New Month, New Week, New Challenge...

I learned only today that November is "Art Everyday" month. I would like to make that happen at my house... we will see if it does. I can try right? The guidelines can be found at the link below if you care to increase the creativity in your life, at least for this month.

Art Every Day

Today, my art will be my entry for this week's Diva Zentangle challenge... "Halloween". I did several, the last one turned out like a more traditional tangle...

The background behind the pumpkin was inspired by the shapes of all the candy the kids brought home last night. For whatever reason I thought it needed a take on the pattern 'Barberpole' on the left. I have been wanting to add some water color to my tangles and I thought this was the perfect opportunity. I like the effect, although I have to say that watercolor paper is terrible about smudging the graphite shading! Next time I am going to wait until I am finished before adding that! And before you wonder... being the dork that I am, yes, I looked on-line to recall exactly what a pumpkin leaf looks like!

The other two are more ZentangleInspired Art-ish (ZIA-ish). Although this is more just a plain drawing, the tree did grow in a tangle-like way from straight lines with little plan but to bring them together toward the bottom. I also like the 'wind' in this one, and may use that more when I need a 'light' filling tangle. Unlike most free-form patterns, this one came pretty easily and is easy to morph around existing features. 

This was the first response to the challenge. Of course the web needed the addition of beads as a take on the tangle pattern "Beadlines".  I tried to come up with a random spidery pattern by drawing random intersecting pencil lines. In each space between lines I added a circle and 8 lines roughly perpendicular to the circle that radiate out toward the boundary of that space. Once the spaces each had a spider I erased the lines. It might be more effective if the lines were in black also.  I don't think it is quite 'there' yet but could be cute. The rest is obviously inspired by sections of a pumpkin, although this is not the best rendition of it. I like the swirls as the pumpkin tendrils. 

In addition to this week's challenge, the Diva has posted a most excellent giveaway to celebrate 200K hits on her site. I highly suggest you go here to check it out! LOTS of great Zentangle goodies and it is super easy to enter. 

I hope this is the start of a great month for each and every one of you. Thanks for stopping by.