Rain in the Calendar and IAST259

Rain is a zentangle-original pattern, I learned early in my tangling journey from the book of Bekah Krahula. I did like it a lot at the start, but I havent used it so much. Like Fengle, though that pattern came in my way later on. So now I decided to spend some time in my calendar with them and I still like to play with them! Drawing Rain I have a lot of fun exploring Lynn Shelton Mead´s examples in her Tangle-Deck 1.

IAST 259.

We are supposed to use Diamante (Carol Therrien), Sling Slang (Lisette Hofer), 7 Keys (Teresa Clerc) and Hollibaugh. Hollibaugh was the only one I knew! To learn three new to me patterns, well that was a challenge right now! But then the real challenge was to get them together into the suggested string! Hollibaugh, where did you go?? Yes Hollibaugh is there as a reticula! This was fun and I am happy with the outcome! Thank´s Adele for a relaxing challenge!

IAST 206 and the calendar 1st-3rd of August

For IAST 206 has Adele Bruno picked tangles that are known to me. Two of them are tangles I use freequently, one I only have done in my sketchbook. 

Funbee(Beate Winkler), is such a lovely little tangle, that makes me smile when I use it. Yincut (Zt) I used a lot as I learned it and now and then it comes back to me. This is my first tile with Pach (Judy Okawa) I think. Using it in a context with other tangles is really fun! So it may land in my pile with go-to-tangles after this round! 

My first page for August in the calendar:

As usual Carole Ohl has picked fragments to start the month with. This time J15 and K15 from the Zentangle Primer. J15 and K15 are not my favourites among the fragments, so I decided to use them all over the page and see what came out of the pen. 1st of August I tried it in a ordinary square reticula as suggested. I wasn´t too happy about the result. 2nd of August I decided to use Pico (Staub Korn) as a fragment and this went a little wilder and I like this better. 3rd of August I blew it up and had to improvise to make it work which led to a striped fragment and a little different fragment from original. I loved the outcome of this and I had fun doing it! Which means: don´t give up on anything. Just do it more!

1st - 12th of June

I haven´t forgotten my blog or abandone it! But I have been away on vacation for a week. Before I left I didn´t have the time either. But here comes my calendar pages:

 I started the month of June with the fragment Carole Ohl suggested, J15. It was som work on it but it was fun! The second day of June I was walking my dogs as usual in the early morning. This time I noticed the small triangular window under the roof of a barn we use to pass quite often. I thought it must make a nice little Dingbatz so...I filled it with Tint (Henrike Bratz) and Impossible triangles (Zt). On the third I went on with Tint and Crescent moon (Zt).

4th, 5th and 6th on vacation. Went on with the Dingbatz-model! I liked to do this page a lot starting after breakfast before we went out into the wild! 
 

7th 8th and 9th: Tried to learn 2V (Ginny Lu). 7th was to follow the steps carefully, 8th I made it in combo with N´Zeppel and on the 9th I tried it with B-Twined (Pegi Shargel). Think I liked the 9th best...

10th, 11th and 12th. Back home again and now Diva dance goes through the entire page followed by Puffin (Jean Chaney), Caviar (Lori Howe), Agni (Lily Moon), Impossible triangles (Zt), Ziggle Chase Messineo), Showgirl Vicki Bassett), and Apacore (Lori Manoogian). I have used Ziggle only once but I like this pattern a lot!

Reticula and Fragments in my calendar

This entire post is about Reticula and Fragments. In my calendar I have tried to focus more on the Reticulas and less on the fragments. The Reticula is the net which keeps everything together. First I tried 6 different Reticulas only, but then my curiosity won and I had to try them all with different Fragments. I worked with my Lamy-pen most of the time, not the micron. Here is the result:

16th-18th of May I did publish in an earlier post but I want to publish them together with the last three days because it is obvious when you look both pictures  what it means to use different Reticulas! The fragments are all from Zentangle Primer, but the Reticulas are from patterns I know well.

19th-24th of May came in a row. I had much fun doing this as I like surprises! It might look like a mess sometimes but there is a structure to follow! 

More Reticula and Fragment done with fountainpen

My fountainpen Lamy and I are old friends. I love to write poems with it, I have done a lot of sketches and drawings with it. I have tangled with it a lot in my sketchbooks. Now I wanted to try it on a tile (Fabriano Tiepolo) as I saw the results of Lynn Shelton Mead! 

The nib of my pen is a little bit broader than on Micron O,1. But I like how easily the ink flows over the surface. It is a different feeling and the pen is better in my hand than Micron. This is not the last tile I´ve done with my fountainpen!!!

I have tried to focus on the Reticula for some days now. The Reticula Glace (In Melinda Barlow´s video) is so fascinating. I tried it here with Fragment L25. It is simple but I like it a lot!

Reticula - addictive!

This morning I watched a video by Melinda Barlow again. I was so excited, I made the entire page in my calendar from this. Take a look at the video first! Here is my entire page:

Watching Melinda´s explanation about the Reticula, I found out some points. The first one was that I should concentrate more on the reticulas rather than the fragments right now! The second point was, that I have been using some patterns as Reticulas quite a lot, without noticing what I have done. The third point is, this opens up even more possibilities with the Reticula-Fragment thinking!

Structures has always been interesting to me, especially in art. On this entire page I have done three Reticulas. They all eminate from patterns I love to do. The first one on 16th I got from Linda Barlow´s video and is a pattern called Glace. Or you can see, it also is an Oge-grid! 

Whow! Some days are better than others even if it is raining outdoors!

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!

