The calendar is a perfect companion when I am on journey! I have been away from home a couple of days visiting an old friend of mine and my grandchild. Tangling-time is hard to find under these circumstanses, but the calendar is the solution!
It can take a lot of time to do it or about no time at all. Hakrall (Holly Atwater) did travel with me. I tried to do it in different ways. It is a highfocus-tangle and I made a lot of Hick-ups as I started in my sketchbook and on the 25th the Hic-kups were still present. Hick-ups is a word I got from Lynn Shelton Mead and I must say it describes very clearly what is happening drawing this tangle! The easiest way to do it for me was to combine it with other tangles. So from 26th I let it play with Sand Swirl (Karry Heun)(using my Lamy fountainpen) and 27th with Balloya (Anya Lothrop). the Bronx Cherrie was also there.
28th was my last day away from home and I continued with Hakrall together with Dansk (Margaret Bremner), Pokeroot and Knightsbridge. I tried to put Hakrall in a box too. 29th, at home celebrating my birthday I waved goodbye to Hakrall for this time. I have been waiting to get Lynn Shelton Mead´s Tangledeck 1 and 2, and guesswhat was waiting for me at the postoffice this day! I got myself a birthdaygift kind of! Looking through the stepouts she made of patterns well known and her examples was so inspiring so I just started off with Verdigogh and following her example I made auras around it! It got a quite different and pleasant look and I loved to try this!
From now and a couple of weeks Laura has invited guests to continue with the weekly challenge. First out is Jessica Davies with a challenge: Tangled hearts. This is my first entry:
I go on with my recycling of old watercolorpaintings. Can you see the heart? Of this particular piece I ought to have taken a before-pic! The reason is; I thought it was a very ugly piece! But I could see a little heart-shape in the middle and from that I could go on tangling! I used the patterns: Phroz (Lynn Shelton Mead), Fassett (Lynn Shelton Mead), LO´s (mine), Knase (Zt), Golden Tipple (Zt) and Zinger (Zt). The Zinger-part wasn´t Zinger from the start, just small bows to make a movement, but all of a sudden Zinger had to come out of that! The painting underneath worked well as a string. I am happy to see the ugliness turned into this! It is like magic!
I aimed to produce some Dingbatz this month. But no planning in Zentangle! The last day of May is today and here is one:
I love the idea. I have done some but they are done in notebooks, on a program for something or as I am sitting listening to something I can´t concentrate on. They are not documented. I belive this is a good thing with Dingbatz. They don´t have to be anything else than a note somewhere! That doesn´t mean I don´t appreciate them. I do love them a lot! And in May I have drawn them all with my Lamy pen!
The focustangle in Square One is Dreamdex by Debbie New. I don´t know why I had to struggle with it. The shapes are familiar. It is easy to learn. But I wasn´t satisfied with the sketches I made in my sketchbook. I like to draw it but something wasn´t what I wanted it to be. I decided I had to focus more on the pattern, so here comes a monotangle or almost a monotangle, since I couldn´t reject Beadlines (Margaret Bremner) coming in.
I am satisfied where this went. Now I think I know what was wrong. I felt a little locked in the pattern at first, but as I found out I really loved the negative form I saw I could break the pattern into other parts, which I loved! Maybe it is that fragmentfeeling....
The UMT this month is about Scallamp (Sarah Uram). UMT means Use My Tangle and is a recurrent challenge from the Diva. This is fun, it is a way to find unexpected patterns and Scallamp is such a pattern. I went on recycling the same watercolorpainting as last week.
As the grang is rough (surface of the watercolorpaper), it is quite difficult to use Micron 0,1. I started this with the Micron but than I grabbed my Lamy Fountainpen, which worked so good on this surface! One problem though, I forgot that the ink from the fountainpen isn´t waterproof! So shading with my distress marker almost went into a mess!the rest of the shading is graphite for that reason and I used white charcoal and white gellypen for highlitning.
Except Sallamp I used Ruutz (Eni Oken), 5C Aura an 5C Wrapped (both Ina Sonnenmoser)
From this I learned, that I´ll look for some old watercolorpaintings with fine grang to recycle!
Home again. I have been focusing on my personal challenge: The strings from tanglepattern.com. I find it relaxing and challenging to work on strings that are not my decision. I know there are lots of tanglers that don´t bother about strings or they find them to limiting. So far I will stick to the basic thing with strings. The string for me is not a limit. It is a guidance. I don´t feel stuck. It is like having a start for free. When someone else has made up the string it is the start of the tangling moment in a special way. As I have been on the bus to and from Stockholm, here comes some wobbling lines too!
string 147 by Judyellen Palumbo: Starcrossed (Jenna Black), Printemps, Paradox and Tipple. Starcrossed is a new tangle and it is absolutely a tangle I will come back to! This one I made on the bus with my Lamy fountainpen and in my sketchbook.
String 148 by Barbara Finwall: This one I made after the funeral of my friend, which was the reason for my trip to Stockholm this time. When I was alone in the night I had to do something to get some relief from all the feelings during the day before I could go to sleep. Tangling was the way to sorten things out and doing so I also could feel grateful that I have had the opportunity to know my friend for so many years. Patterns: Viaduct (Wayne Harlow), LO´s (mine), Ing and Tipple
String 149:A funny string from Grace McIntyre. I didn´t know where to start. But then I decided to go for Ing once more. Ing is the Diva´s challenge this week. I then added Lots a dots (Carole Ohl), Partay (Margaret Bremner) and Florz. Also from my sketchbook, drawn with Lamy fountainpen and micron.
String 150 by Adele Bruno: Most of this tile was finished on the bus. I wanted to draw on a tile, not in my sketchbook. It was more difficult to do this, but using a book under it helped a little. I finished it back home when I added the Cheesecloth (Suzanne McNeill) in the background. As a frame I used Heart Devided (Helen Williams) and the big hearts are Heartstring (Helen Williams) with a Beadline (Margaret Bremner) across it.
This morning when I opened my iphone, I was introduced to a group called "The monotangle adventure" on Facebook. Because of that I will set the Monotangle in focus for this post. The monotangle is simple: Only use one tangle! I have done it a several times and I find it very relaxing and very much being in the zen-zone ! Here is the zentanglemethod at it´s most pure form. Just repeat the same pattern for a while, finding new ways for it to develop and change into tangleations! I also have experienced that doing a monotangle, I am not at all focused on the result, but the process, the line going out from my pen. That should be the case when I do an ordinary tile, but it is very easy for me to judge myself and get lost into planning. With a monotangle I really don´t mind the result, it is just about being in the moment. As I saw the FB-group I said to myself, I must do this more often!
This is my morningtangle from my sketchbook. I tried the focustangle from Square One called Groove by Eden Hunt. As usual in my sketchbook I used my Lamy fountainpen. The pattern I haven´t done before and the wavy-style of the grid is something that I have to practice, because it doesn´t come natural for me. The string I used is the one from Joey´s first circular challenge 116. As I started to do the tangle, I wasn´t sure if I liked it; too similar to others I know. But monotangeling it made me change my state of mind. It works! After having used it some more time I might even have fun with it! I am curious about where this will go!
