Exhibition!! 6th-12th of July!

This blog is most of the time about zentangle. But this time it is also about my painting . I am working towards an exhibition in Harg´s bruksgård 6th - 12th of July. It is lasting only for one week but I look forward to do this, the place is beautiful and filled with ancient history! I am sharing this exhibition with my dear friend Gerd Vading, since the place is large and we are going to have a lot of fun during this week when we are together! Today I finished the last of my bigger paintings, 100x80cm, so now I will begin the work to frame them and get them all signed properly.

"Letters" - Tempera/oil on canvas 80x100 cm.

This painting is made in tempera/oil and also a little collage-work. The last years I have been working a lot with mixed media and I will also show these works on the exhibition besides Zentangle and ZIA:s of course. 

Has the zentangle method affected my other artwork? I belive it has. At least I am not aiming for perfectionism any more. I paint for joy. And I am convinced that there are no misstakes in painting either. Since I work with non-representational art I also try to leave the planning as much as I can and work intuitively. Ofcourse technique has to do with it, working with oil and tempera includes some planning, if it doesn´t the painting will fall apart pretty soon. But I am trying not to worry and not to overplan anything. I am doing sketches, yes, but that is most of the time just to set me off! The zentanglemethod has been encouraging in itself and I hope this will be obvious in my work on this exhibition. 

Tangledeck 3 CZT edition is here!

Tuesday was my lucky day (not the only lucky day but one of them)! At last Tangledeck3 CZT-edition landed here at my postoffice! It was stuck in the costumers for more than a week, I had a mailconversation with them telling them that this was a non-violent package, I wasn´t going to sell it to anyone, no commersial purpose and so on. I told them I was honored to be a part of this and I wanted to have it in my hands as soon as possible. When I got the message that I could come and get it at the postoffice, I thought that I would have to pay some costumers fee, since they didn´t drop it in my mailbox, but nothing like that happened! The only thing they wanted was my drivers license so they were sure I was the right one to get it!!!!

The tangledecks are special. I have all three of them and I love to use them. They are not only cards with step-outs. To find step-outs on the internet is very easy. But Lynn Mead has made variations of the pattern on one side of the card and the steps on the other side. The cards work like an inspiration to go on with a pattern in a playful way, and make the patterns come alive.

As I got my copy of Tangledeck 3 I couldn´t wait to start exploring! I had already started on a journalpage for My Tangled Life-group on fb so there were already other patterns done, but I finished the page with patterns from the tangledeck. On this journalpage I used patterns I already knew except for Keystone.

Patterns I already had started with: Bekk (Cyndi Knapp)
Diva Dance and Msst. Patterns from the Tangledeck: Dorsal
(mine), Keystone (Dennie York), Moowa (Anya Ipsen),
 Pixiose (Margaret Bremner),Ruutz (Eni Oken), My Swing
(Simone Menzel)and Wig Wag (Judy Genovese)

Then I went on celebrating with a Renaissance tile with a pattern picked randomly: 

Patterns: Just Lines (Jane McKugler) in focus
surrounded by Pokeleaf and Pokeroot.

I like the random thing so next tile went like this:

All patterns from Tangledeck: Hexonu (Cherryl Moote)
Pip-In (Anoeska Waardenburg) and Line Dance (Alice Hendon)

And this evening´s meditation:

Patterns: Runway (Cris Letourneau) and Yah
(Emily Classon)

This is so thrilling! I never know what will happen when I pick a card from the deck, only that something will happen! All these amazing patterns deconstructed by CZT:s all over the world, is such a great inspiration! I do admire Lynn Mead´s work with all this! And I look forward to find out what every single card is bringing to me!

If you are interested you find all the tangledecks in Lynns blog (shop) and this specific deck you find here.

Same String x 4

The String in Zentangle is something I have learned to appreciate more and more as I tangle on. From the start I did like the idea of dividing the working space with this technique. But now I feel like without a string it is more difficult not to start planning the result of the tangling. The freedom of limits is something recognizable in any kind of art. With no limits it is very very hard to create anything.  The string is the kind of limit that can change during the work, which is the best kind of limit when it comes to create something unique. The string is just a string, it is possible to step over it, to bury it and go in other directions or just follow it strictly. This means that the String is to be followed as a guideline, nothing else.

The Fb group "Today´s Tangles-Keeping It Classic" offers a prompt every week which includes a string and a list of official patterns. This week the string was Fragment B3 from the Zentangle Primer. It was such a great string, I just went on doing it in different ways. I didn´t choose the patterns myself this time, I let a dice with numbers 1-20 do it for me, which worked well since the suggested patterns were 18.

Patterns: Crescentmoon, `NZeppel, Florz and Printemps

Patterns: Mooka and Ixorus

Patterns: Hollibaugh, Florz, Betweed, and Rain

Patterns: Betweed, Striping, Tipple and Ennies

As I did four of them I got a nice mosaique which makes me happy! I can keep turning the tiles, change the places of the tiles and it will look new each time!

I am not sure I am finished with this string yet. There are infinite possibilities to work with this, so far I have used the string  strictly I think, which means that it is possible to see where the string goes even if you don´t know what it actually looks like. What happens if I only use one pattern?  What happens if a pattern crosses the lines going it´s own ways? This is so much fun! To find out what happens if I go into another direction.....