Finished!

I wrote previously about a Monogram drawing I was working on containing several Heraldry inspired aspects. I finally finished it yesterday & here it is.

The pattern in the top right corner is the one I tried to describe in the post Heraldic Inspiration.

It came from this: 

I did this to it:

....and it ended up like this:

An example of how a pattern is born in my world.

Wonkiness Fun

The last few days I have been experimenting with less conventional presentations of patterns & have found to my childish delight that it very much jigsaws into that rather dominating less conventional part of my little brain. This area of study is largely down to the  ongoing inspiration I find in the remarkable work of Helen Williams from A Little Lime. I have a link to her site on my Home Page.

Anyhoo, she promotes the use of Wonky Grids, Random Dot Grids & other ways to 'deform' standard Tangle Patterns.

Here are a few of my experiments with the techniques from my workbook pages from the last few days, to illustrate the point:
                                                   

Randomising Cadent

I started with Cadent, as I always do when trying anything new, or teaching the art. It is an easy to learn basic pattern with oodles of variation potential. Firstly, ignore the top left hand corner, these have nothing to do with it! The Random Dot version appealed to my love of serendipity, as you just don't know what is going to happen to your pattern until you put pen to paper. I further randomised the framework by closing my eyes to place the initial dots. This disables the tendency of your brain to bring some kind of order to the proceedings!That would NEVER do.

When I moved onto the S-Curve framework, as you will see from my note to self beside it, I made a 'mistake', I  use inverted commas, as strictly speaking there are no mistakes in Zentangle, which is why you start in pen, not pencil, apart that is from your initial grid-work, which is only a guide & can be erased with impunity! On the other hand, some grid-work is meant to be kept...... you absorb this kind of information as time goes on. Back to my error. What I did was to draw the initial  S-Curve Grid in pen, meaning that when I added my Cadent shapes within this, they created a second curve in places. 

I thought 'Oh rats, made a boo-boo' closely followed, in true Zentangle style by 'How can I 'fix' the error. I decided to pattern within the unwanted lines, which had the effect of further randomising  the overall effect whilst  incorporating the blot on the landscape. 

Whoop.

A closer look at my pattern fix.

The next simple Tangle I tried it with was Hypnotic.

The Wonky Grid was my favourite in this instance. I haven't finished shading this little sketch yet, as I had to get on with my day! 

The upshot of all this is that it has opened my eyes to a whole new way of presenting patterns, especially old favourites like the two used above. I can also see the potential for incorporating the techniques into background spaces or awkward shapes in my Monogram work.

Whoop Whoop.

Colour Therapy in the Post

Ta Da!

Nothing much beats getting 20 new Promarkers in the post!


I have a lot of Promarkers, collected over the years, all carefully stored alpha numerically in proper Promarker wallets. A veritable joy to behold! I keep a colour chart, which not only serves as an aid to colour scheme creation, colour matching etc., but also as a record of which colours I have still to collect, otherwise there is a very real danger that I would waste money ordering repeats. I know my limitations!

My aim has been never to pay full price for a pen,(actually, that is my strategy with everything I buy!) so every time I need a replacement or new colours, I just Google 'Promarker bargains',see if I can fill any of the gaps in my chart, & bingo! Just wait for the post, like I did today.
Deep joy.