November 02, 2020

Zentangle® – October 2020

November 02, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

It was challenging to pick 31 tiles from the 67 I created during the October….and I made a tangle in each square of the October 2020 Audubon calendar page and decided to include it in this post too. So – there are 32 instead of 31 this month.

12 are rectangular. Note that they are all ‘uncolored’ at this point. My plan is to do the coloring in a second pass – maybe. Some of my colored pens are running out of ink; I’ll decide to buy another set – or not – before the end of the year.

There are 18 square tiles that also might be colored sometime in November. There is more variety in the type of ‘paper’ in these tiles. The golden brown ones are recycled lightweight cardboard, tan are from recycled file folders, the blue/pink is card stock and the white is either recycled white packaging or paper coasters!

2020 10 img502.jpg — The 31st is square but it is the tangle I made from a Gobolink tile; the red color blot was made in late September and I got around to adding the black ink around it in October.

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.

October 15, 2020

Coloring Zentangle® Tiles – October 2020

October 15, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

My favorite activity just before bedtime is coloring Zentangle tiles. It’s very relaxing and ends then day with a little creativity…appreciating the tiles and the other beauties of the day. I picked 12 tiles to feature this month out of the relatively large pile I created; I’ve been going back through old tiles finding ones to color. In fact – I made two passes on a couple of tiles: one to color and the other to add some white gel pen highlights.

I am creating more tiles during these pandemic times. It isn’t a major time consumer during my day, but it has an outsized impact of sustaining/renewing a positive mental attitude. When I finish a tile (or some stage of the tile), the appreciation of what I’ve done reminds me of the other aspects of my day that brought joy…things I am grateful for. A few valuable moments….

October 13, 2020

Paintings of Cut Flowers – October 2020

October 13, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

I’m looking back at a series of Internet Archive slideshows that I viewed back in June…picking out the cut flower paintings. Click on the artist’s name to see more of the artist’s work which includes other subjects as well as the cut flowers. Enjoy the artwork!

Gustave Caillebotte (1848 - 1894)

36 20 06 (26).jpg — Thomas William (Tom) Roberts (1856-1931)

Bernard Cathelin (1919 - 2004)

Henri Jean Guillaume Martin (1860 - 1943)

90 20 06 (32).jpg — Spyros Vassiliou (1903 - 1985)

William Merritt Chase (1849 - 1916)

Axel Törneman (1880 - 1925)

October 01, 2020

Zentangle® – September 2020

October 01, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

Just as in prior months of the pandemic…I had a lot of Zentangle® tiles to choose from – getting to the 30 to showcase in this post. There are 16 square tiles in various colors of card stock and lightweight cardboard. Note that all the tiles this month are made with dark ink (usually black) and I will make a second pass on the tiles to color them later; I have discovered that I enjoy coloring tiles as the wind down to bedtime.

The rectangular tiles are all made on lightweight cardboard from between layers of cans in cat food boxes. The short side is 3.5 inches and the longer side is the width of the cat food box.

I can’t resist the gingo pattern and have started making ones with more ‘leaves’…trying to always keep to an odd number!

I’ll do a post later this month with tiles that I’ve colored…trying to pick the top 10 is going to be more challenging than the selection for this post!

August 16, 2020

“to be continued” Zentangle® Tiles

August 16, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

My new Zentangle project is a challenge to myself – to stop partway through creating a tile….then wait a few days before finishing. I have created 18 partially completed tiles (see below). I will ‘complete’ them over the next week or so using a different color ink….so I can distinguish the two parts.

I tried for variety in the types of patterns and they are not all ‘half’ done…some are more and some or less. It’s feels good to try something different!

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Registering for the (virtual) Hawai'i Island Festival of Birds. I registered for the festival that will be held October 15-19 with virtual explorations and presentations from the Big Island. It’s free! My husband and I weren’t birders when we made our trip to Hawai’i in 2015, so this is an opportunity to learn a little bit about the birds there…and think about another trip to the island…maybe to attend some future year of this festival.

Dryer repair. Our dryer stopped working a week ago. The repair person came and determined the correct part to order. The part should come and the repair completed in another week. We did a load of clothes that we normally hang up to dry; there is no problem with having enough clean clothes. We are starting to use old and guest towels. So we are not desperate….yet – and likely it will be repaired before we have any big inconvenience.

August 02, 2020

Zentangle® - July 2020

August 02, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

31 days in July – 31 Zentangle tiles. The square tiles are card stock (light blue and ecru) and the rectangular ones are lightweight cardboard from cat food boxes. There were some series this month – where I made several tiles with a similar aspect – strings made three lines thick, circular voids (bubbles), and amoeba voids. I am continuing the last one into August. I tried to group the series in the same area in the display below.

