Friday, May 27, 2016

Challenge #269, Magazine Publishing and Tessellated Fish

Challenge #269


The Diva's challenge this week (here) was to try out the newly released tangle Ellish.  You can find the step outs for Ellish here in the Zentangle Newsletter.

You are seeing my very first attempt at this one, and for some reason I really do not like the tile, but decided to post it anyway.  This proves that sometimes you really need to practice to get something right :)



Magazine Publishing




I love Cloth Paper Scissors and have had a subscription ever since my niece gave me a 1-year subscription many years ago.  If you don't know the magazine, there is a challenge in every issue and once in a while it grabs me, and I have to participate (and hope my submission gets published).  No matter what, I always learn lots when creating my submissions, so even if they don't end up getting accepted, I had fun :) 

This one was to design and cut a stencil and submit a 6x6 in work made with the stencil.  My piece showed up in the latest magazine - May June issue, and I was thrilled to see it.  This is the piece (below) and if you have a copy, it is on page 88.
This is the dirty stencil after creating the piece.
I even lost a little piece of it (top center flower)!


And here is the piece I created with the stencil, molding paste, watercolors, ink, colored pencils, acrylics, and who knows what else!
I also submitted an apron for the next issue, so we will see if that one will make it as well :).

Tessellated Fish


Escher's tessellations are incredible, I love them and find them very inspiring.  Mine are completely amateurish, but I don't care... I love creating them and it is always a huge challenge to make them fit perfectly, especially when you want to make it a repeat pattern.

My latest try was with the fish I hand-carved (here), but I wanted to make them a little rounder and lighter, so I fiddled with them, the design and size until I got to this:
Tessellated Fish repeat pattern painted
with watercolors in blue tones
After making the repeat pattern, I tried it on the VIDA scarves, and loved how they looked - actually was very surprised :)  Here is one:

Tessellated Fish
Cool, don't you think?

Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Challenge 267, The Present, and The Collection

Challenge 267

I was determined to do the challenge early this week :).  After a troublesome day at work, I decided tonight would be a very good night to work on it and try to relax :).  So... this week we had a DUO tangle - to use only 2 tangles in the tile: Poke Root and Drupe.  Drupe was new to me and I had not used Poke Root in a long time, so it was fun even though I'm clearly out of practice :)



The Present

A couple of years ago I started making a piece of art for my kids' birthdays.  Last Saturday I worked on my my oldest's favorite cat - he named her when she was just a few days old, and I think he still loves her the best :)

Rosella's Portrait

The Collection

Last month I was approached to design for VIDA - I think that any artist can join, I just had not heard about VIDA so it was a surprise to me.  I loved the website, the products, and the idea of the company.  So, I decided to give it a try.  I started out with a black and white art collection (here), and will see how it works.

I ordered a scarf with my tangled mountains (here), just to see the quality of the product and printing; I hope I will love it.



I'm loving this one, too with my dancing trees :)... but I will stay with the tangled mountains - at least for now :)

Sunday, May 8, 2016

Challenge #266

Life (work) keeps getting in the way and I see now I have missed 2 of the weekly challenges since my last post :(.

This week's challenge was fun - you can see it here.  I believe I have tried this tangle before, but... still lots of fun and I'm sure it came out differently than the last one.  I always mess it up on the first try... put too many lines on the diagonal :)


This was a very quick posting... hopefully there will be more time next week to share more :).  Enjoy your week!!