Run-by posting; teacher style

Week two of school down. One student in this house is getting settled into his new school (he is a teenager so I don't get much from him one way or another), one is ecstatic about his new school situation (6th grade accelerated classes and all that comes with it - I think he is happy to shed the restrictions and dullness of elementary school) and the youngest seems to be happy at school, but also seems to be sick with something... great, the elementary germ parade begins. At least she is happy laying around reading her new Kindle (birthday gift) and if she gets tired of that there is the huge stack of books she checked out from the library with her very own library card yesterday.

We spent last night eating dinner and watching a movie as a family and that meant drawing time for me. So I pulled out the Zendala template for the Diva guest challenge this week - Erin and her Zendalas... how their regular appearance has been missed while she studies away for her nursing degree! Here my interpretations are...

This one did not work out as planned, but with some alteration it is growing on me. In a month I might actually like it. 

This one feels about how I wanted, I might thicken some of the flower petal lines in places to give it a bit more drama.

Edited: this is the altered version:

Earlier this week I worked on a small piece to replace the one I ruined last week that was supposed to go on the front of a card. It is done on brown paper and I am always surprised at how dramatic a change is affected by adding the white to those. I scanned it before and then after to capture the change.

Before

After

That is about all the time I have. There is, of course, grading to be done, laundry... all the usual. See you next time.

Late, but not forgotten.

Well laid plans and all that... this dare was done quite earlier in the week than this post might indicate. I wan't completely pleased with it and hoped to have another go at it but it did not pan out. Too many cookies for neighbors and holiday parties at kids schools to attend to (although the back side of a survey about the program I helped out with at the middle school might surprise the coordinators of the event!). So here it is...

Better late than never! See you next week!

Black and White Challenge

Wow, this week's Diva Challenge was to use equal parts black and white in a piece. I will admit to having snuck a look at many before I ever embarked upon my own interpretation. I really loved the positive/negative ones I saw, but that is not the way I went with it. I just kept seeing all those tangles that rae nearly equal parts black and white like Bunzo to name the first that popped into my head. So I went that direction with it. I ended up using one that is not necessarily half and half normally, a version of Diva Dance, but I liked the way it came out. Given the black/white nature of the challenge I chose not to shade at all.

Then I thought I should finish up the second entry for last week's Zendalla challenge. It was finished except for shading., so I finished that up and will include it here. It is VERY different than the first entry, even though they use the same zendalla template. That is why I love doing more than one, to see how they differ when they 'grow up'.

Have a great week!

A problem of scale.

I hit the Zendalla Dare this weekend and printed out both the large and small templates because I 'saw' immediately what I wanted to put in part of the larger one. Then I ended up doing the smaller one first because I 'saw' what to put in a different part of that one. Why, you might ask, would both things not go in the same Zendalla? Well, it is a matter of scale. One pattern needed the larger areas of the large version, while the other needed the slightly smaller space available in the smaller version. So there I was, struggling with finding things for the other sections of both sizes! I did manage to finish the smaller one. The larger still sits unfinished. I will update this post, or do another, if I manage to come up with just the right thing, or decide to cast fate to the wind and roll the dice!

NOTE - I finished the second and published it in my next post here. The second is very different than the first, go check it out.

Snowflakes in May

No, it did not snow here in Georgia on May first. However, I have relatives in Colorado that sent photos of (cold) hummingbirds in the yard eating from feeders covered in snow, so it did snow some where on May 1st, including in my drawing book!  I saw Erin's Zendalla dare the other day and knew I had to save this template because it was so nice and curvy and symmetrical  (a huge draw for me!). And I knew instantly what it was screaming for in the way of tangles (Auraknot) so I just had to do it. Fortunately, between class last night with a lot of group presentations that I did not have to take notes for and getting a little maintenance done on the car while I waited this morning I had plenty of time to work. It is not as symmetrical and perfect as I would like... there are a couple of errors in there, but it all blends and looks, well, like a snowflake.