I had a lot of tiles to choose from this month and I think the series is driving that increased production. It’s fun to have a theme to start the tile off.

May 01, 2020

Filling a Day of Social Distancing – 4/30/2020 - Zentangles

May 01, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

Here are the unique activities for yesterday:

Drama with irises. Day before yesterday I counted 5 stalks of iris buds in our flower beds…was thrilled with the prospect of having flowers this year.

When I came downstairs yesterday morning, one of them was gone! I wondered what would have eaten the whole upper part of the stalk and went outside for a closer inspection. I discovered that the stem had broken off and the upper part was hanging by a thin fiber down in the mint and daffodil leaves! Now the bud stalk is in a glass of water beside my computer monitor. It probably is not far enough along to continue its development…but I’ll enjoy the gentle curves of the bud for a few days. I checked the other 4 bud stalks and they are still intact.

Getting a grocery delivery on a rainy day. Usually we have the bags placed on our porch but yesterday was a blustery rainy day, so I changed the delivery instructions to have the shopper put then in the garage in the open hatch of my car. After they left, we retrieved the refrigerator items and then closed the hatch on the non-perishables to let them sit for few days to let any virus particles die.

Finding an article about starting an herb garden in the April 7, 1952 Life Magazine. Available from the Internet Archive here. Click on the images below to see them in a larger view. This is still a good list today although I use some more than others: basil, dill, chives, thyme, rosemary, oregano and mint. I have some mint coming up in my flowerbeds that I might start using in my morning smoothies!

Receiving an email from the grocery store about a new way to shop with them – once I start doing my own shopping again. It involves an app on the phone that allows scanning and bagging into your own bags while you shop then checking out at a self-checkout register. It will be another month at least before I start going to the grocery store again – but this app is another element of the strategy when the time comes along with a mask, disinfectant wipes and hand sanitizer/washing. Basically, this app enables ‘contactless’ shopping!

Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts here.

Now for the April 2020 collection of Zentangle tiles…

I picked 30 since there are 30 days in the month. Only 4 of them were done on the iPad (the ones with the black background). The other tiles were all from recycled materials – lightweight boxes, pocket folders (the yellow ones) or dividers between small cans of cat food (the rectangles). It was not a huge month for Zentangle tiles – which surprised me a little. I have been at home and thought there might be times I would do a lot of tiles in one day but somehow I’ve developed enough other activities to not lean on tangling to keep myself occupied.

April 01, 2020

Filling a Day of Social Distance – 3/31/2020 – Zentangle®

April 01, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

Here are the unique activities for yesterday:

Having the gutters on our house cleared. Our gutters were full of tulip poplar seeds – blown there all through the winter from the large trees in the forest behind our house. Fortunately, the company that clears them for us every spring is an ‘essential business’ and did the job yesterday. There normal mode of operation works for social distancing; everything is set up over the phone and they come at the appointed time (weather permitting) and do the job without any interaction with us. Now if we get some downpours of rain – which has happened more often in recent years – our gutters won’t overflow!

Confusing the red-bellied woodpecker. Prior to the gutters being cleared, I took our bird feeder into our covered deck so it wouldn’t be in the way for the workers. I noticed that the female red-bellied woodpecker came and looked thoroughly for it before flying away. The bird found it again later in the day after I filled it and put it back in the usual place.

Succeeding in getting a grocery delivery scheduled. I was dismayed when I couldn’t find any openings for grocery delivery. I’d been so pleased with what happened last Friday that I had planned to continue getting a delivery every week or so. But then there was an opening for delivery on Saturday evening. I’ll be tweaking the list until then…hoping that the stock in the store will begin to recover. At this point it seems like people should be stabilized with the groceries on hand…not still be stocking up.

Unfurling sycamore bud. The sycamore that I brought inside about 10 days ago is changing rapidly now. Day before yesterday I noticed that the buds were turning green. Yesterday morning, the largest one had begun to unfurl. By the evening a tiny leaf had sprung clear of the bud.

Catching up on Charles Cockell’s Life in the Universe Pandemic Series:

Links to previous “filling a day of social distance” posts here.

And now for the normal monthly post featuring 31 Zentangle® tiles for the month of March. One theme for many of the tiles this month – borderless, stringless, and shadowless (i.e. no pencil required). For some reason, I am keen to only have the tile and a pen.

I did a few rectangular tiles this month. They are made with the lightweight cardboard between small cans of cat food so 5 inches side…cut every 3.5 inches.

Then there are a variety of square tiles cut from various types of boxes and folders. I am making tiles from recycled materials most of the time.

8 of the 31 were made on the iPad. I always prefer a black background when I create a tile on the iPad.

