Left & Right

Over on I am the diva blog  there has been a challenge going on for 13 weeks so far.   While I haven't done all of them, I have done some.   I thought you might like to see these.   I did the same Zentangle with my non-dominant and my dominant hand .. Rick and Maria from Zentangle challenged us last year sometime I think to do this ... I hadn't done it for awhile and thought I'd give it another go. 

I really pressed the pen harder with my non-dominant hand and found a lack of smoothness of stroke.   Funnily enough I did find doing the lines with my non-dominant hand for "Patena" (the pattern in the lower centre of the two tiles) easier.   I get a bit cross-eyed when doing the diagonal lines for these type of patterns.

If you haven't already, hop on over to The Diva's blog and have a look ... lots to see.

Happy Tangling for now ... those of you who are doing a two day workshop with me in Sydney ... I'm counting the sleeps ... very exciting.   Cheers Jane x

Bookplates and some colour

 There are lots of things you can do with Zentangle drawings ... this one is destined to be a Book Plate for the front of my books I think ... it has some of my favourite Zentangle patterns ... I especially love Marasu (my variation of it because I add those tendrils so it looks like a sea creature).  Oh and 'Nzeppel ... you can get some really great curves out of that pattern, and of course there is "Zinger" down in the right hand corner ... I use this one a fair bit too.

And here is Marasu again ... about 4 weeks ago I was lucky enough to get a whole set of Derwent pencils in a beautiful wooden case and had been playing with them.

In this drawing I have used Derwent pencils to colour the background squares, used Staedtler Triplus fineliners to draw Zentangles in them with matching colours, used a beautiful Matisse Ink to paint the background of the Marasu pattern (those three Zentangles) and then a Pigma Micron to draw in the Zentangles.   Lots of mediums here ... then one of my friends directed me to this web site where Australian artist Loretta  Grayson does the most amazing art work ... I'm not even sure she knows about Zentangle ... but wow - worth checking it out....http://rettg.blogspot.com/ ... sigh ... mine pales in comparison really.   I need some more vibrancy in the colours, so I think I will get the Derwent Inktense pencils out and give them a workout soon.  I really like the idea of her methods, using pastels and marking the texture in with a stylus...definately food for thought there.

Okay hope you all have  a great tangling weekend ... I'm going to be out of blogland for a few days while I prepare for my three workshops in Sydney ... I can't believe they are next week ... time has snuck up on me once again.    Happy Tangling ... Jane x