Further Entanglements

I've been more or less off line as far as images and posting goes because my cell phone was bursting at the seams with images and I could do very little until I uploaded them all to my computer. I accomplished that last night and am now back to snapping photos of everything that passes my way and fiddling with the results.

All the while, I've continued with my doodling/tangling. I've worked on them while waiting for people in the car, started new ones in the middle of the night, finished them right before bed. I've learned more with each one and so far haven't wanted to tear up any of them, even those whose "faults" are obvious. Each one has served its purpose.

Here are more things I am learning: Color is fun, but it is also a design crutch. I have used it below because the design if left in black and white would have been too confusing.  I am hoping to find some different pens than my Micro-Line set when it comes to adding color. The colors that are in my current set cover up the black too much and every time you color over the same area it gets a little darker. I have solved that for the moment by coloring with Prismacolor pencils. Below I only used the Micro-Line and stopped using the blue when I realized it was too dark. Yellow and orange work fine in this set, though the yellow tends to pick up a bit of the black.

The top pattern is a variant of Twenty-One. It was my first time doing it and I realized soon on that I wasn't making all the parallel lines in the right direction. So I went with it and decided to emphasize the centers with connecting lines of color to make it look less chaotic. I like the strange effect of carrying some of these lines down like streamers. This is probably when I first started thinking more about how I should make some connections between sections (not done in the next image below this).
The center section is a variant of B-Horn, looking more like rocks in a stream than wood-grain (I hope). Bottom is a variant of 'Nzeppel. On this piece I experimented with leaving portions of each pattern only partially finished. Tangling reminds me a bit of blackwork, where you can increase the value by adding more and more intricate details.

Here I went back to only black and white to make a kind of sampler. I made the line outlines then started with Aquafleur in the center. I love this tangle because I am terrible at giving an impression of depth and as long as I followed the directions, bringing the black over the sides of the design a bit, and adding shine lines, I didn't get hurt. I experimented a lot with the other sections. I started lower right with Fiore and soon realized that the scale was so small that I could not gracefully fit in the details. Even though it's a quite simple design, it became jumbled. I left the edges mostly blank; were I to do it over at that scale I think I would only add the swirly details to alternate squares. Top right is Wiking, and I had learned my lesson by then and didn't add the center details. I left part of the circles unshaded because I love to have subtle variety. Center top to bottom I used Widgets, making them much more spread out in the center portion. I love these little things, they look like some sort of pond life. Top left I sort of invented and it provides the optical illusion of fading into the distance. Lower left a variant of 'Nzeppel. It's very easy to make variants of this tangle and I love all of them. Just above it, center left, is Munchin, which fills random spaces very well. Middle right is based on Florz. I've learned to use this pattern where ever I want an over all lighter value. I want to try this again somewhere, with better formed large circles.

Another thing I am still learning: how to make bold, tapered but not wobbly lines. Part of it is I have a wobbly, distractible hand. Sometimes I can fix things by going over and over the line, thickening it gradually and smoothly in places. That didn't work too well below....perhaps it is because these significant lines need to be started with wider diameter pens. With a .3 pen tip it is inevitable that the lines will show more wobble and will be harder to smooth out. I'm still working on this, but in general, I'm finding that I am able to make cleaner parallel lines and more convincingly twisted lines that I could at first.  Also, I am making these cards on printmaking paper. It is possible that some other paper will be a tiny bit smoother.

Below is what my photos look like without cropping or the white balance adjusted. Shhhhh! I place things on my toilet seat lid because it is white, matte surface, and the bathroom gets this fantastic evenly reflected light from the next door neighbor's wall. Try not to think about this too much, I know I've learned not to. :-)

I started with Fracas, bringing the lines back in to make a star. I let the star be covered by other shapes and let it burst into flights of Printemps on one side.  I think I'm starting to feel self-confident enough to play a bit. Beside the star is a not quite correct version of Paradox. Definitely a shape where my variant was created out of self defense. It seemed quite awkwardly placed but I kept adding on connecting triangles until it more or less held its own. Behind it spreads Florz, where I started to stretch and twist it. It reminds me of the colored fruit wrapper nets that I use in some of my mixed media work.  On either side is a sort of Onamato line, past that is Shattuck (which I love, it looks like basket weaving), and beyond that is a bit more Fracas.