March 01, 2020

Zentangle® - February 2020

March 01, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

29 days in February 2020….so that’s the number of Zentangles I select from the pile I created during the month. The black background tiles are from the iPad (in the Procreate app); I opted to not carry pens and paper tiles when I traveled during the first part of the month so all the tiles from February 1st through 9th were on the iPad. I did a series using letters as strings. A few of them made it into the picks for the month.

Toward the end of the month, I was experimenting with mono-patterned tiles without a frame or string.

And then there were the rest….

February 02, 2020

Zentangle® - January 2020

February 02, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

31 Zentangle tiles for January…and only 2 were made on the iPad using the Procreate app. I was in the mood to make tiles on paper with pens, I guess. It wasn’t a conscious decision. I used different colors of tiles and tried some experiments before my Zentangle session with the Howard County Conservancy volunteers…hence the gingo and beautyberry patterns showing up more frequently. I didn’t use a singe round tile in January --- leaning toward something different after all the round ones I made in December for the Christmas tree. Next month it will probably be more balanced between paper and digital tiles since I will be doing some traveling and the iPad is often already in my hands (since it also provides my reading material).

January 01, 2020

Zentangle® - December 2019

January 01, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

I made a lot of tiles in December. Some were the round paper coaster tiles that I was making for the tree which are thick enough to make patterns on both sides (so they count as two tiles when I scan them).

The Paradox pattern was one of my favorites this month. Notice how the meta-pattern changes depending on making Paradox clockwise or counterclockwise…and in relation to the positioning of the neighboring instances of Paradox.

Chairs is a new pattern published in December that I enjoyed too.

There are quiet a few instances of the gingo pattern this month as well. It was new in August….and I like it a lot.

December 19, 2019

Christmas Trees at the Maryland State House

December 19, 2019/ Gwen Morrison

Another holiday themed outing – driving over to Annapolis to see the trees decorated by garden clubs for each of the counties in Maryland. It’s evidently the traditional display in the central hall of the Maryland State House this time of year. We did it yesterday – a cold but sunny day…and before the wind picked up in the afternoon. I took pictures of just about every tree.

My favorite was the one done for Worcester County – lots of natural material. I particularly liked the pinecones that were cut and painted to look like flowers (they reminded me of zinnias).

I also liked the Charles’ county birds made out of felt (with the bald eagle at the very top of the tree),

Dorchester’s painted shells and pearls (the overall color of the ornaments all over the tree was a light blue),

And the dried roses on Anne Arundel County’s tree…very golden color.

The decorations for the other trees and wreathes were very creative too.

The garden clubs all did an excellent job! I took a lot of pictures and might use some of the ideas for my decorating next year.

December 01, 2019

Zentangle® - November 2019

December 01, 2019/ Gwen Morrison

The 30 tiles I picked for November were all ‘project’ tiles. 28 of them are 3-inch paper coasters with patterns made with red Sharpie Ultra-Fine pens. The round coasters are thick enough that both sides can be tangled. My plan is to punch a hole in the coasters and use them as ornaments on my Christmas tree or hanging between the newel posts of my stair and loft railings. I’ll be making more in December and will post about how I am displaying them.

The other projects were 4-inch tiles made with window plastic…patterns made with Sharpie Fine point. These tiles will go in the corner partitions of a glass paneled door at my daughter’s house.

Overall – this continues my tilt over the past few months toward Zentangle tiles with a purpose beyond the Zen of their creation.

November 01, 2019

Zentangle® - October 2019

November 01, 2019/ Gwen Morrison

Lots of ideas tried in October...31 tiles.

I did some experimented with not filling in all the spaces on a tile. What do think? Which one of the two do you the best from below? It’s easy to save an intermediate version on the iPad and then continue to fill in the blank areas.

On my iPad, I continued to experiment with colors and simple patterns.

Probably my favorite tile of the month was done on black paper with gel pens….no shading. I like the irregular black spaces too.

b zen 19 10 (17).jpg — I discovered that my hole punch works on the paper coasters I am using as tiles…and they are thick enough to make a pattern on both sides. I’m buying some red pens and will make ornaments for my Christmas tree or to thread onto ribbon to make a garland for the stair railing.

The square paper tiles vary in size from 3 inch to 4.5 inch…impossible to tell after I scan them since they are all square. There are still a lot of gingo leaves this month; It may be my favorite pattern from now on!

October 01, 2019

Zentangle® - September2019

October 01, 2019/ Gwen Morrison

I had plenty of tiles to choose the 30 to feature in this Zentangle-a-day post for September. There were some patterns that came up again and again during the month. The dominant one was gingo. I’ve always liked the trees and was thrilled to see the pattern posted on TanglePatterns.com site in late August. 13 of the 30 tiles I picked for September were this pattern…sometimes as a mono-pattern tile and sometimes with other patterns or a background. The ones with the dark background below were made on the iPad…others were done on square heavy paper/light cardboard tiles of various sizes and colors.

