Springy Saturday

Another week, another week closer to spring break! I must be thinking of traveling to warm and sandy places, not that I will be but because the Spiral Challenge this week kept resulting in pieces that looked like shells!

I like the off centered-ness of this spiral. I actually did not intend to make that first section have horizontal lines, but I was drawing while waiting for all the kids to get their hair cut and got distracted... no mistakes, right?

This was an attempt to break out of 'spiral snail shell' mode by doing more than one... the drawing had other ideas. I must remember that changing the thickness of lines is so effective - I am sure it could be used with great effect with lots of  patterns.

This was a very uninspired one, very plain and not terribly imaginative but it has its simple appeal.

Then last week I got to looking at Challenge posts and ran across the one at Margaret Bremmer's blog, The Enthusiastic Artist and LOVED Sam Taylor's Narwal tangle she was trying out. So I went and watched the video and played with it some on Saturday. I added some to the bottom left corner of my art box. I have been slowing decorating it over the last few years and the bottom is the last surface left. I really like how it came out with the very dark black and the very light highlights of white it really leaps off the surface. I highly recommend Sam's videos, there are some really great tangle patterns there that I had not seen before.

Spring Green challenge!

I was very excited to read that the Challenge for this week was to "green up" your tangles... I had spent a little time last weekend making myself some color wash water-color tiles with some new paper squares and I had one that was all greens with a little brown. Then I couldn't find the silly things to save my life. Then the week got really busy with grading and things and here it is Friday night before I get to sit long enough to make something to meet the challenge. Spring and green always make me thing of ferns, and the fiddle heads that come up in the spring. Frickle has alwasy reminded me of those so I started with it. After a few green patterns I just had to put some other color in there as well!

Of course as soon as I was finished and went to the scanner to scan it in I found the original colored tiles... so now I guess I can play with those too - if I don't misplace them first! I also finished a piece this week that I have been working on one section, and sometimes part of a section at a time for many days. No green, but I like it anyway!

Poke Root Challenge

Here is my entry for this week's Diva Challenge and, I am here to testify that Poke Root IS a challenge! I always have 'neat and orderly' angst with tangles that are super free form like Poke Root and Bridgen. Somehow Mooka has a flow to it as does Squid and a few others and I have never found the 'flow' to Poke Root - maybe I just haven't done it enough. Of course I love Cubine and really enjoyed looking back at the original tutorial for it on Margaret Bremner's blog - such loveliness and great ideas! I tried a triangle version of it here in the corners and set up the square grid in the middle just in pencil. Then I went back and finished the Cubine when my Poke Root 'mushrooms' had sprouted and grown as much as I wanted. Who has good advice for filling in large black areas with out the strokes showing? Obviously I had a little problem with that on this one, even after going over the areas a second time they show up.

Have a great week! I have, as usual lots of grading and I suppose, in the interest of feeding my family this week I should make it to the grocery store today. I also have to direct the finishing stages of a 1st grade science project before Monday!

UMT Challenge for March

Things have been pretty tight this week and I am super behind in all things physics, but my artwork and the articles are done for the magazine (and sent out today!). So sometime this summer I will have to share the excitement of the special edition magazine with my articles in it coming out. I capped off the week with a relaxing Friday night trying out Unbatz a cute little pattern by Sandy Hunter for the Diva Challenge. Tomorrow it will be up early, an online meeting and lots of grading, writing out solution sets, configuring a test, and planning the next two units for two different classes! I am tired already.

One 'traditional' rendition (right), and an echo-y one of my own device (left).

Have a great week!

Carving out some time.

Greetings out there in the world! I feel like I have had no contact outside my classroom and the adjacent classrooms (except the occasional parent communication) in months!

I read the Diva Challenge for this week which encourages us to try new tools or techniques and thought "Hey, this is just what I needed this week!". My interpretation includes different paper and a situation that I have not tried drawing in before and I will admit that the two entries I have in this post for that Challenge were done prior to reading the challenge but they are no less relevant because of it.

So the first one is an exploration of both a different drawing tool and a different drawing paper. I usually draw on white card stock or pale cream mixed media paper. Last week had a chance to go get a new supply of paper in light of a new project I will tell you about in a minute and branched out into a darker paper. I was drawn to the "craft" paper color - sort of like a paper grocery sack - just for its gentle variation and not-so-serious black color. I fingered the dark coffee and latte colors, but in the end they were too smooth and perfect and I went with the craft color. Using this color I was able to try out the white pencil and white gel pen that I don't ever get to use when I am drawing on white. I put it all together this weekend and this is the result.








The second one was done about a week ago and involved a less than ideal drawing situation and familiar materials and tools.  In general I have very little time for drawing these days so it must be squeezed in. The other week a few other teachers and I were taking a couple of bus-loads of sophomore's in a field trip. I had about 30 minutes on the way there and 30 minutes on the way back to occupy since I was not driving and the students are pretty self sufficient. The situation was not really conducive to anything 'productive' like grading papers or planning lessons and, I thought at first, not really conducive to drawing either. The bouncing and swaying of the bus on the highway was seriously messing with my obession with smooth, straight lines. I do like to have 'control' (or at least the illusion of control!). I decided that you can't always control your circumstances and it is up to you to make the best of what you have so I pulled out the pen and the card stock scraps I take along in my bag and tried to make the best of a bouncy situation. This was the peice from the trip back. I had seen an interesting modern painting with the spiral motif as the "sky" texture on our trip and wanted to try it out. I kind of like the wiggle in the lines on Footlights.  I think it would be hard to get them to wiggle so regularly 'on purpose'!

That project I mentioned above, by the way, involves writing a couple of articles for a special edition of a magazine that is due out this spring. I decided to try to create a new piece for each article and flesh it out with with some of my more recent, but already finished ones (and it may or may not be because I don't know where all of the older stuff is!). That was the reason for buying some nice new paper - but then, do we really need a reason to buy new supplies? I have been happily draing on card stock scraps for months, and giving them away as book marks, but a magazine submission deserves better paper - if only so I don't have to write in the article that I use plain old card stock!

Until next time (don't anyone hold your breath - I have 55 tests to finish grading and 55 notebooks to go through ASAP)!

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....