Work in Progress

Working on a new large project. Actually started this in Florida, I need to finish it up here in Maine. The background is Dylusions Ink Spray, my standby, my go-to product. London blue and bubblegum pink.  That mix in the middle is arukas and my own airways. The overall piece is 9" x 12", this is just a small section to get you interested. Stand by for more. SaveSave

Time to Get Back to Work

It has taken longer than I anticipated but we are finally finished unpacking boxes. Hallelujah! Finally I can get back to work. Sorry to be gone so long.
Now I am trying to get familiar with this new computer, computing standing up instead of sitting down, and I am dealing with a new version of photoshop.
I love this piece with the finery flourishes mixed with arukas.  Did you know that arukas is Sakura spelled sdrawkcab? Hahaha! There's a brain twister there for you!

Dylusions on Canson Illustrated

With our big move coming up,  it is hard to fit in tangle time each day. Each room of the house has boxes stacked up. Boxes, plastic containers, bags, stacks of items. What a logistical nightmare. But we are tackling it -  one stage at a time. This week? The first wave of furniture goes out,  quickly followed by the second wave. Yay!!!!!
The above piece of art was created on a sheet of Canson Illustrated board, using Dylusions Ink Sprays. I do have other art supplies, I just don't love them as much!
What's on your desk this week?

A Bit of a Week

So I haven't posted in a couple days and I was wondering why not. Then I realized a lot has been going on in my life. I did find time to participate in A String Symphony with my Facebook group Zentangle All Around. Above is my tile for string #30.  I am only about 30 strings behind. Hahaha! The tile is a mashup of arukas and airways. Such fun!

 I also got to spend some time with the Frankles.

She loves those sunglasses. 

 She even insisted I wear them -

even if they were made for a little guy

and barely fit my face.

Frankles wore her new glasses that 

are helping her see better.

(When she gets tired of wearing them,

she will have them to me and say, "thank you.")

And our really big news this week is that Bobbie - my son's wife who I call daughter - and mom of the Frankles - earned her ears at Disney two days ago. The beginning of a new adventure for their family. My son will be starting a new job dispatching in a 911 call center for one of the Sheriff's Offices in the area. And the Frankles is starting day care.
In the meantime, we are packing everything  that doesn't move in preparation for our move to Maine.  Happy times. 
What are you up to? How was your week?

Camouflaging a String

 I love making the string disappear,

make it vanish right into the tangling.

Can you see the string in the drawing above?

In my Facebook group Zentangle All Around

we are doing a string each day.

By the end of 2016 we will have 366 completed

works of art!

I tangled this last night.

Because I know what the string looks like I can see it.

Can you?

Here is the string I used.

This particular string is #51,

the string for February 20th.

Strings are meant to be used as guidelines.

You can either follow the string exactly,

or use portions of it.

For my tile, I elected to leave out the square borderline, 

but keep the string itself intact.

This tangling was done on a piece of scrapbook paper

that I bound into a handmade art journal.

That tulip band in the center is a tangle of mine 

called veez. 

It was published in Cris and Sonya's book

Pattern Play: a Zentangle Creativity Boost.

Everything else you see is a tangle called arukas.

I don't recall the specific story behind arukas, 

but i remember how to spell it

because it is Sakura backwards. :)

Yes. I can see the string very obviously,

and you can see it because I showed you the blank

string tile.

But my guess is - 

most people won't spot the string that helped

me create a bit of interesting art.

And they probably (hopefully, maybe) are going

to wonder how I created this.

So.

Camouflage your string line and leave them

wondering!

Punzeled Arukas Part Deux

Yesterday I posted a tile with the unshaded version of the drawing you see here.
I drew this on an 8" x8" sheet of stonehenge paper. I love stonehenge! Smooth, takes the pen well. And it takes shading well, too. Like a dream!
What a difference a shade makes!

Punzeled Arukas

Just time for a quick post today. We spent a wonderful couple days in Orlando, visiting Harry, Ron, and Hermione at Hogwart's. I wish. Actually, we visited the  Wizarding World of Harry Potter and had an excellent time!  I've been posting photos on Instagram, I need to pull some of those and post here. Hmmmm.
For today, though, here is a drawing I did awhile back on a Disney trip.  A little punzel meets arukas thing. Even though it isn't shaded - I still like it! I may shade it for tomorrow's post :).
Hahaha! Have a great day! It's Friday!!!!!

Opus #2

Over the past couple weeks I have posted bits and pieces of this artwork on facebook and instagram with the promise of a blog post to follow. Well, here it is.

Zentangle recently came out with some new tiles they call the Opus. It is a 10.5" square tile of 100% cotton, fine artists paper. I enjoyed drawing on the larger tile, but won't be carrying them in my store for two reasons:

1. At $22.00 for five tiles, I don't feel they are cost effective, and
2. I haven't figured out any easy way to ship them, while keeping the shipping cost low, and have them packaged safely to prevent bends and creases. 

However, I did purchase some to play with. I posted the first Opus tile I made here. Well, shoot. Apparently I haven't blogged that yet. Well, here it is anyway. Shoot! I can't even find a picture of it. I guess I'll have to blog that another time. I have too much going on in my life. I'd like to be bored for awhile.

Moving right along. The first Opus tile I did - the one I can't show you right now - was done with microns alone. For this second tile I wanted to see how the tile held up to wet media. I used my peerless watercolors and a water brush. In case you aren't familiar with peerless, they are sheets of paper with concentrated color on one side. You dip your water brush onto the paper and it picks up the color that you then paint with. So, ultimately not a lot of wet on your paper and they are easily portable.

While the color looks amazing - peerless are bright and wonderful - the tile itself didn't hold up all that well. I had a lot of pilling and abrasion on the paper, even though there wasn't a lot of water. I just kept filling in bits of color till the entire tile was covered.

When the tile was totally dry, I gently brushed as much of the pilling off with my fingertips as I could and . . . 

. . . began to tangle. I filled in large spaces of colors with a couple different tangles.

Then I went back in the open areas and started filling in with a new pattern called Arukas.

Interesting story. Arukas is easy and fun, but I was really concentrating hard filling in those areas. Making them carry over under tangles and connect on the other sides. I concentrated so hard that I had a blood vessel in my left eye hemorrhage and cause lots of pain and ugliness. At that point I decided to call this tile completed. Ta-da! Opus #2 done. 

My eye is better. All healed up now. It did look quite nasty for about a week. Still doing eye drops for it, but the white part of the eye is no longer the color of that hidden Mickey up there anymore. 

So there you go. Blogpost done and hitting 'publish.' Happy New Year, everyone!

Arukas Take One

So. Kali and Mark are still driving - 

their third day in the U-Haul truck.

Currently they are are somewhere in Oklahoma,

and yes, I do want to start singing the stage song

O-K-L-A-H-O-M-A every time I say that.

I have been trying to draw,

not always easy for me to do when I'm sad.

I got to spend most of yesterday with

Jason, Bobbie, and the Frankles

and that was a huge help to me.

Last night I gave my first try to this tangle

called Arukas. What fun!

I'm happy with the end results for my initial try.

Yesterday, Kali texted me this shot of Sable -

being all cute and stuff. 

This is the longest car ride she's ever been on!

Looks like Sable travels well!

The plan is to arrive late afternoon.

We have truck unloaders scheduled at 5:00.

And Kali starts her new wonderful job

at 5:00 AM tomorrow.

Hopefully she will be able to wake up and 

get there on time. 

(I am seeing now that the video doesn't open,

and you don't get to see how cute Sable is.

Sorry. I am going to leave it here anyway.

Cause it's my blog and I can. :) )