Rockpool tangling

Having spent a week in beautiful Cornwall, with its wonderful beaches, I was inspired to tangle a 'rockpool' tile. The barnacles covering the rocks looked like they would make a great tangle, so I've included them in the top-right of this tile (along with some Limpitz by Jo Newsham). I did find another barnacle-inspired tangle - Barney by Sadelle Wiltshire - but this is a different enough I think. Other tangles include Antidots (Anita Roby-Lavery), M-Anning (Teresa Clerc), Kelp (Nancy Domnauer), Scallops (Suzanne McNeill) and Zentangle originals Pendrills, Mooka, Pokeleaf, Pokeroot.

Square One focus: Zoya

This week's Square One Focus is Zoya, by Celia Norman. It's a fairly straightforward fragment-type tangle, which can be combined and embellished in a number of ways, so it's very versatile. After playing with it in my sketchbook for a while I decided to arrange it as three sets of four squares, diagonally the tile. I also wanted to extend the edges of Zoya beyond the squares, so Mooka seemed the obvious choice.

Having completed it, I couldn't help imagining it with ZenGems embedded in those dark spaces, so I did something I don't normally do and virtually copied the design onto a tan tile, with a couple of variations (I wasn't keen on the Paradox in the black and white version, so that got simplified). The gems are Prismacolour pencils with white gelly roll highlights, and the centre squares are gold gelly roll with Printemps in black micron over the top (not advisable with a nice new pen as it picks up a lot of the gold ink!)

ONE Focus: Skye

For more about this tangle, visit Margaret Bremner's blog, with stepouts and the inspiration for this Celtic knot tangle.
I had fun with this one, as celtic knotwork was very much my 'thing' when I was younger. I practiced it a few times in my sketchbook before deciding that it would look good 'big' (rather than as a border), filled with Adalpha and Marasu to highlight the different threads. Footlights went on one side, and Florz on the other.

3Z practice

I've got lots of spare 3Z-sized tiles now, so I had a break from ValenTangle today and did a few of these. Firstly a really quick one with Flux and Mooka, then a ZenGem surrounded by Mooka, and finally Flux with Paradox in the middle, and surrounded by Printemps. I weighted all the tangles to give an extra sense of depth.

ValenTangle Day 10: 3Z puzzle

Today's prompt was to create a puzzle from 3Z tiles, designed so they look great on their own or placed together. I haven't got any official 3Z tiles as they seem difficult to get hold of, so I haven't tangled on triangles before. I've been keen to have a go though, so this motivated me to make my own, from some old watercolour paper. I really liked Marguerite's 'Delft delights' example, so I treated myself to a blue micron for this one. These two took quite a while, but I like the result, particularly when placed together.

ValenTangle 2018: Day 4

I've seen quite a few posts on Facebook and the Mosaic app in the last few days with a heart theme, tagged ValenTangle2018. This challenge has been set up by Marguerite Samama, and features a different theme each day leading up to Feb 14th. Not sure how many days I'll be able to complete, but I had a go at today's, which is to use the 'Impossible Triangles' tangle, incorporating a heart.

I started with a Mooka heart shape, using a gold gelly roll. The impossible triangles fill the inside, shaded with red, brown and sepia microns, plus lots of graphite! Then I added a gold heart to each triangle, surrounded by red coloured pencil.

C-You

Just had to try this new tangle, C-You, by Debbie Huntington! After following the stepout, and adding shading, it reminded me a bit of Crazy Huggins, so I used that to surround it (along with a touch of Mooka, and Tipple in pencil). 

12 Days of Zentangle: Day 7

We had a busy weekend with friends, but after they'd gone home I found some time to relax and try out my new Zendala tiles. The first had no string - just a flux border and a sprig of mooka, with some filling. Finished of with a new one - Scrawlz (prettier than it sounds!)

The second is from the 12 Days of Zentangle, day seven, on a pre-strung official white Zendala.

No mistakes!

One of the principles of Zentangle is that there are no mistakes, only opportunities. I tried Stella for the first time on this tile, but went wrong very quickly, by missing one of the for markers I'd made - this should have had eight points! I nearly scrapped it, but decided to keep going and see how it ended up. By modifying one of the lobes slightly I managed to rescue it, and I'm pretty pleased with the end result - what a great lesson!
This was definitely inspired by all the wonderful examples of Stella on the Zentangle Mosaic app, but hopefully not a direct copy of any of them.

Renaissance Mooka

I've seen lots of examples of BIG Mooka on the Zentangle Mosaic app, and wanted to have a go myself. I'm fairly pleased with the result, particularly the Mooka and  Sand Swirl, but I wish I hadn't added the small white Mooka top-right - it really doesn't need it. Still, there are 'no mistakes' in Zentangle, so I'll take this as a lesson learned!

Used: black, sepia, brown and red microns, white gelly roll, white charcoal and graphite, on a tan tile. 

Butterfly ZIA

Finally finished this ZIA - a Christmas present for my friend Nicola. It's 8" x 8", the usual black micron 01 with graphite shading, and Prismacolour pencils for the zen gems. Hope she likes it!

A renaissance tile for the New Year

Had to try out a couple of my Christmas presents - new red and brown micron pens. Also used black and sepia, white gelly roll, plus white charcoal and graphite for shading. I can definitely understand why Zentangle was originally just black on white - it's amazing how much more complicated things get when you add more colours/media. I really wasn't sure about this one at first, but I think it turned out alright in the end. Definitely need more practice though!

12 Days of Zentangle: Day 8

A cute little crown on a Bijou-sized tile (2" square). Add a ribbon and it can be attached to things like bottles 😀

Moonlight

Discovered the other day that the moonlight gelly roll pens fluorescent under UV light! After purchasing a new UV torch I did a fairly quick tile to try it out. They definitely glow nicely under UV, but it's really hard to photograph! Not sure if the problem is the camera on the phone not coping with the strange light, or if there's too much white light mixed in with the UV, causing too much reflection on the black tile. It's an interesting effect, anyway - will try out some different photographic techniques.
First photo below is in normal light, second is in UV.