Taking ink seriousely in calendar 13th-18th of october and DC 372

I used to do a lot of drawing with my fountainpens earlier, but I haven´t done this so much when I tangle.  But for inktober last 6 days I have taken the ink seriousely. I hade some deep burgundy in one of my pen and that made my first page. But now I have no more of that ink left! Maybe this will be the last page ever with this ink from Mont Blanc!!! I hope not.  The patterns: Dewd (Zt), Ando (Kim Winebrenner) and Inapod (Carole Ohl) 

For the next page I went on drawing with my Lamypen filled with black ink (I have a lot of that) and changed to blue in my Mont Blanc and it got just a little touch of the previous burgundy ink! I love that effect! The inktober tangles: Joki (Kim Aarts), Narwal (Sam Taylor) and Luv-a (Sharon Carforio).  With some help of Aquafleur and a tiny Squid.

The Diva challenge 372 is all about Dewd. This pattern is so fun and relaxing to draw, I feel like I could go on with it for ever!

I decided to try something different. I used a fountainpen which is made with a caligraphy-nib (inspired by Lauras dip-pen): 

I don´t use this pen very much but I like the way it works. The result is a little bit rough but I still like it. Then I went on making Dewd on a black ATC-tile:

Couldn´t resist having some Tipple in the middle. This one is very different from the first tile depending on the surface and on which tools I used; gellypen and white charcoalpencil. Since this wasn´t enough I tried it in my journal with tan surface:

Also quite different approach! I only used gellypen, white charcoalpencil and graphite. Yes Inapod is there too. I think I am a little bit addicted to Dewd by now. Definitely a tangle to go to when stuck!

28th-30th of September and IAST 262

I have been visiting my grandchildren this weekend. A lot of fun was going on. Not much tangling though! But here is my calendarpage with three takes on string 32. Patterns: Mooka, Tipple, Beelight, Static, Striping, ´NZeppel and Hibred. All of them official zentangles. I wanted to do IAST 262 badly, but I think I might be too late. I made it in my new sketchbook on tan paper. 

Gourdgeous and Woooo (Joan Stark). Gourdgeous is not my best friend, but I like the drama it causes! Now I make the post to Adele Bruno and if I am lucky it will come to here in time!

I found this sketchbook Saturday, as I was in Stockholm with my grandchild, 4 years old. The book is from Hahnemühle and the paper is called Cappucino. It is wonderful paper, doesn´t bleed through at all! Gourdgeous was a test!

In the round with Hexa

Tangling in the round is one of the best methods for me to get into the zone, no worries, no planning, just being there. My friend Ria Matheussen has come up with several beautiful patterns recently and I have paid attention to them but not done much more than that. Hexa is one of them and is built from small hexagones. I like this pattern,because it is easy to learn, it can come out bold or elegant, with different amount of drama and so on. Here is my first attempt:

As I try a pattern for the first time I always draw it in my sketchbook first and then I try it on white surface with black pen. I enjoyed doing Hexa like this and together with Stikz (Laurel Sponseller) D´Rua (Damy) and Antidots (Anita Roby Lavery). 

  

1st-3rd of July and recycled watercolor

1st - 3rd of July. New month. New challenges. I wanted to try my new Tombow pen. When I added the water to get the watercoloreffect I realized the paper didn´t like this at all! The color was bleeding through the paper! But the result was pretty cool, though I got a wobbling surface! I used Crescentmoon, Arc Flower (JJ La Barbera), Fescu, My Swing (Simone Menzel) and finally Striping.

Today I couldn´t bare myself! I got a couple of recycled watercolor-tiles from Gerd Vading, my friend in Östhammar. It was such a lovely one, I almost forgot to take the before-pic! But I stopped myself before the surface had disappeared under my tangling!

I started off with Footlite (Carole Ohl), since this is a prompt for 4th of July offered by Jamie Johnson att Today´s Tangles.

Next pic is from before shading:

The patterns added are XYP and Jonqual both Zt. Since this was on a watercolorpaper-surface, I didn´t have any problems with the Tombow pens.

