For the second week, I’ve tackled Joey’s Zentangle challenge. And hey, this one was also great fun! This time, the numeral was strung askew, which makes for good practice disrupting the normal sense of up and down and giving room for some productive chaos.
Here was my creative thought process (and what follows is probably way overthinking it, but it helps me to write stuff like this out):
Like pretty much everything I’ve done, this is ZIA, not “real” Zentangle — mainly I’m not sticking to the tile size: I like being able to work all over the page.
The three challenge tangles this week were Japonica (the one in the middle), Hi Cs (on the left, the flowerdy things), and Flux (top and bottom — er, above and below — um, the apostrophe things and the leaf things). I really dig Hi Cs and I want to use it again sometime soon. I had originally intended to do them all in the star/flower pattern at the top of that section, but I got thrown off somehow and ended up going for an allover chaos pattern. I kind of wish I’d managed to stick with the pattern, but to tell the truth I kind of like the wildness. I decided to just pencil in the grid lines for this one, and I think it comes out looking better for it.
Japonica, a ribbon-type pattern, seemed a natural for the space within the II. I didn’t have quite enough space to set up a full grid pattern, but it seemed too wide to just do a single column. So instead, I put two side by side, then realized I could get a pretty cool looking “reverse” pattern by putting Xs in the middle. Some black-and-white alternation (which I have decided to call “Harlequinning”) felt right for it, and when I added some diagonal lines to some of the inner circles, I realized it created little cones, which I hopefully managed to bring out with some shading (when I get time and money to take in some real Zentangle training, I know I need to work on shading technique).
Flux is given in two varieties, and I definitely like the plain leaf/teardrop shape (Rick’s version) better. The filigree things are just never came out looking right to me. But I’m glad that these challenges are pulling me out of my comfort zone a bit.
The other grid pattern I used was JaJazz. I honestly have no idea what’s going on at the edge there. I guess a couple of the grid seeds broke loose and decided to go for a dive and fell into a portable hole or something.
Tangle with Dr. Tutt 