More Fun With Color

This week's Diva Challenge was to use Tipple in a monotangle. I like Tipple and immediately thought of doing a piece that had a gradient of color. I looked on the TanglePatterns site for a string and decided that string 144 would be perfect. Unfortunately I don't have a yellow pen so had to make do with a gold but I think it works pretty well.

I spent the rest of my art week working on ATCs for the Stacked and Tangled ATC swap. I posted 6 least week and here are another 12. Almost done!

The Humble Umble

This week the Zentangle newsletter was about Umble, one of the original tangles but one whose step-out had never been posted. Until now! So I was not surprised when the Diva challenge this week was to use Umble as at least part of our tile. I chose to do mine as a monotangle in a sort of Meer meets Umble mashup. I worked on it at a meeting this morning and had a nice time listening to the meeting and Zenning away (is that a word?).

Over at the Facebook Group Stacked & Tangled there is a new ATC swap starting up. I've always wanted to do one of these so I decided to jump in and give it a go. Here are my first 6 (I need 20 in total).

A New Project

A couple of years ago a friend of mine passed away. She was an avid stitcher and three ladies in her Embroiderers' Guild spent several months organizing her stitching stash and brought it to a meeting for a stash sale. I picked up this finished piece to remember my friend by and plan to make it into an ornament for my Christmas tree.

I've always loved cable cars!

I also found a project she had worked on that was obviously meant to be a mixed media piece. I picked this up as one of the few in the group that relishes working in mixed media. When I got it home I found that there was no documentation with it but there was a receipt for a tote bag purchased at The Greenbriar in West Virginia. That lead me to the discovery that she had taken a workshop through NAN (National Academy of Needlearts) in 1999 and that what I had brought home from the stash sale was what she had worked on at the workshop.

The workshop seems to have been about painting on paper using transfer paints, transferring the image onto fabric with an iron, and then embellishing the result with thread and fabric snippets. There were two paintings and three fabric images (two are duplicates from the same painting) and one of the fabric pieces has been started. I am planning on working on these and posting my progress from time to time.

Painted swatches and color mixing

Threads and fabric snippets

Two ironed images from one painted piece

A second painted piece with the work in process

I like the way the two "duplicate" images on the left look as though they could be photos of a landscape taken on different days, one cloudy and one sunny. I am going to begin with the piece on the right that is already in process and see where it takes me.

Back to paper art, when I was little I remember one of my teachers showing us how to make scratch paper by coloring a piece of paper with crayons and then covering the crayon with black tempera paint. We then got to scratch our artwork into it and reveal the color in new and surprising combinations. Recently I saw some scratch paper books on clearance and bought several. I gave away all but one as gifts but when I saw this week's Diva Challenge to work with the colors of the rainbow I knew it was time try out my purchase. Eight of the pages are holographic silver and eight are rainbow colored but it didn't say which half of the book was which (part of the magic!) So I wound up doing two since the first one wasn't the rainbow paper.

 Does anyone else see a stylized bunny in this one?

String #161
Tangles Used: Bateek, Box Spirals,
Crescent Moon, and Organza

I gave myself an extra challenge using tangles starting with L, G, B, and T to create a rainbow tile for Pride Week which is coming up next week.

Tangles Used: Lazy Eights, Glace, Beadlines, and Ticking

So much fun! I both can't wait to do more and will be sad to have used them "all up."

Color My World

Despite the title of this post I am starting it of with something in black and white. This is my tile for the Muster Mixer challenge this month. The challenge is to combine Cat-kin and Jax into a mash-up tangleation. This one flowed for me and I'm happy with the result.

And then the color started to happen. As I mentioned last week a friend and I had signed up to go to a Copic Marker workshop. We took two classes on Friday and one on Saturday. First up was a class focused on faces  and hair so as you can see, I haven't yet colored in anything else.

The second class of the day (and it was a very long day) covered mono tones and sepia. The focus was a really in depth look at shading.

The second day was focused on clothing and accessories. It built on the shading we had done the day before.


I learned quite a bit about color and shading that I hope to apply to my pieces in the future. It was fabulous to be in a class with dozens and dozens of colors to use but I'm not sure I'm ready to invest in a huge set of markers yet. But the lessons should apply to watercolor and colored pencils which I do have so I think it was time well spent on top of being a total blast.

The Diva Challenge this week also had a color theme.  She and her friend Tara organized a Fun Run for Beads of Courage for the third year in a row. The beads are used by children and their families who have chronic or life threatening illnesses to represent their journey in a tangible way. A bead is given for each needle stick, X-Ray, test, or procedure and they help children coping with a serious illness. The challenge was to take your inspiration from the Beads of Courage program for your tile.

I've used markers (although not Copic) to color the smaller beads and ironically have done no shading at all. But that is what the tile said it wanted and I bowed to it's greater knowledge!

Boxed In

A friend of mine convinced me that we should go to a Copic markers workshop that is being held nearby this weekend. (It didn't actually take much convincing!) Since I have very little actual experience using markers I thought it might be a good idea to practice a bit before the event. I found a nice little tutorial on the subject here and though I don't have any Copic markers (yet) I used a combination of Prismacolor Premier and Sharpies and did the following two practice pieces. In the first I used three shades of green and in the second I used one blue and two oranges. I'm fairly satisfied with how they turned out and am really looking forward to the workshop.

Monochromatic Shading

Complementary Color Shading

For the Diva Challenge this week, since it is a first Monday, it is a Use My Tangle challenge. This month's tangle is All Boxed Up by Alice Hendon. I will admit I had some trouble with the step out which was odd since I usually don't. But I seem to be having a string of such as I had trouble with a different pattern last night and a third this afternoon. Oh well, no mistakes. I'll just do it my own way and sooner or later the step-outs will be glaringly obvious and I'll wonder what the malfunction (all my own I sure) ever was.

Tangles Used: Quare and two versions of All Boxed Up

This week I stuck to the basic Zentangle materials but, be prepared. Next week's entry will probably be very colorful!