I am the Diva´s challenge 308

This week the Diva ask us to bring our "MacNCheese" tangles. As I understand this it is about those tangles I get back to and know by heart. These tangles I could do in my sleep and no planning is necessary. I have a bunch of those tangles by now but these are the ones that came up today:

Nipa, Flukes, Crescent Moon and Florz, all Zt. They came in that order and I used string 248 (Lori Byerly). Ofcourse the string guides to the choose of tangles! This is the basic, dots in the corners, pencil the border and then the string. Uncap the micron and start off! This is the way to go. The zen is there, the flow, no worries.

There are so many beautiful patterns coming up all the time. To bring in one new pattern into my own tangle library can be stressful. To use a new pattern means I have to give it time. Some patterns are complicated and it takes a lot of practice to learn them to make them come naturally.

I appreciate this challenge from the Diva very much. It takes me back to where I want to be when tangling. Not thinking of the result, just let it go and stay focused.  

21st of March

The calendar for three days.

Nuwave (Beth Snoderly), Meringue (Kelley Kelly), Tipple (Zt), Crescent Moon (Zt)and Trifle (Margaret Bremner). Doing Crescent Moon in levels like this is inspired by things like this going on in Fb-groups, which comes from inspiration from a video published in the Zentangle mosaique-app. To watch this video you have to be a paying member of the app. I am not, but as you see, the ideas are spread outside it! It was fun to do this and it gives even more 3D to the Crescent moon!. Nuwave is the focus-tangle in Square One and this tangle is also a tangle that easily gives the 3D-magic. So they went very well together in my opinion.

18th of March

This page from my Calendar is made for the Diva´s challenge mostly. I can´t stop doing Zingo (Indy and Mazzy)!

 It kind of sends me right back to the playground! I also came across Trifle, a new pattern from Margaret Bremner, which is so easy and fun to draw! Meringue (Kelley Kelly) is a pattern I haven´t used for some time, but I love it. So I am quite happy about this entire page!

I am the Diva´s challenge 307

I am not doing challenges right now I said some time ago. But the Diva´s  (Laura Harms) challenges are something special. On her blog she brings her own story about her family and the tangles. She takes zentangle into an other level when she brings it into real life. I can´t resist that.

As I wrote in my previous post, challenge no 307 is about Zingo, the tangle created by Indy and Mazzy, Molly Hollibaugh´s two daughters. Watching the video, when the two kids draw this pattern and instructs how to do it, is warming my soul. Their way of draw is filled with focus and selfconfidence and there are no misstakes. If you haven´t watched the video, please do here. You might learn something. I did. 

15th of March and string 247

This time I start with the string-thing. I have now come to string 247 (Anette Plaga-Lodde). Not many left now.I kept it simple this time and I liked this string a lot!

The patterns are: Tesell (Judy Okanawa), Pico (Staub Korn), Star Map (Suzanne McNeill) and some Tipple (Zt). This was my first try on Tesell, which is a lovely pattern. I found similarities between Tesell and Pico. Both are to me Reticulas and looking at it this way I get them work. I will go on trying Tesell as well, it is very fun!

Here is my calendar for the last three days:

Monday 13th: I needed a Dreamcatcher (Daniel Lamoth) to catch bad dreams going around. The followers were: Cruffle (Sandy Hunter), Liefing (Dorothy Allison), Gneiss and Tipple both Zt.
Tuesday 14th: Beadlines (Margaret Bremner) connected with Brrrst (Kelly Barone).
Wednesday 15th: I had to try Zingo (Indy and Mazzy)! Zingo is in the Diva´s challenge this week. I loved to do it and this pattern I will go to again! Caviar (Lori Howe) just poured out of yesterdays Brrrst and Fescu was growing out of Zingo.

I am very busy right now, my exhibition opens at  25th of March at Fröja gallery, Östhammar, and I am sharing the gallery with Gerd Vading, my friend. I have done some late paintings, hoping they will dry in time. They are a little wet today, I use oilcolors. Here is 2 of the paintings that sure will be in the exhibition:

Dancing Queen

After you have gone

This blog is about zentangle but I choose to show two other pieces of my art today. Hope you´ll enjoy it!