10th, 11th and 12th of May

This page i only use Fragments from the Zentangle Primer. I have thought about that for a while inspired by Simone Menzel´s work.

It was very fun and I only used one kind of Reticula, the one with squares. I started with one I have tried before, W7,  then I  went on with P6, M7, P5 and F2. M7 became a favourite! I think I will go on with this Fragment-Reticula-thing for a while it is so fun!

I talked a lot about Molygon in yesterday post. Today I tried it on a black tile and I got a tip from Sue Zanker, Australian tangler, to make them fatter.

Now I think I found a way to work with Molygon that I feel more comfortable with. This one was really relaxing to do and I like the way it talks to me.

4th - 9th of april and the Diva´s challenge

There are a lot of Grids. And Grids that can be used as Reticulas. Maybe it is the way you think of it that makes the difference? One definition is that a Reticula is always drawn with the pen, not the pencil. But a grid can be drawn with a pencil or a pen. That is confusing I think. 

4th of April: I picked up Daniel Lamothe´s Knightstar, a pattern I first learned from the Diva I think. Working with it I did fall in love with the pattern though first I found it a little bit difficult or too much high-focus. Until I experienced that this pattern was an excellent way to learn to see the oopses as new possibilities! I haven´t done it for a while, but looking through my sketchbooks I stumbled over it and tried it again. Now I put it into a Reticula from the Zentangle Primer, but still I kept the pattern not as a fragment but as I learned it from the start.

5th of April: Now I was thinking Knightstar and then I went into Merryweather by Sandy Hunter, a pattern in a square-grid, that I loved from the start. 

6th of April: Lovely Sindoo from Sharon Robinson completed three days of grids and reticulas.

7th of April: This day was a day of sorrow and/or anger for most people in Sweden. A terrorist attack in the heart of Stockholm occured when a lot of ordinary people were strolling around, shopping and whatever. A lunatic drove a truck into the crowd. The result of this did affect everyone I know. I tried to focus on some tangling and choose to go to the focustangle of Square One: Joki by Kim Arts Bruins.

8th of April: I went to church and to the church-choir. We sang "Crucifixtion" by John Steiner. It was so comforting to do so and the whole choir just sang from their hearts which made it to a special musical moment we won´t forget.

Tangles for the day: Joki, and the Diva´s challenge this week: Frunky (Katharina Königsbauer-Kolb). A lovely tangle! Thank´s to Laura Harms for introducing it to us!

9th of April: I went on with Joki and Frunky today and Trifle (Margaret Bremner) joined and some Striping. 

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!!!

27th of February and string 240-242

February 2017 is soon gone. Looking backwards, it has been a busy month and my studio is full of things going on. The calendar is very often my start of the day, before I go into anything else. It wasn´t planned but now I have had three days with Waybop, a tangle I didn´t even like from the start....

The last one today is different from the two before, as I only used 6 "seeds". It looks more like a decal or something you put on the wall. I liked it though. The patterns except Waybop, are parts of Arukas, Pardox, Caviar (Lori Howe), and Mashed (Lori Byerly). there is one thing with the calendar I am not comfortable with. As I blacken bigger areas, the black doesn´t come out black and even, if I try to make more layers of black it will all be messed up. Now I have tried that, I will be more careful not doing so much black areas.

Now to the strings I have done´. The first one, string 240 (Anette Plaga Lodde):

A monotangle with Tri-O (Hanny Nura). This one started with a little Oops and then it went out of control into a monotangle-orgy! It was so fun and I think Trio will be one of my favourites. 

The second one, string 241 (Barbara Finwall):

Barbara Finwall has made a lot of very interesting strings! I used it with Yaw-Dee (Peg Farmer), the focustangle in Square One, Huggins and Beadlines (Margaret Bremner). Yaw-Dee is so cool!

The third one string 242(Joyce Blodgett):

Yes! A black tile at last! Haven´t done that for some time now. It is odd that I did this since it was my first try on Ragged Ray´s pattern Flec. But I had to try that since I liked his example on the black tile in his blog a lot! It is a fun and easy pattern. I will sure try it more. Here I used it with FragmentY1 in a wavy reticula following the string and Some tipple.

12th of February and one travelling tangle!

One more page finished!I love this calendar!

I went on with F Q2 and R A2, Florz (Zt), Crescentmoon (Zt) and Web (Suzanne McNeill). Then Zimba popped up again and also Beadlines (Margaret Bremner). From now on I write F for Fragment and R for Reticula and the letters and numbers coming with it refers to fragments and reticula in Zentangle Primer. I liked the way it all turned out.

Then I went on finishing one of Sue Zanker´s beautiful starters for me! Forgot the beforepic, but I took a groupie as soon as I opened my Happy Mail, so everything is to be seen!

Sue started this black tile with Relly-Telly-One (Karin Klang-Meier) and I answered with Tipple and 2 patterns of Helen Williams: Heartline and Heart Offset. Heart Offset is a new tangle to me  and I liked to play with it. Here you find the entire Happy Mail from my friend Sue in Australia:

11th of February

My Calendar for today:

Crescent moon. then I choose Reticula A2 with Fragment Q2. Then Florz (Zt) passing by and Web (Suzanne McNeill).

In SquareOne Flowery (Ina Sonnenmoser) is the Focustangle. I was just wondering what kind of hearts I would like to use for Valentines tangling. Here it is!

I prefer to see hearts instead of flowers in this tangle! Or heartpetals.... The other tangle is Waax (Esther Piszczek), a new found one for me. The string is 238 (Beth Snoderly).