Challenge 119: Ebony and Ivory

This week's challenge really got me to try a new technique and discover a little more about art.  Guess that means it was successful.

My first attempt at "Ebony and Ivory" was a pretty basic tile using tangles that I thought would keep the balance of black and white pretty even.  

But then I saw this work from Chris at Tangled Up in Art, which was in turn inspired by the work of Justine Ashbee.  I was enthralled.  I loved the free-flowing, organic look of it.  I decided that this week, with a theme of black and white, was a perfect time to try this new technique.  I gave a little more  weight to the black and made some of the background black to make the proportion of black and white approximately the same.  I was very pleased with the result.   I'm sure I'll work with this technique a lot more. 

Being a fairly new artist with little formal training (does one zentangle class and a collage class at the local art center count as formal training I wonder),  I'm frequently discovering new (to me) artistic principles.  This week I learned that black has more visual weight than white.  Even if they are in equal amounts, the black seems to take up more visual space and importance in the work.  Unless there's so much of it that it becomes the background and kind of disappears.  Another idea to play with.   Thanks to the Diva for yet another learning experience.

Zendala Dare 58

I've been quite busy lately, and haven't taken the time to tangle that I normally do.  It's amazing what a difference it makes!  I feel more anxious and unfocused.  I've decided that no matter how busy I am I need to take a few minutes to tangle every day, especially before I go to bed. 

Here's my entry for The Bright Owls' Zendala Dare 58.  Visit her site to see the template and all the beautiful zendalas that people have made from it.

Zendala Dare 57

This week's Zendala Dare is by guest blogger Genevieve Crabe, who also creates wonderful zendala templates.  Genevieve has also devised a stencil system for creating your own templates. Check out the above link for more info.  Sounds like something interesting to try. 

Here's the zendala I did from her template. 

I also had a chance to do some zentangles this week.  This one's my favorite.

Challenge 117: Schway and Monotangle 10: Hi-Cs

Schway is a new tangle by Zentangle creators Maria and Rick.  Scott of Colorado also stepped out the same pattern, calling it aroz.  Either way, it's a tangle that looks like arrows going in two directions and it's this week's Diva challenge.  Pretty cool, and surprisingly easy to do.

The monotangle challenge from Roy this week is Hi-Cs, another beautiful tangle.  I've done it here in a very geometric tile.  I hope to have time later to do something more fluid.

Monotangle #9--Nzeppel

I enjoy creating monotangles because it gives me a chance to explore a tangle in various sizes and variations.  Here's my entry for Roy's Adventures in Monotangle #9.

Nzeppel is one of my favorite tangles.  It creates a lot of depth, which I love.  Here's a link to another Nzeppel monotangle I posted a few weeks back.

Zendala Dare 56

This was a very challenging dare.  Erin at The Bright Owl gave us a great template, as usual.  Then, as an added challenge for the first dare of the month, we were to use only pencil to tangle it.  This was a lot harder than I thought it would be.  It's harder to get good contrast, and the lines are just not as crisp and clean.  The overall look is softer.   This is a technique that would definitely take some practice to really look good.  After my first attempt, I thought softer, more organic shapes might work better, so I did a second.  Can't wait to see what others did.

 

Zendala Dare 55

Erin called this week's Zendala Dare template "pretty".  So rather than adding a lot of tangles, I decided to use an aura-style effect.  I continuously repeated the lines of the template, although mostly to the inside rather than the outside as in a normal aura.