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.

A Book & its' Cover

Books have featured prominently in my day today.

 I was at Buckie Library today as part of Book Month. My remit was to produce a piece of art designed around the opening lines of my favourite book. My all time favourite book is The Diary of a Nobody written by George & Weedon Grossmith in about 1895. The copy I have belonged to my Grandad in the 1940's & is one of my most treasured possessions. I took the opening passage , then converted it into the modern equivalent & embellished it with a design comprising of piles of books & a long row of coloured pencils, 3 deep. Here's how it turned out.....

The next 'book' thing that happened was that during the event on 2 separate occasions, 2 elderly gentlemen came over to see what I was doing. Unusual in itself, as men normally pass my table by without a second glance. One had been a cake decorator & was fascinated by pattern in all its' forms. He even has a book all about the patterns on man- hole covers! Now I know there's a Zentangle pattern based on one of these (Man-O-Man), but a whole book of their designs?! Anyway he said he'd put all his cake patterns on a disc & would make a copy for me to see if it would inspire me in my work. How fab will that be?

The second man was an artist himself & seemed very impressed by the little I had time to show him about Zentangle. He asked if I'd go along to his local Art Group & give a talk about it.
 These encounters got me thinking. I have long felt that elderly people are, by & large, overlooked by society in general, in terms of what they have to offer & the wealth of experiences they have had. I remember as a child, loving to sit at my Nana's kitchen table in Elgin, listening to her blethering with her sisters. It stands to reason that through  all the decades they've lived,there must be a lot to tell!
I was so enthralled that I even wrote some of it down as they were chatting.
                                            So you see, never judge a book by its' cover!

Toothberries

Sitting in the waiting room at the dentist in Banff this morning(which used to have a medal-worthy view over the bay until some swine built houses smack bang in the way!), mentally preparing for over an hour of root work, I spied these jaggy wee berries on dry spindly branches. I don't know why they caught my eye, but as they did, I thought they were sketchworthy. Sketchworthy isn't really a word I don't think, but get used to it, as I write as I would speak, & that can be a little on the bizarre side.
I dare-say I'll include a version of my Toothberries in a future Tangle (as in the art of Zentangle). Zentangle features heavily in my art & inspiration. It's so dangerously addictive that it becomes all you want to do in every spare moment seeing Tangle-fodder everywhere you look, even at the dentist!