Tangling the Opus

Recently the Zentangle® company released a 10 1/2" tangling tile called the Opus.

I've drawn on a couple with great results.

This time I thought I'd combine the Opus with my

first tangling/journaling love - Dylusions Ink Sprays.

 Typically I wouldn't leave the curled edges in the photo,

I would crop them out before I posted.

I thought it was worth showing you the little amount of curl I got 

for a whole lot of wet media.

 I began by using a mop brush and slopping a whole lot of water 

across the entire page.

Then I used lemon zest, fresh lime, and calypso teal

and sprayed on some beautiful color.

I spritzed a little more water just to be sure.

You see those circular places?

Those are super easy to make.

Wherever you have a good puddle of water,

point your heat gun straight down into the puddle

and watch it push the color out to the sides.

Let it dry that way and you have instant cool circles.

 I use those circle areas to make designs like this one.

I just follow the lines.

And while I'm thinking about it let me say this -

the slight curling you saw in that second photo from all the wet media -

once the opus dried it flattened itself back out.

Completely.

 I just kept tangling, following the lines of color.

 Building section by section.

 I saw someone else drawing their squid tangles in a similar manner. 

I liked it so much I tried it out. 

This is how mine turned out. 

I tried to make it look like they were swimming.

And here is my completed Opus tile. I love the way it turned out!
Just follow the flow of the color. Go on, you know you want to try it!

Back Home

That was a fast five days at Cedar Key. I tried so many times while I was there to make a blog post, but their internet didn't run fast enough. Sorry. I apologize right now for the inferiority of some of these photos. All of them were taken with my cell phone, then posted on facebook. I have simply dragged the photos from facebook and am posting them here. I did take some pictures with my nice camera. Hope to post some of those soon. Above is our view the first morning.

We were sitting right on the Gulf of Mexico. It rained the entire first day we were there, this was taken by the dock - shooting back towards what used to be an awesome restaurant until it got gutted by fire. The building has been fixed back up and is currently for sale. I wonder if Kali could run a french pastry business from there. Hmmmm.

Day three brought this little bundle of sunshine to us. Fourteen months old now, she is the happiest little thing I've ever seen. She only cried twice - once because she was tired and wanted a bottle, and the second time was because Mark tried to hold her instead of me holding her :). Good girl!

And she ate great this day. A sweet potato for lunch, with cinnamon butter. And for dinner - garlic mashed potatoes, crab bisque, sweet corn with rice, and apples. Topped off with pepsi and sweet tea. Hahaha! And she slept like a champ that night. Not so the next, but she did this night.

The sad thing about Cedar Key is the way it got hit with economics. So many of the shops are closed, and most of the restaurants. Not many good ones left, so we went back to Steamers again last night. Little bug had more garlic mashed potatoes, crab bisque, and this time we added peanut butter mousse and a little lemon pudding. 

She did finally settle in and let Mark carry her on our walk back to the resort. She is soooooo cute!!! And such a good baby. So happy and smiley.

Our last night. The sun finally came all the way out. I shot this on our way to supper. The water was beautiful! I will post some other photos soon. It was a nice break, sorry I couldn't post while I was gone. Actually those posts you got while I was gone - they were all pre-programmed to pop up and look like I was posting because I was afraid there'd be a problem. I just didn't make enough of them because we added on an extra day to our trip. Technology is great. When it works. 

Feel the Flow

I drew this tile awhile back. I've long had a fascination with the undersea world. When I was growing up in Newfoundland, my dad would fish off the only dock on the Navy base in Argentia just about every weekend. He fished for cod and flounder, and would often catch a puffer fish. It seems like they called them blowfish back then. I remember him taking me to the base library when I was about ten years old and we checked out this wonderful, big, full-color book of ocean photography. For almost a year, I kept that book checked out, renewed and renewed again. I loved it! My dad never got to see any of my drawings, but I know that he would have loved them! And he would have shown them to every single person at his church.

Under the Sea

I love drawing underwater pictures! Underwater tangles! Underwater gardens you might call some of them. This one is only partially done. I have been trying different art styles and techniques in my Stillman & Birn Zeta Series Sketchbook. I will be curious to see how this 9" x 12" drawing turns out with color. I think I'll work with copics and twinkling H2Os. I'm curious to try those two together, on this paper. When I get back home where my pens are, I'll get to work on it and let you know. 

Love the Beach!

I was looking back through books, getting my artwork ready to head to Rhode Island tomorrow morning, and I came across these two pages in my smash journal. I haven't posted these before. I drew these back at the very beginning - this was one of the first drawings I did using zentangle patterns.

Some of the patterns I used are florz, keeko, shattuck, a variation of diagonals, tidal, and cheesecloth.

The color came from Pitt Artists Pens. This was before I learned about Derwent intense pencils - haha! cause I would have totally used those if I had them then!
And speaking of Rhode Island, I am leaving in the morning. I will be back home next Thursday. I don't know if will be able to post while I'm gone, so if you don't see anything new here for a few days - that is why. I hope to see you here when I get back!

Under the Sea

I got some new stencils in the mail yesterday - from Dream Weaver. I figured I'd play around with them for awhile. I took a watercolor notebook and slapped around some paint in greens, purples, and blues. They had a bit of metallic in them - cause I like shiny!

Then I took four of the stencils and traced them on top of the dry paint. Totally sacrificed a pen doing this.

Next, I tangled a few patterns into the stenciled areas. Then I added some seaweed, flowing plants, and amoeba-stuff. So "sea" like :). When I uploaded this above picture onto the computer, I noticed what looks like a shark in the upper left corner. Totally unplanned. The only thing I intentionally added was the small black line to designate a mouth.

So much fun! I tried out some new patterns. I always think featherfall looks sloppy, but that's pretty much the way it is detailed out in the drawing steps. I also used: finery, hybrid, heron, fescu, shattuck, tearse, waves, squid, and beadlines. 


I may come back to this tomorrow and add some bubbles - something I meant to do. I've been following the national championship speech and debate breaks today - in the NCFCA, a Christian homeschool league that my daughter competed in for several years. I got so tied up with breaks to semi-finals. I worked on this in between checking the computer for the hundredth time!!! and forgot the bubbles. Tomorrow!

Under the Sea

I've always been fascinated by the sea. I grew up in Newfoundland, Canada, right on the ocean. My dad would take me with him to the docks where he would fish, sometimes for hours. I remember the library on the navy base where we lived had a great book about the ocean. It was huge, and every page was printed in full beautiful bright color. A sentence on each page would identify the fish, plantlife, coral, whatever was depicted. I checked that book out every time it was available and would only return it when I had to. These days I would simply buy the book on amazon so I would always have it.

I started drawing this ocean life yesterday. I like all the patterns. The spiral shell idea came from a zentangle pattern from Michele Beauchamp called spiral. I saw the pattern and wanted to do something with it - it's a really pretty design! My picture just kind of took life from there.


I used the patterns: squid, popsicles, spiral, fescu, an unknown pattern - I can't find its name - the top flower with the pink in it, and added some tall reeds (perhaps a variation of mooka.) The color comes from Faber-Castell Pitt artist pens and Faber-Castell watercolor pencils which I used dry. It was incredibly satisfying to complete this project - good memories all the way :).