Finish:

There are no ups and downs in zentangle, but I liked it best this way I think. This was fun and thank´s to Gerd for offering such a great surface to work on!

10th-12th of April and a tile for Cris

Amphora (Lily Moon) for three days. This is a beautiful tangle that I use now and then. It can take many shapes! 

Recently Cris Letourneau CZT, artist and author has been affected hardly as her husband died in a fire that totally destroyed their home. Cris and her daughter Alexa are safe since they were not at home that nigt. In the group Today´s Tangles were Cris is a member, Sandy asked us to make tiles, send them to her and she will send the package to Cris for comfort and support. Here is my tile for her, now on its way by mail.

The patterns are Flukes, Ing, `NZeppel and Peace Petals (Sandy Kelley-Jones). 

22nd-27th of March and something colorful!

Revisiting tangles!
22nd: 2n5 by Anita Roby Lavery. Like this playful pattern a lot! So simple and yet so cool to play with!
23rd-27th: Can´T by Chris Titus. First time I met Can´T was in a challenge, I think it was Adele Bruno´s It is a string thing! I was thrilled by the way this pattern seems so different depending on the shading. I didn´t try rounded corners then, but now I did an it was totally something else I saw coming out of the pen! So much fun! I belive Can´T is now going to stay with me!

I have been away a couple of days enjoying to sing Pergolesi´s Stabat Mater in the church of Rasbo. Ofcourse I brought my tangle-kit with me. I used one tile I cut out of a large marbeled sheet of heavy-weight paper that I have kept for years.

Since I have bee busy rehersing Pergolesi I haven´t had the time to try two resent published techniques published by Maria and Rick in the zentangle-app. The first one was to tangle Molygon in a string which looks like a creepy thing going around the tile! I love the little dangerous look of this shape! Then I went for the Cadent-tangleation whick I do appreciate a lot! Some Tipple and Fescu also came along. This is my Happy Eastern tile for all of you!

I am the Diva´s challenge no. 352

Last week I didn´t go for the Diva´s challenge. The reason was I wanted to practice SKYE. Another reason is I wasn´t that interested in the Olympic theme, it didn´t speak to me.  This week´s challenge, no 352, is about hearts and I thought I was done with hearts this month! But then I visited Michele Wynne´s blog  and couldn´t resist to give the heart one more round! I opened up my treasure-box filled with eco-dyed papers and there it was!

Can you see the heart glowing in there? I did and here is my nested heart:

The tangles: Chainging, Tipple, `NZeppel and Dro´t/Wire (Ferenc Nagy). The size is different from what I use to work on, 9x17,7cm.I used some brown colorpens, bronze and white gellypen. It was a nice surface to tangle on and I love the eco-dyed colors a lot. 

Duo-colored surface and rescue tile part 2

One more round to gowith the duo-colored surface, since there was one more tile left out of the first one! Here it is:

I realize I should have taken a before-pic before I cut the tile in parts with the tan tile. I didn´t. If the first one was fun to do, this one was even more! I used Fragment Y4 (from Zentangle Primer; very useful fragment), Eye-Wa (Zt), Florz(Zt) and Knightsbridge (Zt). It is so satisfying to rescue tiles and give them a new life! I also put the two tiles together to see if something happened here:

And yes they can match eachother. Not a perfect match maybe, but good enough! This is a wonderful technique, learned from the Project Pac 2, which was a part of #12DaysofZentangle! I´ll find out a way to use this working with my other collages.

13th - 15th of January

Now I am trying out patterns from Lori Byerly I haven´t tried yet. The first one is gr8. I loved this one at first sight. I am sure I will use this pattern furtheron. Next one is Ruflz. Easy and fun to draw. The third one is 3 to go. I also liked thisone. It makes me smile doing it!

Striping on a black zendala and calendarpage 25th-27th of November.

