Black is Black

There is something about black tiles. I love to work on them sometimes. Not always. There are traps to fall into. One of them is to get  balance in the greyscale on black surface, not to smudge everything up. The easiest way to avoid this is not to use anything else than white gellypen. If you do that, there is no greyscale. Only black and white. As I am deeply in love with greyscale, that is not an option. I get bored very easy if there isn´t one. Now I almost have run out of black original tiles so today i used one I have cut myself.

This is the week with Garlic Cloves so i made a monotangle inspired by Lynn Shelton Mead´s monotangle on white tile. The zenstone is a tool I like to use to make the greyscale! If i get too much of zenstone, I only use a brush with a little water on and then I can get rid of the excess! I start "shading" with the zenstone and use a little amount of white charcoal to get some brighter highlight. Ofcourse the gellypen also bring highlight! But there is a value in getting something less "high".

Then there is a second trap. It is easy to belive that a black tile works the same way as a white one. It doesn´t. I have to spare the black parts out if I want them to be black. Ofcourse I can change my mind and go on with a black micron on white parts made by the pen or white charcoal, but that is not the same. I can get some effects doing so, but I am not so fond of that technique. I want to do it the easy way. For me that is to think about the spaces, about forms and where I want it to be very dark and where I want the light to be bright.

Is there any zen in doing black tiles! Ofcourse there is! To me it is like going into a another zone of zen. Especially when doing a monotangle. I love to do that and when I keep it simple like with Garlic Cloves I love it the most.