Long Lost.

Oh. My. Goodness. What a semester! OK, my first semester as "the teacher" has been over for a few days now and I am just digging out and catching up with a few things. I have been drawing a tiny little bit over the last months and sewing not at all (one day this break I WILL go turn on my machine and peice a few blocks!). I actually 'responded' to a challenge or two but never got to post them. I have also been drawing on scraps of card stock that fit in a plastic bag with my pens when I have the odd minute or two. I will do one massive share right now so you can see them all...

playing with the new arukas 

one response to 'boxing' a normally freeform tangle - this one has both boxed (on the right) and free (on the left)

this one also has a boxed mooka (on top) and a free version (below)

just for fun

started doing these while on fall vacation beause they were super portable - I still have a pile of blank ones and I am about to laminate these to give away as book marks - as if anyone reads print books anymore! 

The book I contributed to came out, so that was pretty cool to see my work in print. It is called "Zen Doodle:Oodles of Doodles" and can be found here. Not only do I have several peices in there, and a two page feature spread but I also spy a few of my patterns in the work of the other artists. Pretty neat!

I hope you have a wonderful holiday. I will try to post anything else I manage to get up to over break. I do need to do some planning for next semester before we go back, but I hope to get in a little sewing and some drawing as well.

Two Little Letters

Just a little time for a challenge enrty this week... school begins on Monday and there is still so much to do before my students walk through my doors! The challenge this week over at the Diva was to choose two letters and two tangles to go with those letters and make a Duotangle with them. I did not get wildly creative with this idea, but I had just gotten the Tangle Patterns email about the new pattern Meringue and also just participated in my graduation ceremony for my second Masters... this one a Masters of Arts in Teaching (MAT, the first one was an MS). So, I chose the letters M and A and quickly worked a sketchy one out (the second one below). I loved the Meringue so much that I choose another A pattern and did a 'nice' version the next evening. I was going to do an MS and a PhD as well (using Phicops as the 'Ph' part) but then things got a little crazy and I started to get a little nuts about planning for next week. I will work on those in the next few weeks when I have time (que the maniacle laughter). I guess I could do a BA as well just to complete the series! Anyway, here are the two I got done in commemoration of my latest (and hopefully last) graduation!

This one uses Meringue and Axlexa. I think they are a good pair. I love how the Axlexa really gets to look like it is rippling when you add the shading.

This one is Meringue and Archer and has not enough contrast between the two to reall appreciate the patterns.I also did it kind of sketchy and small in a corner of my book because I was just trying out the Merangue for the first time. I really love that pattern!

Well, have a great week! I will be meeting my students and trying to learn their names and capture their minds and imaginations while demystifying physics and learning the mystifying world of the online grading system at that same time. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh....

Oh that I was where I would be!

Then I would be where I am not;

But where I am I must be,

And where I would be I can not.

This little version of an old scottish fold song refrain is so true this week, from a temporal standpoint anyway. I have had SO much due this last week of the sememster while I have been required to be in training and also REALLY wanted to do the challenge this week. I love the whole beverage thing... and noticed, you caffeine loving lot, that most entries used coffee! Its a good color. 

I made my stains early in the week hoping to steal a few minutes here and there to tangle them. Well, I'm not near finished but thought I would post them anyway... part of this is 'the process' right? Well, my process is taking longer than usual! Maybe I will have some time next week, although 'new teacher training' for four days is sure to be captivating (*blink*blink*). The top one is unfinshed and there is one more, more interesting stain that I let sit for longer that I will work on finishing, maybe, during breaks in training this week. Have a great week, mine will be the first week I have worked full time in 14 years! (Ugh, did I just say that... I am getting old, how did that happen? Am I not 28 anymore? - no wait, don't answer that, I don't want to know.)

The Crux of the matter...

Sorry, couldn't resist using that title.

All I have to say for this week is thank goodness for endless baseball games on Saturday mornings or I would not have time to tangle at all - and yes, I watch the game during critical moments, like when my player is at bat and playing first base, but I can still get something done. Here is my contribution to the Crux pile this week.

It is quite a large peice, most of the page of a drawing pad with some really terrible paper - I will not be drawing in this one again! I started this one a few weeks ago when I wanted to try the candy ribbon pattern and could not find my "real" book. I added the feathers part trying to work out the stone pattern I saw in St Louis and then there was a couple of big empty places left. When the Crux challenge came up this week I had to try it because it is such an awesome adaptable pattern, so I put it in one of those empty spaces. I decided to go big with it and I like the way it turned out, although I need to play with the shading some as I would like the two faceted petals on the top to really look like they bow upward from where they are pinned to the page by the four dark lobes and I am not getting that somehow. 

The rest of these are ones that I have done over the last three weeks or so. One was for a challenge but it didn't get done in time and the other two were just relaxing a bit and trying some things out. 

This one is working a bit on the bean pattern I posted about in my last post. 

