December 02, 2015

Zentangle® – November 2015

December 02, 2015/ Gwen Morrison

Eleven months of Zentangle®-a-day…..it doesn’t get old…but it does evolve. The trend recently has been to use more color (somewhat tied to the season) and to name each tile. I found some Christmas glitter pens (red, silver, green, gold) and have started using them as I transition from fall color schemes.

Gourds, cross-section, puddles…O flower, plant frame, blue thorns…Bindweed, folded leaves, fire, peaks, tangle of color

Water grass, blue aura, flower frame…Aqua, tentacles, papyrus, red and gray…Spiral miscellany, blue and gray, flowers and pine

Crystal earth, micro earth, Tri-fiddle, ball spiral…Curled leaf, triangle figure, ferns, curls, ribbon beads…Green and gold bubbles, diva night, totem

Christmas flowers, frog eggs Christmas, glitter quilt…Lyre, ferns, pumpkin, yarn loops…Fall forest, eddy, crowd space, arches, tassles

The Zentangle® Method is an easy-to-learn, relaxing, and fun way to create beautiful images by drawing structured patterns. It was created by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas. "Zentangle" is a registered trademark of Zentangle, Inc. Learn more at zentangle.com.

November 02, 2015

Zentangle® - October 2015

November 02, 2015/ Gwen Morrison

The Zentangle habit is one that I even take on vacation! There is always enough room for tiles, a pen, a pencil, and tortillion!

Toward the beginning of the month I started experimenting with the patterns on soft drink bottles. My rationale was that making patterns on a curved surface rather than a flat tile would take some practice and I was considering making spherical Christmas ornaments for our tree this year; in the meantime, the decorated bottles could hold water for when I was hiking. I bought an ultra-fine point Sharpie. The ink did indeed stick to the plastic although I discovered that any residual oils (like from fingerprints) caused it to wear off. I also discovered that it pooled a bit if I didn’t pick up the pen fast enough so continuous line patterns were preferable. I am not back to tiles…and thinking of ornaments made out of paper coaster material – hanging diagonally ….I’ll have so of my early test tiles later in this post.

I am enjoying the colored pencils even though the patterns are made with the Micron pen.

I find myself using more open patterns so that I have spaces to add color. The group below includes a test of the Sharpie on a strip of plastic…before I used it on the soft drink bottles.

I like the flower fillers!

The group of tiles without color below is from when I was traveling. For some reason – I reverted to more traditional tiles while ‘on the road.’

Sometimes I use only one color…and in areas that I would have done shading.

Sometimes I think – after the fact – of themes for tiles…like the sea (upper left) or jewels and scarves (upper middle). I decided to start naming the tiles.

The names for this batch (starting at the upper left and moving to the right…then lower left and right): Opera house, Space I, D flower, Deed pods, Tri-red, D flower 2, 2015. The last one was an experiment on the coaster material to hang on the tree.

Below are three more with potential to hang on the tree. I started using a red Sharpie. I like the color but the lines are very fat! The lower right is a Zentangle with my name in hieroglyphs (one of the activities in the Coursera course on Ancient Egypt)…and I did auras around it to make a cartouche.

July 01, 2015

Zentangle® - June 2015

July 01, 2015/ Gwen Morrison

June is my fifth month of ‘a Zentangle a day! Early in month I decided to put the tiles from previous months under the plastic on breakfast table (like I do with Christmas cards every year in December). The arrangement will have to become more ordered when I put the June tiles in the same location. I am already thinking of other locations I could display them this same way.

I started using markers and pencils to add color to some of my tiles. Most of the time the old style - black in on neutral card stock - appeals to me the most.

I do still have some teal card stock left and I may buy some more of it…or maybe an assortment of bright colored card stock. I realized that I should put the boxes of old business cards that I accumulated over the years to Zentangle use too; they will always be the smallest tiles.

I made two in a row that I really like - the one on the upper left and then the next one to the right. I was thinking ‘beads’ when I made the first one and decided the second one was ‘medusa’ as I added the tentacles near the end.

My favorite from the collection below is the on the lower left. I used markers that had miraculously not dried out that my daughter left behind (they are probably over 10 years old!).

I get ideas for patterns in all sorts of places. They pop up everywhere: hotel bedspreads and carpets, antique furniture, and pottery! Sometimes I start with a pattern from TanglePatterns but most of the time I do deviate in some way….or surround it with something completely different.

June 17, 2015

Winterthur Museum

June 17, 2015/ Gwen Morrison

Last weekend toured the Winterthur Museum and Gardens; I’ll post about the gardens later…today the post focuses on my impressions of the museum of American Decorative Arts. The museum holds the collection of Henry Francis Du Pont and is housed in the mansion - extended by du Pont to hold hisgrowing collection before it became a museum in the 1950s - when even the rooms where the family had lived were converted to museum spaces.

The initial impression of the museum is that the light is dim. One of the reasons for that is the large number of old fabrics displayed. Here are some examples taken in the part where photography is allowed: a child’s dress,

Bedding (showing the straw stuffed mattress at the bottom and featherbed on top)

Carpets,

And in an upright grand piano.

Some pictures I took to prompt Zentangle designs in the upcoming weeks: a gate

A comb (It took long teeth to hold very long hair!),

Patterns of wood inlay on chests

And chairbacks,

The transom over the front door.

The biggest surprise of the day for me was noticing that the silverware patterns are mixed for place settings (i.e. all the knives on the table were the same pattern…but the forks were a different pattern). Now I find myself looking at every museum dining room display (there will be another in tomorrow’s post).

February 06, 2015

Zentangle® Class

February 06, 2015/ Gwen Morrison

I am taking Beginners Zentangle Art at my local Community Center and enjoying it tremendously. In some ways, it is very much like doodling but the myriad of patterns have me on a path of trying new things rather than sticking with too much of the same thing. I’m also learning more about shading, to list the pattern names on the back of the tile, and how to get the ‘Zen’ from the activity. When I doodled, I sometimes got the ‘Zen’ and sometimes not. Now I know that keeping my focus on the tangle - encouraged by the environment I choose for the activity - increases the value of the activity beyond producing the 3.5 x 3.5 square of artwork.

My favorite time of day to produce my daily tangle is right after breakfast - when the house is quiet (except for the birds getting breakfast at the feeder outside the window) and I don’t yet have anything else started for the day. The patterns I selected the previous afternoon are ready for me at the table as are all my materials. I have a pretty box I didn’t want to recycle after I’d mailed away all the greeting cards; it has found a new function: storing my Zentangles. Zentangle is also a way to utilize some of the card stock I’ve accumulated in my office supply cabinet; the 3.5 x 3.5 standard tile size is easy to achieve with a paper cutter.

What do you think of the results so far? The photographs are the tangles in the order I made them. I did break the rule about orientation (Zentangles do not normally have an orientation) when I added the spiders to the webs (day 3) - I couldn’t resist.