactly where one is. (Arnold Bennett)

The same photograph of my tile, run through my iPhone app.

Full Sized.

7/21/2019

I finally tackled making a full-sized tile version of Bitty BookZ™ today. It isn't perfect by any stretch of the word but - as usual - it's "good enough" for my first one and I learned what to do and what not to do for the next one. I'm liking this full-sized version. All the interior pages of this are tangled already because I used my "Teaching Tiles," (tiles I've created when preparing to teach a class) and some of my earliest tiles from back when I first learned. This is a great way to store previously tangled tiles.

The finished book, opened up so that both covers can be seen.

The Last on This Theme

7/20/2019

Tangles: Well Well, Scena, Diva Dance, Crescent Moon, Bronx Cheer, and a variation of Fanning. Shaded with grey and white chalk pencil only. Brown and Black Micron 01s on a tan zendala.

Compare this one to the previous post where I worked that previous tile just as Maria did (basically copying her to learn from her). Last night and today I re-did it more in my own style, as a mandala. I added a few random things and a variation of the tangle Fanning (which I had never done before) around the edge, then shaded with a grey chalk pencil and highlighted with white. I'm liking the result, and feel like I've explored this "theme" created by Maria as much as I wish to right now. I'm done with it for for the moment.

Weather here is fiercely hot and humid. Not that far (20 miles) from me the heat index today was 115 degrees F, resulting from a high temperature and a dew point of 79. I had no idea dew points could even go that high. When I ventured outdoors to get the mail this evening it felt as though I was walking thru a vat of hot soup, wearing a sweater. It's been years since the weather has been this bad. Tomorrow will be the same; they are promising relief by Monday night. Let's hope so!

My Version

7/17/2019

Trying to get my mojo back after a long period of (puzzling) lack of interest. We have a heat wave moving in, my most dreaded weather. Perhaps staying home during that will enable me to get some more tangling done. Still no interest in textile work, although hot weather often brings that on.

Below is my version of Maria Thomas's latest "Kitchen Table Tangle." She invited us all to give it a try, so I did. She scored and folded hers, but I wanted to leave mine unfolded. She used watercolors and I used chalk pencils. Because of the nature of Zentangle®, they look very similar but are in fact very different. It's like two people writing the same sentence on a sheet of paper with cursive script--it's the same sentence but their individual handwriting will make the two versions look very different.

Tangles: Well Well, Scena, Crescent Moon, Tipple, Bronx Cheer, Diva Dance. Brown & Black Micron 01s with graphite and chalk pencils.

This Says It All

7/11/2019

Some days are better than others. I just don't have it today. (Whatever "it" is.) Instead I have a very mild toothache, which I'll deal with in the morning. Staring at this blank page in a Bitty Book™ I made a few weeks ago, all I could imagine doing was drawing some random lines. Thank goodness for chalk pencils.
Time to go read a trashy novel, methinks!

Moon Bridges and Moon Dancers

7/8/2019

More life-busyness means less posting. The good news is that I'm feeling better. I've continued to play with art tissue paper, the type of tissue paper that comes in dramatic colors and bleeds when wet. I've been wetting it, then squeezing it above wet Zentangle® tiles to see what it does, and/or crushing it and smashing it around directly on the tiles. This first tile was the result of the "dropping stain onto the tile from above" method:

Tangle is "Icanthis" (I-can-this, after the very complex Icanthus leaf), an ironic title for a tangle that I-couldn't-this draw, until recently when it sort of clicked. Black Micron 01, graphite, chalk pencils.

I still feel a bit wobbly about the Icanthis tangle, so it will probably show up here more often while I practice it.

More tiles below. I switched tissue paper colors and both dropped color on and also mashed it on. This was violet-colored tissue paper and it was interesting to notice how as the staining dried, some pure blue began to seep out. There was absolutely no way I could avoid seeing these backgrounds as moon-and-sky (the first one) and evening sky. So, I built some Moon Bridges and left the tiles as mostly background, minimal tangling. Great fun with this art tissue, as you never know what you're going to get.

Moon Bridge #1: Background created from Art Tissue Paper, aka Bleeding Tissue Paper. Tangle is "Bilt." Blue Micron 01, chalk pencils,

Moon Bridges #2: Created with Art Tissue for the background (the same piece of tissue re-used from #1 above), Blue Micron 01, chalk pencils, a little Signo White Pen.

I was so surprised by those two.

Well then, of course I had to experiment some more, so I ran Moon Bridges #2 through a mirror app on my iPhone and was startled to see some figures emerge. See the result below.

The Moon Dancers tile. These figures mysteriously emerged when I mirrored the tile on my iPhone.

The destination cannot be described;
You will know very little until you get there;
You will journey blind.
(T. S. Eliot)

Hellish or Ellish

7/4/2019

Tangle is Ellish. Black Micron01, graphite, white chalk pencil. On a 3.5" white tile colored by drops from two small pieces of wet art tissue paper.

As far as I can remember, I have only ever done this tangle once, and that was years ago. So I wasn't sure if this would end up becoming "Hellish" or "Ellish." I do like the way it turned out and I need to practice more to allow myself to relax right from the start.

Speaking of hellish, the outdoor temperature is warming up and humidity is just beginning to slide in this direction; my all-time least favorite weather. I can tolerate cold far better than heat. Ok, enough of that!

Yesterday I broke out my gellyroll pens, which I haven't used since I can't remember when, and played with another grid-based tangle, this one a fragment from the Zentangle® book, Reticula and Fragments. (A "reiticula" is just another name for "grid.")

Fragment in a grid, turned in different directions. Green and purple gellyrolls, gold gellyroll, brown Micron 01, graphite, white chalk pencil. The slight bend in the "frame" is because this tile is folded into one of my BittyBookZ™.

In love with this weather? I'm happy for you! (You've certainly waited long enough for it after the long cold rainy spring.). "Hellish" or Coolish, we all welcome summer. There is so much to enjoy. May yours be a wonderful one.

"The difficult part of the process is the long exploration and discovery of your own soul and living with the results."
(Mike Svob)

Yup, gridlocked.

7/2/2019

Tangle is Cirque, but doubled, and I added a few more things to it, like some Mooka and a spinoff of Crescent Moon. Used black & brown micron 01s, graphite, white gellyroll, general's chalk pencil, and a very small amount of Prismacolor. This tile is inside one of my first BittyBookZ™. See posts in June for info about those.

Gawd, what a week. I needed something round and sunny today so I made the above tangle on some pages in one of my recent handmade books.

Today is the first day I feel like myself in over a week. I had a medical test that went wrong. Nothing dangerous, but it's quite impressive how bad one can feel when something is seriously "off" but not dangerous. I have had zero, and I do mean zero, motivation to do anything for days and days.

Hurrah for feeling better!

Last week in the middle of my woes I had a bout of insomnia, and that's when I did the tile just beneath this. I was still trying to work on grid-based tangles, which are not my preference. The combo of "not my preference" and "feeling really crappy" added up to what you see below.

[Late last week] Oh, how my mood is matching the feeling of being "gridlocked," like the tangles I have been working on. I've been pretty sick this week, unexpectedly. Nothing that won't improve, but the improvement is slow. I've discovered--no surprise--that I suck as an invalid. I'm not good at sitting around. There are things I want to be doing that are physical, and I'm just not up to doing them yet. Frustrating.

Insomnia last night led to another grid-based tangle, C-Stem by Agneta Landeson. I've never tried it before:

Tangle: C-Stem by Agneta Landeson. Tan 3.5" tile with Black Micron PN, graphite, white charcoal.

I'm not crazy about how it came out but at least the process did enable me to go to sleep.