These Betweeds look a bit like delta wing kites which is how they ended up with clouds and a sun.

This was another exploration of the candyribbons pattern. 

Well, I have a million pages to either edit or write and several chapters to read and do on-line questions and quizes on and I am going to training next week as well so I should go! See you the next time I get to catch my breath!

Redux-Revisit-Rediscover

Very short post this week... Diva challenge was to revisit an old favorite in a new way. Time has been very short this week but the opportunity to revisit a favorite was too much! I love Betweed, it is one of my all time favorites. I did have a hard time deciding what to change or do differently... So this is what is different... I used a round string - I have never used a round tile because I draw in a book and I don't usually use the round shape by itself and I have never used this tangle in a circle before AND I used a very soft pencil (4B) and a paper blender to do the shading which is different for me AND I rounded the corners which is what is called for in the 'directions' but I never do it because I usually like the sharp crisp points. I also threw some Black Pearls in there, more or less how I usually do them. I like it, but it is maybe not as different and exploratory as I could have gotten.

I did play around ealrier in the week doing some trials of Betweed and Mooka (another favorite) and a pattern I am breaking down from a beaded trim I saw a few months ago. This ribbon-ized version of Betweed has some interesting potential but I was not really satisfied and had limited time to explore further. I think I will laminate the Mooka corner and use it as a book mark or on a card and I need to figure out if that bead pattern is similar to anything else I have seen out there... I like it's potential. Cheers! I have to go finish a take-home midterm exam before heading out to help commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain by helping to place a luminaria bag for each of the 3400 soldiers on both sides who died this month 150 years ago in the campaign for Atlanta back in 1864!

Duo Tanglein' Mooka and Auraknot

Love the two tangles in this week's Diva challenge so I had to play with them some. Of course I could not find my drawing stuff for about 4 days (turns out it was in a car that I wasn't driving this week) and I am heavily into the second week of trying to cover a semester's worth of General Chemistry in 5 weeks so I am a little busy relearning electron structure and molecular notation and bonding and... ugh. I am glad I have seen all this material before, albeit 20+ years ago or I think I might be totally overwhelmed!
However... I did play a little in the car notebook while I waited at baseball practice on Monday and I managed a few minutes here and there, including a couple of hours while at the pool after all day in class last night. Despite the wet spots on the paper from kids jumping in the pool a little more enthusiastically that I thought, I think it came out well...

This one is the result of playing on the only paper I had in the car at baseball practice on Monday. There is a little girl there also waiting on a player in practice that will come and watch over my shoulder as I draw for a long time. She won't try it herself... I have offered, but she will stand there and watch. My own children don't even bat an eye anymore!

This last one is from last week. I was playing with trying to develop a pattern from the photo of the feather texture in stone from my last post. Then I got busy with school work and pretty much stopped doing anything but that. Speaking of which... there are many on-line modules of electron configuration and bonding that I have to finish by Sunday, so I think I will sign off. Have a great week!

Bugles Challenge

I had quite a time with the UMT challenge tangle for this month, Bugles by Joyce Evans. I still don't have it quite right... as Linda Farmer cautioned in her post about it, it can be hard to get the horizontal spacing to play nicely with the vertical spacing. I also have the overwhelming urge to make the cones either carrots or dragonflies! However, with this version the cones really pop out from the surface and the rest makes an interesting background.

I also took her initial jelly bean shapes and instead began with upward arcs, drew the point of the cone above and then completed the "circle" behind the cone so it looks more like they would nest together. The pattern to the right is, I guess, a tangleation of Tipple that I saw in a light fixture at the bank. I am still playing with it a little and this version is a little rough, but the gradually smaller circles should all meet at a single point that varies randomly over the collection. It looks a lot like quilling patterns and it makes a great light fixture!

While on the topic of patterns, while I was visiting my mother I took the kids to one of our favorite places. They like to climb and slide and explore and I like to do all that and LOOK while I am at it...it is RICH with visual stimulation and the home of some of the most creative people I know of. They use all sorts of scrap items to make the various parts of the landscape, as you can see from this small sampling of the patterns I recorded while I was there...

a column covered in old gears and marbels

a wall made of steam tray inserts

One of the indoor climbing paths built around an old tree trunk

an outdoor bridge and climbing structure made of recycled parts

old printing plates decorate the mezanine walls

a fence made of metal left over from cutting out parts

texture on a stone carving salvaged from a torn down building

another fence made from old metal parts

one of the outdoor climbing pathways

another shot of an outdoor pathway, this one suspended by cables

even the serpents that guard the perimeter of the parking lot are a treat

This place, called City Museum, is such a treat and they have found so many wonderful and creative ways to use, as they say, "repurposed archetectural and industrial items". They are always growing and making new pathways and places to explore. The floor is a real visual treat as well... a giant mosiac of broken tile that took years to complete. I used to like to go just to see what they had added to the floor while I was away. Most of it on the first floor is sea and ocean themed with some patterns worked in around the edges. They have a museum of archetectural parts from old buildings (those that aren't worked into the rest of the place) and a circus and an art area with all sorts of projects you can do. It is a paradise for kids, but really speaks to the artist in people as well. If you ever have the chance and are in St. Louis, do go and visit!

