Throwback Thursday #5 - Most Fun With a Tangle; Diva Challenge #241 Stones and Ceremony; TNTM #43 "U", SQ1 W2

 Welcome Gentle Readers,

The snowbirds are back in Arizona from their cooler climes, and temperatures have started to moderate.  What a blessed relief after a long season of heat.  Mostly, I just want to wear some of my favorite cool weather clothes which were relegated to storage for about six months!  Yes, I do own clothing with sleeves and legs! 

The trip to San Antonio that my husband and I had really looked forward to never materialized.  Even though late October is supposed to be the ideal time to visit there, dry and sunny most years, our chosen week was beset by the promise of the highest rainfall in one day ever, to be followed by a blast from Hurricane Patricia, the strongest hurricane ever recorded or some such notability. Accommodations on the river walk did not seem like the best place to be.  Oh well, another vacation scuttled by Mother Nature!

This week the Diva Challenge is about Stones and Ceremony.  My book club just finished reading a novel in which a history professor becomes obsessed with the Sorcerer's Stone, to the point at which he is ready to kill for it!  The Apostle Peter's name is associated with a stone.  Stonehenge captures our imagination, and something absolutely, positively certain is "carved in stone".  One could write an entire doctoral thesis about stones, but...I won't...

I took my gray sketchbook out of its lonely hiding place and just drew a pile of stones.  I tangled and shaded them with a marker, and here they are.  I don't know what that one baked potato looking thing is, but I guess it's OK.

 

 

 

Suzy Mosh chose the letter "U", and added artist Elena Hadzijaneva.  I used Unyuns and Elena's Chordin.  That reminds me of those metal extending thingies.  This would be a pretty cool pattern to use in a Steampunk tile if you put bolts in the center instead of the spiral design, wouldn't it?  (Hmmm...file for future reference...)  I really had fun with the shading on this (about two hours worth!), and it really shows up best when you tilt the tile a bit. 

 

 

Square One: Purely Zentangle focus this week was W2.  It looks so easy, but I will tell you I messed up twice getting started even though I practiced in my sketchbook first.  From what I read on Facebook, I'm not the only one who stumbled a bit on this.  My entry is plain and simple, but for some beautiful examples of what can be done with W2, check out Chris Titus's page https://www.facebook.com/groups/squareonepurelyzentangle/.  Each week there is a new focus tangle, and participants are to create a tile using the basic Zentangle materials of white tile, black pen, and graphite pencil.  It's a supportive and amazing group.

 

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THROWBACK THURSDAY #5 - THE MOST FUN I EVER HAD WITH A TANGLE

 

This week, I am going to be ultra lazy about this challenge and just post an oldie.  No revision or new version, no sweat, just a lookback.  I thought about some tangles that seemed dubious when I first tried them out.  Yes, I could construct them, but what could I do with them?  Sometimes a tangle is very beautiful, but so complicated that it takes all the fun out of it.  Sometimes they are so simple looking (see W2 above, or consider Knightsbridge or Keeko), that you wonder what can be done with them other than fill in the background behind some other "funner" tangle.

 

For me, when I first learned Rixty, I had a little trouble drawing it correctly.  I somehow had the shapes tapering up instead of down.  Then I got it right, but just made a big string of it wandering over the paper, and figured, "So?"  Then one day I spotted one of Maria's tiles in which she connected some of the shapes at the top with a curving "stem" portion.  Hello!!  I sat down and drew a tile that has since become a legend on my own home wall of fame.  I call it "Rixty Puzzle".  I keep looking at it and thinking I wonder if I could make it into a pop-up page.  Wouldn't that be excellent?

 

So here is the challenge:  Post a photo of the most fun you have ever had with a tangle.  That's it!  You may want to tell about how you arrived at your personal "vision", why you initially had reservations about the tangle, but then became seduced by its charms, or whatever.  Or, you don't feel you need to say one darn word because we can all see what fun you had! 

 

Thank you for stopping by today. Know that I cherish all your thoughts and comments, and would love to see your Throwback. Have a beautiful weekend, slow down, admire, appreciate, relax and have fun.

 

Namaste, Antonine