Circle Zendala: Diva Challenge #169

Tags

art, Diva Challenge, Mandala, zentangle

Here is my response to the Zentangle challenge for this week. The funny thing about this challenge is that I made a Zentangled flower out of circles of blue paper that I drew tangles on and it is part of my last post.

Flower Study

Tags

cut paper flowers, embroidered paper, flowers, gel pens, gratitude, gratitude journal, Pelikan watercolors, Sakura glaze pens, watercolor, zentangle

I am working on a meditation collage that will include different colors of flowers to represent different attributes. This week I have spent a lot of time and thought on this collage. I have been using it during my acupuncture sessions to help pass the time more comfortably. Flowers are a favorite subject of my art (you may have noticed) and I have another collage in mind as well. I will post photos of them when they are completed. One of the ideas of the collage is to find the healing thoughts that you need at the present moment. In this first layout I explored different markers, colored pencils, watercolors, cut paper and embroidered paper to see how they support different ideas.

The colored paper circles turned out very interesting. My plan at this point it to have a layer of drawn and painted flowers and layers of cut paper and photographs, too. I’m playing with the idea of photo transfers and I don’t want to use any layers of acetate in this collage. I want it to be a different kind of reflective material.  I got a gorgeous 12×12 flower stencil from http://www.thecraftersworkshop.com/The_Crafters_Workshop/Home.html

Playing with the new stencil and with the Sakura Gel Pens and Pelikan watercolors I just got. Whenever I sell some art or teach a class I invest the money into new art supplies. So new art supplies represent layers of gratitude.

I’m really not happy with how the right hand page came out, but that lets me know that I’m trying new things. The right hand page on the layout below exceeded my expectations. On days that I have acupuncture I generally sew something into my journal as my metaphor for that healing process. Here I have sewn in a flower. I was going to use flowers from fabrics in my collage, but I have too many other ideas and I think I would rather just embroider the paper. Here is also my original color mixing sketch, too!

Zentangle Challenge 168: (Purple) Rain

Tags

Diva Challenge, embroidery, purple rain, zentangle

I took this week’s Diva Challenge in a different direction. I have been playing around with different flower images for a mediation collage. Embroidery and Zentangle have seemed like natural synthesis and when I saw that Rain was the Tangle pattern selected for this week it seemed like a great place to start. I’m not sure how flower-like it turned out, but I am very happy with the experiment overall. The gratitude journal page that this will be part of will continue my flower study, but in the meantime, here is Purple Rain. (BTW – this is also the title of an album by the artist formerly known as Prince that I LOVED as a young person and still enjoy).

What the heart imagines

Tags

Altered book, art journal, gratitude, indigo bunting, Inktense, yoga

I fell a little behind in posting and there is a lot of variety to the pages in this post. I hope you find something that speaks to you. This first two page layout was from a few days that were difficult, but I love how the journal pages turned out. The indigo bunting that was in our tree was here so briefly. That glimpse and so many other joys of spring and the support of friends and family lifted me up during my difficult times. Can you see that in these images? I also LOVE how the Inktense pencils worked with the stencil. The prismacolor markers didn’t work very well on gesso covered page, but the coffee cup has an interesting look to it.

 

Playing with ink and water and inexpensive watercolor pencils.

The title for this post came from the card on the right page of this last layout. The pages aren’t posted in chronological order and this last one is from Mother’s day. My husband gave me this beautiful card. There are a lot of layers to these 2 pages.

Duo Tangle Diva Challenge 167

Tags

Diva Challenge, zentangle

Well, I’m done with this for now (a little tangled humor). I have never tangled punzel. It looks kind of creepy to me and my rendition did not improve it in my mind. I’m really curious to see what other people come up with for this challenge. I actually was inspired by Maria’s rendering http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs023/1101168872594/archive/1108276063239.html of punzel, but am not so happy with my many accidents that came of it. I am really trying to participate in the challenging challenges rather than picking and choosing the fun ones. I have been intrigued by the idea of monotangles, but have not yet tried one. This duo tangle came at just the right time. As I was playing with the layout of well I found some interesting links between the two tangles, but was not quite able to get them to create the effect I was hoping for. I stopped coloring in and didn’t do any shading because it was not getting closer to what I was hoping for. Now that I’m done I will see what everyone else did. Maybe I will be inspired to tweak this one or do a second tile. As always I am grateful to the Diva who is celebrating the anniversary of her birth today.

<a href=”http://iamthedivaczt.blogspot.com&#8221; target=”_blank”><img src=”http://i909.photobucket.com/albums/ac293/pfarrell50/Button-Diva.jpg&#8221; alt=”iamthedivaczt” width=”125″ height=”125″ /></a>

Art Frenzy and Yoga

Tags

altered art, art journal, collage, gratitude, photography, yoga, Zentangle Inspired Art

The image on the left page is similar to the collage that I submitted to http://www.clothpaperscissors.com/media/p/35706.aspx for a reader challenge. The Zentangled skull in my last post is one of the components of the collage and I linked to the magazine in the comments section. You can see the progress through the week as I worked on different components of the collage. I also created a birthday card for a friend of mine and used my journal for sketching. The right hand page of this first photo is snippets of leftovers from a collage I am making of a trip our family took to New Orleans in March 2013. Can you see the alligator in the center of the page? I’m a little behind on getting it assembled, but am very happy with how it is coming together. I also have an image from some of the Chinese medicine from my acupuncture doctor. Acupuncture is such a freaky and effective thing and I am so grateful that it works so well for my migraines! Without the acupuncture I would never have been able to do this much art in a week. Of course the yoga helps, too. I take classes 2 days a week and am sometimes surprised with how strong and flexible I am becoming.