The entire calendar-page

From now on I will only publish an entire page. The reason is, that early in my calendar-journey, I felt that I wanted to get the days together and I like what it looks like to see the entire page instaed of one page at a time. 

I have already commented on 10th of March so I leave that. 11th of March I went on with Locar, Cubine and Squid, all official zentangle. Squid is a pattern I haven´t used since I learned it when I started my zentangle-journey. I liked the way it popped up this time. 12th of March I went on with Cubine, Locar and Tipple. I added MI2 (Mimi Lempart) as I needed to practice this beautiful pattern

String 246

The focustangle in Square One is MI2 (Mimi Lempart). My tile for today started as a monotangle but ended up with Margaret Bremners Beadline too.

I used string 246 (Nancy Smith). There are not many strings left in my personal project! About strings is much to say. One thing is that sometimes it is a real challenge to make a pattern go with a string. But it is never boring and you can never tell what is going to come out of it. Another thing I have noticed is when I try to learn a pattern and make it my own, the string is very useful. It makes me see the pattern from different angles and helps me to not bother too much. MI2 is a beautiful pattern, but it is also a pattern I haven´t been on good terms with. But now I think I am starting to love doing it. Thank´s to the string!

8th, 9th and 10th of March

The 7th follows as I want to publish the entire page:

I loved to see this page, the way it went. I haven´t been using so much organic tangles before, but I think this is crowded with organic style tangles! Old Purk also came by and Pepper, two patterns I haven´t used for a long time. There are treasures buried in the past!

Today I got back to Lolly Wimple (Sandy Hunter). Here with Mooka (Zt), Tipple and Liefing (Dorothy Allison). Liefling I found in one of Melinda Barlow´s video-lessons at YouTube. Her lessons there I do recommend! She also demonstrates in one of her lessons how to use Echoing lines. 

7th of March

The right thing to do today was to sit down and tangle along... The wind is so cold outside, the clouds are low and it is snowing, snowing..

Nothing could be better than try a tangle new to me, Edgar (Jody Genovese). This tangle was in the challenge "It´s a string thing" last week. I am not into challenges right now, I have a lot of challenges around me anyway. But soon I´ll participate I belive. Edgar got company from Shard (Carole Ohl), Vega, Florz and something down in the right corner that I don´t know the name of...

Well there are challenges and challenges. The Diva this week has Amphora (Lily Moon) as a challenge. I have seen that pattern before, but I haven´t used it. Today seemed to be the occasion, so here it is:

It almost went into a monotangle! But as I used string 245 (Barbara Finwall), there was a circle in the middle which begged for a black gem and in the background Cheesecloth (Suzanne McNeill) was my choice. I loved to do Amphora, though I admit it wasn´t love at first sight. A very relaxing pattern and a pattern that can be used in many ways!

4-5-6th of March

The amazing pattern/reticula Pico from Staub Korn wasn´t all the last days! Linda Farmer published a pattern from Susanne Kelley Pundt called Aprox. Susan had forgotten all about sending the pattern to Linda so she was really surprised! The two Patterns Pico and Aprox has been my company tangling:

On the 5th I also tried Por Fin, the focustangle in Square One.

Yesterday I went on with my stringproject. I have come to string 244 (Debra Sweeting).

The patterns: Featherfall (Carole Ohl),Waax ( Ester Pisczek), Star Map (Suzanne McNeill) and Cubine (Zt).

