Tangling Grids for Chocolate Baroque

July's Challenge (Number 16) for the Chocolate Baroque Zentangle Group is once again based upon tangles (the challenges are based upon a rotation of three: tangle/s; strings; theme/s). This time the brief is to use ONLY tangles based upon a grid.

Two tangles based upon grids & which can be beautifully 'merged' are Cadent & Cubine. I wanted to see what these would look like using curved grids so I created a string of two overlapping pointed ovals. The vertical oval is tangled with Cubine & the horizontal with Cadent; the segment where the two ovals overlap is tangled with a combination of Cadent & Cubine.

tangles: Cadent, Cubine

The restriction of using ONLY grid based tangles proved quite an interesting challenge for I found I was wanting to add an organic tangle like Fescu emanating from each of the points where my two tangled ovals meet. I resisted the urge & just added s tiny touch of sparkle to the Cadent circles using a Clear Sakura Stardust Gelly Roll pen.

close-up to show sparkle of Cadent's circles

MCC Time to Tangle with Colours - Wk 3

Links: MCC (My Creative Classroom), Marie Browning

tangles: Cadent, Chevron, Cubine, Hypnotic, Jonqual,
Knightsbridge, Neuron, Nzepple, Peaks Border, Screen, Tagh, Tipple  

There was a choice of assignments for the third week's Dual Brush Pen homework so that those who had already taken one of Marie's earlier tangling classes, which I have, could choose to tackle something fresh. So, instead of drawing & colouring another "Flower Garden" (see here), I set to work with the "Falling Leaves" project.  This incorporated watercolour blending, indirect Blender Pen & direct to paper colouring, Glue Pen Resist & haloing techniques as well as layering of complimentary colours to produce muted tones. The latter was a most interesting exercise as all of my leaves started out watercoloured in various greens & ended up as in the photographs once I'd applied the additional reds, pinks, oranges & yellows. The whole piece is about 6½ x 9¾ inches in size using Daler-Rowney Langton 300gsm Hot Pressed Extra Smooth watercolour paper.

close-up of top section

close-up of central section

close-up of bottom section

As I didn't have any suitable dies or die-cuts to draw round I drew myself some leaves freehand. Another option would have been to use real leaves but the leaves in our woodland are soaking wet because of the heavy rainfall we are experiencing at present.

close-up showing  the pinky white spots where the Glue Pen Resist repelled the colouring

MCC Time to Tangle with Colours - More Wk 1

Links: MCC (My Creative Classromm), Marie Browning,
           Glenda Waterworth (Seussisms post)

I struggled rather with the final assignment for the first week. My first mistake opportunity for learning came as I tangled, since, all the patterns I chose except the border are based upon grids. Next time I shall pay attention to the need for balance between grid-based & organic flowing tangles.

Secondly, as I worked with the Derwent Coloursoft pencils, I realised that I was getting an awful lot of debris & the layers began to 'stick' or 'catch' upon one another - particularly visible in Jester (top right). I switched to using my Polychromos pencils which, being oil-based, don't crumble & give off debris, but I still struggled to blend. I tried smoothing out the blending with the Tombow Blender Pen & found that it made no difference with either brand of pencil. Sitting & thinking about this I've concluded that I was much too heavy handed in my laying down of colour  &, possibly, the Tombow Blender isn't compatible with either Derwent Coloursoft or Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils.

Analogous Pencil Colouring
tangles: Cubine, Flukes, Jester, Pearlz, Screen
Derwent Coloursoft (Flukes & Jester) & Faber-Castell Polychromos (Cubine, Pearlz & Screen) both
blended with Tombow Blender Pen on Canson XL Series Mix Media 98lb/160g paper

MCC Time to Tangle with Colours - Wk 1

Links: MCC (My Creative Classsroom), Marie Browning

I was thrilled to discover that MCC were proposing to run a second tangling course taught by Marie Browning & so I signed up as soon as I could.

The class is taught using Tombow Dual Brush Pens & Irojiten Colour Pencils. I have a good selection of colours in the Tombow Pens but, since the Irojiten pencils are at present not easy to get hold of in the UK, I shall be using my tin of 36 Derwent Coloursoft pencils which are wax-based like the Irojiten.

The assignments for each week are optional, however, I always learn more when I actually engage with my materials & know from experience that a particular product can vary greatly in its performance depending upon what type of paper it is used upon. I shall include what I choose to do for 'homework' here in blog posts but for reasons of copyright I will not be giving detailed technical explanations.

The first assignment involved using the colours we find combined in the natural world to start a reference tool in the form of a notebook or Pinterest Board. I decide to work with the latter option using my own photographs to create a board which you can find HERE.

For my second assignment I chose to use oval shapes with a cool colour scheme to create a piece of Zentangle Inspired Artwork (ZIA) in my Black Page Album Moleskine.

Cool Colours ZIA
tangles: Cadent, Cubine, Hollibaugh, Nzepple, Printemps, Quandary, Triangles, Tripoli
Tombow Markers outline watercolour blending & indirect Blender Pen colouring on
Canson XL Series Mix Media 98lb/160g paper

Spring Tangling

Firstly, thank you for all your thoughtful wishes - my migraine control has improved over the last month & after catching up with some essential organising about the house I shall hopefully have some more time for artwork.

I had some very old papers with a rather large floral looking design which I thought might work as a framework for tangling. I outlined some areas of the pattern until I had what looked like a very large flower & then tangled the petals using a selection of tangles from Suzanne McNeill's book Zentangle 3 plus Cubine from Zentangle Basics. The resulting artwork was then mounted onto black cardstock & a scalloped edge card blank. The inside is simply decorated using die-cut elements from Spellbinders Shapeabilities Lace Doily Motifs & Accents.

tangles: Bubbles, Chaingang, Cubine, Droplets, Loops,
Rain (tangleation), Scallops, Yincut

inside of card

Challenges Entered (card above)

Everybody-Art Challenge 228 - Spring (a floral theme plus the green of Spring flowers)

Simon Says Stamp Challenge - Easter/Spring (the Spring theme of flowers & the colour green)


As I had a second large card blank (but without scallops) I made another card using slightly different tangles but keeping the same design for the inside.

tangles: Barberpole (tangleations), Bubbles, Droplets, Loops,
Rain (tangleation), Scallops, Strircles, Yincut