In PP01 there was a video with striping on a black presprung zendala. As I didn´t have a presprung black zendala I searched the web and found a template I wanted to try. Here is what I decided to try. I printed the template, used my white charcoalpencil on the back of the paper, placed it on my zendala and traced the lines and so there I had a "presprung" zendala! I don´t use templates very often but for this purpose I thought it would work ok.  This is the first time I made a monotangle on a zendala and I must say it was the perfect thing to do on a presprung one! I do enjoy the process  working on a zendala very much. So: More zendala in my life is a promise to myself. 

Here is the calendarpage:

Viaduct (Wayne Harlow), Cubine, Beeline and Drupe. A strange combination I thought. Especially to get some Drupe on 27th to be done! But however it came out and I do love this page more than I thought I would. Cubine is a favourite of mine for sure but I wouldn´t have chosen these combinations if I hadn´t followed the #Giveatangle2017 -prompts! So glad I did. 

Striping the Diva´s challenge

Striping is a challenge I remember from last year. It isn´t about the pattern Striping, it is about using tangles in a striping way as I think about it. So here comes my entry this time:

Well yes, I took a before pic. Before shading and highlighting.

After shading and highlighting. This is made on a piece from an old watercolorpainting. Recycled Fabriano heavyweight watercolorpaper. I love this paper though I have to use thicker pens than on original tiles since the surface is quite different. I didn´t use the distress markers for the shading this time, I only went on with watercolor and graphite. The patterns are: Paizel (Angie Vangelis), Sula (Susan Kelley Pundt), Lealad (Lily Moon), Tattle (Milde Weiss), Nekton and Crescent Moon. I am still happy about the idea of recycling my old sins! 

Paizel and the calendar

Paizel by Angie Vangalis is the focus-pattern in Square One right now. I have seen it before but not used it.

I filled in the spaces with Nekton as Angie did on her example and I like the way it changed the look of the pattern. Nekton is not a favourite pattern of mine but here I can see the qualities! Paizel is very meditative to draw and easy to learn. The other patterns that came by are Antidots (Anita Roby Lavery), She Leaf (Yu Ru Chen)and Tipple (Zt).

By the way, I love to work on tiles even more than before. The paper, Fabriano Tiepolo 290g (same as in original tiles) has such a lovely surface I can´t get enough of this.  

In the calendar I went on trying some different fragments in various ways. As I look at this page I find it quite messy and not what I wanted it to be but this is the way it went. I like the 14th most. Fragment T4 was the one that caused me trouble from the start. I think I will go for it another round and only use that one, now I left it this way because I didn´t belive this fragment liked me!

3Z - for Dad

Today my dad is going to the hospital. Tomorrow he is going through a big surgery. He is 88 years old. I am not there physically but with my mind. Of course I am worried. But right now there is nothing I can do. He is in my tangling. My thoughts go to him. My prayers as well.

As I look at the result of today´s tangling on 3Z I get a picture of the subconcious process going on. And it deals with my dads situation.  I can see that. But I also can see there is balance and strength. I appreciate that and I am thankful. The patterns are Crescent moon and of course Papz, the pattern I made up for my Dad. I filled it with pearls but now when I look at it they look like lamps....

I thought of giving this tile some color. Maybe it will come up... or not. Today it looks like this anyhow.

I am the Diva´s weekly challenge 314

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! 

One more for the Divas Amandaday-challenge

I love recycling. I use it very much in my art. So I wanted to make one more for Earth Day and for the Diva´s challenge this week. When I have done something that I don´t like at the moment, I don´t throw it away.  I keep it for further use. I have some watercolors kept in a pile and now I cut up one (on heavyweight watercolor-paper)  in tile-size and tangled on it! As it was a quite big watercolor-painting, I have a lot of tiles from this! Here is the first one:

The surface is not as smooth as on original tiles but it worked and I get a good feeling to remake an old watercolor-painting in this way!

The patterns are: 5C Aura (Ina Sonnenmoser), Andromeda (Lily Moon), Lealad (Lily Moon) and something that is the beginning of Amphora (Lily Moon).  

String 249 and 250!