This week's tangle efforts

I got so excited last week to be using my dad's drafting templates for the Diva's circle challenge that I used the oval template to make a string for another one...

Not all the sections of this one worked out as well as I had hoped, but overall I like the effect. I will have to use these templates more. I started another with a large circle when I got Linda Farmer's email with the link to the instructions for the new tangle Tropicana which I love. I had a few ideas for finishing this one off, but in the end just left the areas blank because I liked them that way too.

Then the Adele Bruno's String Thing Challenge (#43) was published on Tuesday and the string was very much like the circle string I had just done only with a squarish focus! This string worked so nicely with the tangles she suggested. This is a bold and graphic piece and I like it and I will use the string again. I worked Hollibaugh into the string itself and Huggins and Hypnotic and a little suggestion of Hibred. I did learn the value of just the right pencil... I was not wild about the waxy one I ended up with but I didn't have any of my "real" drawing pencils. I need to dig out a conte and see if I can smooth some of the shading out as it really shows up rough in the scan.

I have less than a week before classes begin and I am trying to squeeze as much 'relaxing' as I can before then. I hope to get a new pen or two and do more tangling this week. Maybe I will be posting again! Until then I will leave you with one I ran across by accident, a monotangle with Ansu, a scribble I did on a plain piece of typing paper one night and shoved in a book at the side of my bed...

Round and Round!

This week's Diva Challenge was a lot of fun and I am happy with the results. I am at my mom's house so I was able to go raid my dad's drafting templates for drawing the circles. I may do a few more before I am through!

Still lots of visiting, playing and work to do while I am here. See you next week!

This Week's R & R... Rain, Rixty, and other R tangles.

The letter R must have been on every one's mind this week. The Diva came up with a tangle based challenge centered on Rain and Adele Bruno's String Thing Challenge was all about tangles beginning with R (and a specific string, of course).

So first, here are the Rain pieces I came up with...

This one just has the look of "noise" to me and I used one of the strings I have been trying to work my way through.

In this one I was just trying different ways to fill in the Rain triangles... I like the one where they look like they are cones and I like the partial aura's on the outside one as well.

Then there is the String Thing #41 challenge... this one was a tough string and the R tangles chosen for it were difficult to get to play nicely together.

Finally there is the one random piece that I did to use, or re-use a string that I started to use last week and failed to complete the piece. I really like this piece and it had been so long since I had done Floatfest!

I am getting ready for a week out of town visiting my mom. I am sure it will be a busy one, but I will try to make the time to draw a bit.

Hae a great week!

Doing Art... well, maybe not EVERY day!

I wrote back in February here that I was going to try to squeeze a little drawing in every day. Well, I did OK for a little while that month and then kept it up sporadically in March while it gradually got to be a little art every few days, then maybe once a week. By the time April rolled around I was lucky to get some ink on paper once or twice that month! As I said a few posts ago, the semester is over and I have a few week break until the summer semester begins and I am taking advantage! I have been able to do a Diva challenge two weeks in a row (here is this week's) and a String Thing challenge two weeks in a row! Woo Hoo!

Here is this week's String Thing entry entitled "A tile within a tile". I used Betweed (one of my all time favorites!) and Beandlines and Beelight and a little Black Pearlz.












And now for the update on the March installments of "Art as much as I could" possibly manage...

March 1st - I like this one, especially the pattern on the right that I can't remember the name of!

March 4th - This one is OK, I always enjoy some nice PopCloud.

March 16th - this one was over several days and is larger than a traditional tile.

March 27th - this is the 15th AED 2014 peice

March 29th - I like this combo of Betweed, a variation of Bunzo, Y-ful and Bridgen with a shaded background.

April 12 - This one is very open and airy.

April 12 - I hadn't done anything in two weeks and then two in a day - I must have needed some relaxation!

This one was just the other day when I was working on the String Thing challenge...
a little different interpretation of the string in this one.

I still have one page left in the current drawing pad so I am sure to have at least a couple more this week! Then I will have to go shopping. I did buy a new pen this week and my goodness, what a change! I had been using some that are nice and black and consistent (and inexpensive!) but do not have a very fine tip and I had kind of forgotten how nice a good fine tip is. I hope to keep up the activity as the summer gets busier.

I have an exciting announcement I can 'kind of' make... Some of my older work has been accepted for publication in a new book due to be out in December. I need to be sure I can say which one before I tell you and maybe I will be able to get a couple of copies to give away on the blog in December. I was pretty excited and will now have to patiently wait for publication.

Have a great week!