The feather-like pattern that I enjoyed so much with the campers is still one of my favorites…with variations.

I did an experiment with the paradox pattern – making the ‘same’ tile on paper and with the iPad. I love the meta-pattern that paradox creates and made two different ones. I was going to pick a favorite (meta-pattern and media) but I liked all of them.

Periodically I enjoy making a tile with a crazy string and then just filling in. Both tiles below were simply filling in shapes where only a point touched the area I had just finished coloring. For the second one – I made some red dots on the tile after I drew the string but before I started filling in shapes. It is surprising how different they look….so dependent on the scribbled string!

Then there were 8 tiles that didn’t fit any of the above categories. Sometimes it’s just fun to try something different!

September 05, 2019

Zentangle® in the Transom Window

September 05, 2019/ Gwen Morrison

In my September 1st blog post, I talked about the large Zentangle I was making on window film…and then forgot to include the photos of the segments taken before it was huge (from right to left). So here they are now –

My husband helped me attach the window film to the transom window above the French doors in our breakfast area. I cleaned the window thoroughly before wetting it a little then positioning the plastic film and using a shower Squeegee to smooth out the air bubbles. The matte white film with Zentangle patterns is very effective at making our dinner table less sunny! I wish I would have thought of doing this sooner. If I get tired of the patterns…I can take it down and make another.

This is prompting me to think about what I might do with window film for Christmas. Right now I’m thinking: red Sharpie for the patterns and the same type window film….for the narrow windows on either side of my front door.

September 01, 2019

Zentangle® - August 2019

September 01, 2019/ Gwen Morrison

The August Zentangles included a lot of variety. I collected up 31 to demonstrate. There are nine general tiles created on the iPad (black background usually with white ‘ink’ created using Procreate and an Apple Pencil).

Three general tiles are on card stock using a Sharpie Ultra Fine pen.

Everything else has something different for my ‘norm.’ I found a pad of black paper left over from my daughter’s teen age years (over 10 years ago). I drew 3.5 inch squares on the tiles and made tangle patterns using metallic gel pens. The silver shows up the best. I’ll be gradually using up the rest of the pad this fall.

The butterfly tiles I had left from the activity are 2 of the 31 tiles this month.

And then there are the feather themed tiles I made preparing for the activity with summer campers and guiding the Zentangle class.

Last but not least – I tangled a long rectangle of window film for a transom window over the French door in our breakfast area. I used Sharpie Fine Point pen on slightly pebbled mist film. The photographs below are segments before it was hung. This project is -by far – my biggest Zentangle to date!

August 01, 2019

Zentangle® - July 2019

August 01, 2019/ Gwen Morrison

There was quite a lot of variation on the Zentangle front in July. There was a challenge on the long road trip days and then being very busy the rest of the time. Some days there was plenty of time to make several tiles…other days were too short to do anything other than on the critical path to get my daughter moved to Missouri! In the end – I still had a lot of tiles to choose from to come up with 31 tiles for July. The normal variation is seen in this first group made on the iPad with the Apple Pencil using the Procreate App. I found the iPad the easiest to work with at the end of a long day of driving.

I started experimenting with some square paper coasters for tiles early in the month.

There was also a series that were created with a spiral string then a single pattern….all on the iPad.

The most different tiles the samples I made using the butterfly tiles I used with the summer campers last week. It was fun experimenting with the shape and working with symmetry.

July 18, 2019

Zentangle Pattern from a Dog Bed

July 18, 2019/ Gwen Morrison

It seems like everywhere I look these days I see Zentangle pattern possibilities. My parents had a dog bed with a pattern in the cover that was easy to deconstruct.

2019 07 dog bed.jpg — The first tile I made using the idea was a round coaster….and some old gel pens. The pens skipped but I decided that the skips simply made the pattern look more unique – maybe like part of the lines had deteriorated with age or usage.

The second tile was on my iPad. I didn’t worry about make octagon shapes. It’s surprising how little variations make the pattern look so different.

I’ll always think of this pattern as ‘dog bed’!

July 01, 2019

Zentangle® - June 2019

July 01, 2019/ Gwen Morrison

I had a lot of tiles to choose from in June….it was the usual challenge to limit myself to 30 – June having only 30 days.

2019 06 phicops img111 (1).jpg — I did a series of tiles with the phicops pattern for the whole tile – using it like a string for other patterns. All of these were physical tiles.

2019 06 img098.jpg — And then there were all the others – the black tiles are digital (iPad)…which shows that about half my picks for June were digital…half physical.

I’ll be doing a several road trips in July. It will be an adventure in Zentangle-on-the-go. I anticipate that I’ll create tiles at the beginning or end of the day….unless there is a substantial storm and I stop to wait it out.