The last strings from tanglepatterns.com are 249 and 250. The end of my string project. It has been so fun doing this! I hope Linda Farmer will publish more strings after this! This pics are scanned, since I now think I can manage my scanner in a better way and the result is ok.

For string 249 I used Pico (Staub Korn), fragments B4, F7 and Q7 from zentangle Primer.

For string 250 I used Orange Arc (Sandra Strait), Meer (zt) and Vitruvius (zt).

4th and 5th of February

Yesterday was a day of rehearsing with my beloved vocal ensemble. I was so tired after that, I didn´t know what to do with the calendar. I needed help so I asked the tangle randomizer on tanglepattern.com choose the tangle to start with and there was Loop by Amelie Liao. Had not done this before and it reminds me of both Ellish and Arukas. Pretty one and then they just showed up, Diva Dance (Zt), Holes and Bubbles (both Suzanne McNeill). Today Sandy Kelly Jones made a challenge for us: combine Bales with Oof. Both Zt. So I took the easy way, which was quite relaxing. But the connection with yesterday is pretty week I think. Don´t know what is coming!

This night´s meditation. Square One´s focustangle is Neuron. 

I used string 234 (Rosemary Turpin). Neuron (Beth Snodderly) is special. I didn´t think of it as a tanglepattern. I know it from studys in art, I have done it myself long ago and made a painting out of it which I still like. Strange to use it as a tangle! But I made a try. Here with Strickles, Crescentmoon, Florz (all Zt), Beadline (Margaret Bremner) and Chain Link (Barbara Finwall). 

After working in my calendar a lot I do appreciate to go back to original tiles. I love the material, the way shading works on it, the slight resistance in the surface when the pen glides over it, yes, everything!!! 

2nd day of the New Year

2nd Day with the calender. I would like to connect the days in some way. The first day lead to the second and so on...

There are three days on each page so this should be possible. On my second day I wanted to try Carole Ohls suggestion; a double spiral fragment in a grid.

I choose Amaze as the "background". The space to tangle on (59x62mm) is less than an ordinary tile (89x89mm). That helps to keep it simple. It is also another kind of paper, smooth and slightly glossy. It is fun and I don´t need a lot of time to do it. Very deliberating!

Then I made my daily tile using string 221 (Sandra Hart).

The patterns are: Cracked (Lori Howe), 3D-room (Dami Teng) and Sez (Zt). I brought Sez into this because that is a pattern I haven´t made to mine. It isn´t yet either, but I want to go on with it to see where it can lead.

Black Friday

Why do we have this BLACK Friday? And why call it BLACK? It has popped up during the past 2 years in Sweden and is all about commercial stuff. Buy whatever, if you need it or not. I admit. I did buy something but I won´t tell what! I love BLACK but not in combination with Friday. So I didn´t make a black tile today. I went for my personal project with strings and I have come to string 197 (Nancy Smith). A very geometrical string and I love geometry.

I started with a favourite of mine, Lollywimple (Sandy Hunter), and then followed: Cubine, Starmap (Suzanne McNeill) and Appearance (Sandra Strait). These four are all such patterns that just appear unplanned and so easy to learn that anyone knows them by heart very quickly! Very relaxing! 

Listening to the inner circle

Sometimes it is important to step aside. I belive I am at that point right now. There has been a lot of input. So I will take a rest from challenges a little while. I need to melt things and make them my own. All this about Reticula and Fragments for ex. today I have ordered the Zentangles Primer in German language (Amazon) and hope to get it in a few days. Thank´s to Ria in Belgium for her kind help! Bonus: The German edition is cheaper than the one in English! I can read German, I read it better than I speak, but not as easy as I read English! But as Ria said: it is good for the brain to work a little! 

This is what I made today. Doing it I became aware of the importance to listen inwards, not plan the outcome and appreciate it whatever. Let the line flow out of the pen, breath. No judgement. This is what it is like. I used string 196 (Beth Snoderly) and the patterns: Zonked (Barbara Finwall), Marnie (Chrissie Frampton), Starmap (Suzanne McNeill) and `Nzeppel.