The Big Lemon.

You know that old and trite saying, "When life hands you lemons, make lemonade."
Right.  Well, it's hotter than HADES here, and humid to the max, and it's been that way for five full days and won't stop until it gets to seven.  We are all miserable; everyone's complaining.  We all want to be sitting around drinking cold sweet lemonade.   I am fortunate to have air conditioning, and I do mean fortunate.

So today I decided to participate--at least sporadically--in a summer tangle challenge sponsored by the Yankee Tangler.  Her tangle challenge for today is Footlites, by CZT Carole Ohl.  It's a real favorite of mine, and I thought I would try something different.  Some version of it as a monotangle. 

Instead of being pleased, I created a big lemon.  Here it is:

The only pencil I had to hand happened to be this huge Grumbacher Sketching Pencil with a very wide, flat point.  Look at that point!  Yowza!

Thus, this was a big experiment, and it didn't work at all.  There's a wonderful technique of creating images using only soft pencil and then smudging it so that the patterns look like beautiful soft fog.  I thought I'd give it a try but instead of the cool gentle fog, I produced a hot mess.

Ug-LEEEE.

Even while I was working on this, I wasn't enjoying myself.  But I'll never learn if I don't try, or so I tried to console myself.  I told myself maybe I'd like it better tomorrow, after a good night's sleep. 

But later I walked into the room where it was sitting and I liked it even less.

Yup, I had created a lemon indeed. 

Face pucker time.

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Having created this monstrosity, and knowing there are "No mistakes" in Zentangle® (I have the t-shirt with the saying on it to prove that), I knew I had to try again.

I grabbed the same tile and for reasons I don't fully understand, I went with a black Micron 08 (thick), not the usual delicate Micron 01.  Perhaps this was a subconscious attempt to murder the earlier image?

I more-or-less-kinda-sorta followed what I had previously done.  Contrary to my previous experience, I actually enjoyed doing this.  It felt much more meditative...always a good sign.  I'm much happier with the result.  No fail, no learn, right?

A friend who just got her CZT said they experimented with the graphite-only method during the training, so I'm hoping she can help me figure out how to get better results.  I left a little of the graphite-only part on the finished tangle.

And now to go drink some cold lemonade.  Ahhhhhhhhh...

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