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:

Cool, don't you think?

Challenge and Carvings

Challenge

This week's challenge was to use only the Mooka and the Auraknot tangles.  You can see the challenge and videos on how to tangle both of these here, in the Diva's blog.

This is what I created last night.  It's a bit crazy-looking with all the lines, but... it is what it is, and I'm not going to have time to do another one.  I must say, I have tried Mooka many times but I never know how they will turn out... they kind-a go crazy on me and I have no control over them... LOL

Carvings

As I only usually have a few minutes in the evening to create, this week I concentrated on making cards with the leaf stamp I carved from a cheap eraser.  

Since it is such a simple design I played with pattern.  I will still go back to these next week and add more color and pen and ink work - we'll see how they will turn out in the end.

And then last night I made this card with my new fish (you can see others here).  I think I like the one I made last week better, but still... since the dark blue of the fish below was painted with H2Os (shimmering watercolors), it does give it a bit of life :)

This is what the hand-carved fish look like.  

Next week I will be working on a seamless carving and I'm sure I will have lots of fun designing it.

Carve, Stamp, Play Workshop

This week I did not manage to enter the challenge; with the new job and trying to get adjusted to getting up around 5 in the morning, the week just got away from me.

I did manage to create a few carvings and prints for the Carve Stamp Play Workshop based on Julie Fei-Fan Balzer's book (her blog here):

The Flowers:

I think I mentioned here I wanted to create a coloring sheet with the flower carvings.  I did just that, and scanned it so I can print it in whatever paper I want and have fun painting or coloring it in.

Stamped flowers and leaves

Outlined flowers and leaves and added shapes to the background

It will be a lot of fun painting or coloring it in :)

Interlocking stamps - abstract shapes:

These are rather small stamps but I had a lot of fun with them.  The idea is to create two stamps to work together.  So, this is what I came up with:

Something simple:  background color (right) and shape outline (left)
I wanted to create them so I could use them together or separately

So, I tried printing them with different colors to practice aligning them, and to see which color combinations I liked.

Then I had fun :)

Both together in same cases, and then separately

... and even more fun!!

Same print after adding watercolors, pen and ink, and colored pencil

Patterns with a simple carving:

The idea was to use a simple carving and use it to create different patterns.  I decided to carve a leaf and created these patterns, although I could keep going :).  I haven't had the time to play with this leaf yet, but the little carved away spots inside of the leaf will be fun to paint or color, or even tangle in.

One Fish, Two Fish...

The purpose of this lesson was to carve a stamp that printed multiple times will create a continuous pattern.  I decided to do something different here... to create a tessellation Escher-like (or rather, the same type; his are amazing and fabulous!!).

So, I went online and created a tessellation, carved it, and added some designs inside.  I started with one fish, but it was really hard to print it and get everything aligned, so... I carved a second fish :)

Fish one (left) and fish two :)

Then, printed them together to form my tessellation:

The values are too close together so it is a bit hard on your eyes :)

And had some fun with a card:

All fish outlined
the darker ones had the carved away shapes painted with shimmering watercolors,
the lighter ones had the background lightly colored with coloring pencil

I think these are easier on the eyes.  I know I will have a lot of fun with these fish!  I'm already have an idea for a bigger piece.