Catching Up

It's been a busy week here. We're getting the house ready to host 4 students from Oklahoma State tomorrow evening.  Lots of extra cleaning, cooking, and bed-making.  Oh, and getting my book finished.  It should be here tomorrow.  I'm so excited.

Here is the art I've done for the last 3 days:

Zentangle tile with Auraknot and Bunzo

ATC ZIA

A study in colored pencil:
base layer is metallic pencil
then covered with red and white Prismacolors
highlights with pink watercolor pencil
burnished with white Prismacolor
I'm debating whether or not to smooth it out by adding water to the watercolor pencil. I think I will have to sleep on this before deciding.

Watercolor Sunflower ATC, revisited

Since I didn't like my watercolor sunflower and I have been liking the results of mixing Zentangle and watercolor, I thought I'd see what would happen if I did some tangling over the ATC from a few days ago.

Before: a sloppy watercolor sunflower

After: I'm still not digging it.
But I do like the background.
The inner critic is back. <sigh>

Working Backwards

Yesterday, I started by tangling and then adding watercolor. Today, I did the opposite.  I put down a little wet-on-wet.

But, I thought it needed more texture, so I put down another layer of watercolor. I've decided I really like putting down colors and just watching them blend and seeing what happens. It is very freeing.

Then I tried to find tangles the emphasized the paint designs. It was hard to pick just the right tangles and I'm not sure I completely succeeded.

Here is the final result.

I think it might need some more color on the tangles.  What do you think?  Is it done? Please comment and let me know.

No Judgement Day

Today, I refused to listen to my inner critic. I wanted to do something fun and free-flowing and colorful.  Lately, every time I sit down to do art, I hear this little voice in my head telling me how bad it is. She can be very persuasive and it sucks the joy out of painting. So, today, I declared it a "no criticism day." Every time that voice started, I just told her to shut it.

It worked.  I was able to have a blast on this piece and I really like the results.

My favorite part. I think it looks like a mermaid tail in a beautiful blue sea.

Phiclops, a very fun new tangle. After painting and shading this, I used a white Gelly Roll pen and then covered the whole thing in Glaze.  

The whole piece: 5x8
watercolor, pencil, Sakura micron, Sakura Glaze pen,
white Sakura Gelly Roll pen

A Tangled Rose

For my 4th flower, I wanted to try something new, so I used the ubiquitous garden catalog, but this time, instead of using it as an inspiration, I used it as part of my art. Here are the steps:

1. Cut out a picture of a light colored flower with large petals. I selected a picture of a yellow rose.
2. Get your Zentangle pen and start tangling, using flower as your string. (If you aren't familiar with Zentangle, check out my other blog: TangledUpInArt.)
3. Every petal gets its own tangle. I tried to used darker tangles on the sections that were darker in color, but that's not necessary. 

How cool is it to be able to create a beautiful, colorful piece of Zentangle-Inspired Art using only your black pen and without the need for any drawing or painting skills. You don't even have to shade it!

If you try this, please leave me a comment and let me know how it turned out.