I spent some time waiting in a car somewhere and started sketching my own tangle ideas. The orange flowers come from Blooming Butter and the rest all come from the idea of making a strong flower center with 4 and then 8 total loops coming out from it. I then created this sort of vine ball based on the same idea of shapes that radiate from a central circle. I think the flower shape is basic to design; humans love daisies. Now I want to create a series of small rubber stamps based on all the flower ideas.  I also like the lines at the upper left. Like the vines they were just a space filler, but they look like Chinese brush strokes.  When I had finished this piece looked very flat. I tried adding stippling behind the flowers, and it sort of works, but in retrospect the stippling should have been everywhere else and the flowers left with the white background. Oh, well, too late on that idea.

I wanted to play around with perspective and shapes being allowed to grow gradually larger. I started with Laced, and that worked really well, becoming larger and more spread out as they reached the bottom of the card. I then tried the same thing with Dessus-Dessous,  but, despite specific instructions in the book, I blew it and connected one line by mistake on the top. So I then made all the lines run on top and held it down with "stitches". I may shade the lower thread a bit to make it look more underneath the top. Next I used Huggins, but forced myself to make an outline of dots growing larger. I then realized it would be cool to have it run on both sides of Laced. I let little ribbons dangle down from it. Below left is yet another version of 'Nzeppel. I knew to make the details with the finest pen and use the large ones to fill in the black. I thought it would just look fussy, but I like it a lot once it was finished. Top right is just a series of wavy lines with various fillers. It looked pretty indistinct until I went back and darkened alternate lines. Now it looks like a geode or the edges of a clam shell.

 This next one I started with a line of ING overlapped by a line of Puffle. So far so good. Then I filled in the bottom section with my first rendition of Angle Fish. Big mistake not to have tried this one on scrap paper first.  There is a strange thing in the instructions....one stage has 7 radiating lines, but the next stage has 8. It matters because each pair of lines needs to be connected. So I spent the rest of the doodle trying to hide various errors. I was over-sensitive for a while, but as I added more shapes, and colored everything in boldly, it mattered less and less.  It will be good to master this shape, because several tangles have similar twists and turns. Dripping down from above is Chainlea. Fun and easy to adjust for space. To the left is another simplified Wiking.  I decided to fill in the background with a gradient of yellow to orange colored pencil. To the right is another of my inventions in progress....round balls of two different sizes, met with shapes like bamboo sections that accommodate the balls in different ways.  Bold colors because this piece was already off the tracks for refined taste. I like how I am forced into making various decisions that force me to explore new design ideas.

Last, some digital play. This is a black and white version of my Wiking selection above. It's pretty crude because blowing it up has caused pixillation.

I layered it with a tinted version of my floral card to get something mysterious:

Then I took the floral card and changed up the colors.....

In various ways.....

And converted them to a kaleidoscope image, which makes me think of starting a new drawing just based on this.

Then I made a layer of my bright colored jars behind a flower closeup.

Intensified the colors....

And went back to the first closeup and gave it a colored background.

So again, I have learned a lot from these little cards. I really should use scrap paper and pencil to learn more complex tangles before committing them to nice paper. But I also get a thrill from gambling. I tend to allow myself to become distracted, not examining each step sufficiently. Line slant and relationship is important and I often mis-direct the lines of new shapes. Eventually I may gain some sort of muscle memory for the shapes I feel comfortable with and I no longer need to look at previous examples to get the details right. At which point I try to push myself in new directions, adding perspective, running one pattern into another, taking a grid and twisting it.

I seem to get the logic of some patterns almost immediately, others I never quite understand and have to either follow the instructions very closely or allow myself to make a lot of variations based on mistakes. Each pattern becomes a resource for the next attempts. Also every piece has some little bit  of detail that feels like the beginning of a future exploration. I am not too proud to use color when I have created an otherwise muddled design. Or just to use color because it's fun to have a field of multicolored flowers.

I'm starting to play with my own patterns, but most need more development. Some are pretty but too complex to be actual named patterns, there needs to be a kind of "elegance", as they say of scientific solutions to complex problems.

Next post will hopefully include several links to Zentangle pattern resources and a couple more cards. I'm sort of taking a Zen Break right now, because of the beadwork and other 12 x 12 group projects that need to take center stage. Also less car waiting lately, at least at times when there is enough light to draw.