Today I went on with Por Fin(Cathy Steaven):

A great pattern! Here with Ziggle (Chase Mesineo), Webz (Suzanne McNeill) and Beadline (Margaret Bremner)

3d of March and more about fragment and reticula

Talking about inspiration is not necessarily as important as one can imagine.  If we belive that inspiration is necessary for the work of art, then not much would be done. Sitting under a tree waiting for magical inspiration doesn´t work very often. Necessary for creating art is the daily artwork, daily tangling, drawing and painting. In our best moments this will lead to creating a piece of art.  While  painting or  drawing, inspiration will show up. When we look at what other artists / tangler  are doing it might be there. Those are happy moments when inspiration appears and those moments are also moments of gratitude. Why do I say this? Because I have met so many people saying things like this: I envy your inspiration, where do you get your inspiration from, I would like to paint but I have no inspiration and so on. And I say; this is not the point. If you want to paint, make a sculpture, draw or whatever, then you have to do it. In lucky moments there will be inspiration that forces you to go on, but most of the time you do it for the joy of working with the material only and for the joy of looking at what your pen does on the sheet of paper.

When it is about tangling the most important thing is to keep focusing. It is all about Zen. But there can be sources of inspiration!

March 1st: My inspiration here is the examples on the page before this by Carole Ohl. She used a fragment, which she transformed into new shapes. I loved that. 

March 2nd: My inspiration here was Åsa Vadings drawing of Fetherfall (Carole Ohl), which I loved, and 

March 3d: My inspiration was Janet Burdit´s calendar-piece with Vega. Vega was a pattern I had forgotten and was lovely reminded on!

Staub Korn, a very talented tangler came up with a new pattern, Pico, recently. I wanted to try it! As I worked on it, all of a sudden I saw what this could be! It saw it as a Reticula!!! Which meant, I could fill it with a fragment of my own choice. Whowsa! This was a moment of inspiration and I had to try the idea at once!

I started with a tiny Bijou:

Here I used Yew Dee (Peg Farmer) as a Fragment. So fun! Then I went on with:

Fragment Q2 from Zentangle Primer. I am not finished with this Reticula-way of seeing Pico! The possibilities are infinite! I love this!!!

Zendala again

There are time between my zendalas.  I haven´t done many of them. but they are what I call double-up-zentangle. Lot of zen and lot of relaxation. To go into  a zendala and be there every stroke at a time, that also means I have to have time to do it, since it take a least one day for me to finish it. I have done 2 zendalas quite fast, but I made them for challenges and as I see it now, they didn´t work in the same way.

I started this zendala 28th of March on a rennaisance tile and had to take a break before it was finished because of our two dogs needing their evening-walk. So I left it to rest over the night and finished it yesterday morning as soon as I could grab my pens.

I am happy I did instead of forcing myself to finish it late at night when I ought to go to sleep! It was a special moment to do this. I am not into doing mandalas. I don´t use pre-strung tiles. The round empty tile is good enough but I have to be in the moment and remember the steps in the process. Once started it is just to go with the flow. Here I started with Way Bop, which I used as a string. The funny thing is that I didn´t love Way Bop at the beginning of our relationship, but in the zendala it is perfect. And now I think I start to love it! The other patterns are Arukas, Pokeroot, Paradox, Trio (Hanny Nura), Antidots (Anita Roby-Lavery) and Archer (Peg Farmer).

I want to explore more about zendalas. It would be so cool to be able to go to a class where the zendala is in focus. But till that will be reality I have to work on it myself and do my own experiences. I just love it.

1st and 2nd of March

1st of March: Carole Ohl started this month with a Fragment as inspiration. I used it together with Pokeroot.

 I found it very effective to have Pokeroot to create layer which means depth.

2nd of March: As Gerd Vading has made a fabulous Featherfall in "Tody´s Zentangle" that reminded me of this great pattern by Carole Ohl. I had put it in my patterns-to-try-box and forgot all about it. Now I tried and it is a wonderful pattern to play with! I also brought Shard (Carole Ohl) out in the bright with Antidots (Anita Roby-Lavery and a pattern new to me; Ziggle (Chase Messineo). Ziggle was fun to draw! I will get back to it!

28th of February

Last day of February. I used Flec (Ragged Ray), Hamadox (Diana Scheur) and Cheesecloth (Suzanne McNeill)