The one to the right was my first scan of this piece... I don't know if this ever happens to you, but sometimes I look at a scan of a piece and see something that needs adding or changing that I didn't see before. Its like stepping across the room from a large painting or a quilt to get a better perspective. As soon as I saw this I knew I needed to beef up the straight lines. I only added them in the first place because there was a dent in the paper there from tracing the original template and there was no getting around that, but the thickening of the inside ends of the lines really makes a difference I think.

Now I have to do another one with all the other ideas I have for this template!

Snow Flakes on the Brain

Whew! IT about 2:30am on Saturday, but I actually finished a challenge this week! I was really interested to try Erin's snowflake zendalla template technique from Challenge #35. I thought I would whip out a trial just for fun this evening, never figuring to be done in time to have a weekly entry. I really liked the result and kept going. It does not happen often that each thing I add to a piece makes it even better (making the pressure to choose the next element even greater of course!) but this one seemed to be working out that way. So, when everyone else had gone to bed I had no other barriers and no good 'stopping places'. So here we are, middle of the night and I am scanning in an entry for a challenge!

Since the challenge was to fold paper like I was cutting a snowflake in order to come up with a zendalla template I had snowflakes on my mind. I think it heavily influenced the outcome! This is the original...

This is the result... oddly it looks very little like the original in my opinion. It is about 7" across. I am interested to do this template again and see if the second one also looks 'flakey' or if I can make it look totally different. To see what everyone else who felt called to this challenge came up with check out Challenge #35 on Erin's blog over at The Bright Owl. NOW I am going to sleep!

tanlges include, Black Pearlz, Bunzo, Fescue, Dragonair and Finery

Friday already

Well, here it is Friday. I feel like I have spent most of the week asleep on the couch! One more in the house has fallen to the bug, although it doesn't seem to be as bad. I thought about posting a "finish" today, goodness knows I have posted about the project here before; but now that it is finished I feel like maybe I should wait until next week after I actually gift it to its new owner before posting it here. So... I do have one more zendala for Erin's challenge. She has posted a new one for the week by now, but I'll link it up if I still can. I went with good old black ink for this one, those pens have a finer nib - I sort of felt like I was using crayons with the colored pens I have! Here it is. Hope you have a great weekend.

Finally some Zentangle action...

I have been seriously out of sorts with my tangling efforts since the beginning of the year. When I have had the time (which hasn't been often) to sit and tangle I have been sorely disappointed in my efforts. I have tried to keep up with the challenges presented by The Diva but have not actually posted one in months, although a few have been even been finished. Through it all I figured that it was just a matter of over-thinking... in the beginning I was just making random stabs at it and doing passingly well. Then the process got a bit too cerebral and that took the natural flow away and I had the previous good results to 'live up to'. I needed to get back in there and just do it and get over the slump. Sometimes I just want to quickly draw one or two patterns over and over with no plan and no expectation of a decent looking whole in the end and I have let myself do that some too which has helped. So along comes a different challenge... or 'dare' as she calls it over at "The Bright Owl". Erin will be posting mandala templates for tangling and hosting a link-up each time. I thought that the new format might just bump me out of my rut. So here is the result for the first 'dare'... two versions.

I should have chosen something other than paradox for those inner triangles... it loses so much of its punch in isolation like that. I'm not sure what I was doing in the four circles... but I like it as a whole - ironically it looks better in this smaller version than it does in my book! As usual, the Mooka lends a bit of a deco feel to the whole thing. 

I like the garden-y feel of this second one... a little Tufted, a little Facets, some Fescu and an uneven Fengle in the middle. I love how the unbounded sides of Mumsy look like they are larger than the bounded sides... totally an illusion since it all fits in the same original circle. Overall sort of spring like - also looking better here than in my book. Maybe I should scan all my pieces in and look at them on the computer, maybe I would be happier with the results more regularly!

So thanks to Erin for daring us to try the Zendalla format. It should be interesting to see what comes of it.