Tangle in Peace - My New Blog

I am drawing more than I expected and participating in online challenges more than I thought I would.  I want to have a place to put my pieces online so that they don't take over this blog.  The idea of just a separate tab for my art isn't working.

So I made a new blog, Tangle in Peace.  It's still very much in the infant stage.  No bells or whistles.  I will probably dress it up a little and personalize it more in the future.  And that is where I will be posting my tangle attempts.

You're all invited over there anytime.

A Few Recent ZIA Pieces

In order for something to be called a Zentangle, it has to stick to the basic formula.  On a 3.5" tile, black and white only, true Zentangle patterns (not intended to look like anything or really have a right side up).

Most of what I do (and much of what shows up in a Zentangle search) is actually Zentangle Inspired Art (ZIA).

I haven't felt up to writing, but I've been drawing some.  Here are a few of my recent ZIA pieces, all on 8.5" x 11" linen paper.



I asked my son (17) to tag this wall and then cleaned it up a bit and added details.  It was fun to include him on my project and he did an awesome job!





I was going for a stained glass feel with this one.  I really like the way it turned out.  Unfortunately, now I'm having trouble deciding what to do with the sections.  I like it so much the way it is; I don't want to mess it up.  Some day inspiration will strike and I will finish it.  Inspiration always strikes eventually.

One of my favorite patterns is Widgets.  I've used it a lot.  It's usually small and used to fill a space.  For this piece I used the Widgets shapes as the design to fill.  It was fun to work with them on a larger scale.

I sometimes struggle to leave edges open, without solid borders drawn in pen.  This was an exercise for that.  I used pencil to lightly draw outlines for the petal shapes (just the sides, I left the tops open).  I used different grid-based patterns because I've found myself steering away from them and felt like I needed to practice.  I tried to let the grid hit the edge in such a way that when I removed the pencil line it would just feel like the shape ended naturally instead of being contained with a border.  I like the difference.  I'll have to try this more often.

This one was by far the most time consuming (I just might have stayed up until three in the morning with an obsessive need to finish it), but was also super fun.  The globe idea was inspired by a piece by Erin at The Bright Owl.  I saw it months ago and have wanted to try it ever since.  Again, I tried the no-actual-border-line thing.  The shading creates the border and helps the circle become a sphere.  My daughter said it reminds her of art from people on drugs, like The Yellow Submarine movie.  Art that looks like I was stoned?  Hm. Not sure if that's a compliment, but she captured the feel of the craziness of the background.  I'm kind of picturing it in psychedelic colors now in my head.  Far out, man.

 

And that's what I've been doing lately.  I'm feeling much better.  Oh, so much better.  I'm still having some anxiety moments and hurting a lot, but I feel like myself again.  Everything is easier when my brain and I get along.