Roman Numeral Vll

It is only the fifth day of April and already we have had more rain than in the whole of March, so when we woke up to sunshine today we decided to take a little trip out. Instead of walking along our own beach (known as a strand here) we took the scenic route to the beach three villages along.

The beach sweeps for about a mile and a half around the bay and looked stunning in the sunshine with the Wicklow Mountains as a backdrop. I took lots of photos to show you, but why oh why do panorama photos never come out as stunning as where they were taken ? It looks grey and wet when in fact the bright sun shining on the sand made it look golden and the mountains have disappeared into the clouds  :-(

I do have this photo of the shimmering water as you look across the sea to the furthest of the islands, and the reason I am showing it to you is the tiny island right on the end. For some reason that little bit is known as Ireland's Eye!

Then there is this photo of the golden sand, the way the waves and wind had blown the sand reminded me of the tangle pattern Tearce or even Nipa that we are to use today!

Each strand around here has a Martello Tower. They are coastal defence towers built at the time of the Napoleonic Wars. The are all built within sight of each other. Some are in better condition than others, and two or three in this area have been turned into homes. It really is wonderful to be able to walk along such quiet beaches.

We had a lovely lunch at the local hotel, with glorious views of the islands just off shore, and I really felt like I had been on a mini break. After this we returned home and I turned my attention to Joey's Challenge and my trio of tiles for this week. This is the first tile I drew which included all four of the patterns Joey suggested, Gotcha, Queens Crown, Nipa and Sailz. I had been wanting to try out the new pattern Gotcha so I was pleased when I drew it and discovered I really enjoyed it. Nipa I have always liked and use a lot. The crown and Sailz I have used but not so much.

I decided that I had drawn the patterns in the most obvious places and so for this tile I tried to mix it up a bit more.

Lastly came my gold tile where I usually outline the Roman Numeral in gold. Of course the Queens Crown just begged to be done with the gold pen so first of all drew tha tangle all along the Vll. When I had finished I liked it so much by itself that I almost left it like this:-

Joey had said that it would be great if we managed to fit in all four tangle patterns. Although I had already done that in the previous two I felt honour bound to continue with this gold one and this is how it turned out:-

Diva Challenge #262

I have had a lovely week with my Zentangle® Primer Vol 1. Maria and Rick say they called it a Primer "because it has all you need to enjoy the Zentangle Method" and also "because they enjoyed the 19th century feel of the word" :-) As I started to work my way through it I could imagine Victorian children having a book like this to refer to for their lettering.

We probably think we know the basics of the Zentangle Method, but the introduction has a lot of additional interesting information about it. There are Zentangle official step outs to many tangles that we know and love, but just to warn you there are no new tangles in the book. Nevertheless it is interesting going over the fundamentals of those I knew with official Step Outs by Maria. The Diva's Challenge each week, and other challenges on the Internet, have already made me think about drawing variations of tangle patterns, but somehow I had not thought of doing that with basic tangles such as crescent moon, hollibaugh, Florz etc. In the first two chapters you are taught some of these basic tangles but instantly you are led on to the possibilities of the endless variations. Another chapter is all about strings, something I was very grateful to read about and also a chapter about the Zentangle® way of shading. 

Of course there is much more, but that is as far as I have got and I have had a whole week to explore it, so that shows you how much information there is to digest. There are exercises to do if you wish, at the end of each chapter. It has been fun to go back to basics and I have really enjoyed completing some of the first exercises. If you have the new Zentangle Mosaic App there are hashtags for each exercise so that you can see the tiles others have done for these exercises. Here is a Mosaic of my exercise tiles - did you know a Mosaic is a set of tiles laid side by side and an Ensemble is a set of tiles laid side by side with a common string drawn across them? I didn't know this difference. 

I certainly haven't been disappointed with this book as I have with some others previously. I have learnt so much and I still haven't got to the chapter about the new reticula and fragments yet! Of course I couldn't resist a peek at that chapter and the ideas look amazing, but I stopped at just a peek because it was obvious that I was going to have to sit down and study it closely to undertand it properly. I will wait until I have worked my way through to that chapter.

As you can see from the previous photo, I have also been experimenting with my initials. I don't really like the one I use and I can't find an elegant way to sign Y T that doesn't take up space. I have ended going back to my usual one, so any suggestions will be gratefully received. I have even tried drawing a tiny tortoise instead but that didn't work either.

The Diva has challenged us to use the tangle pattern Fassett this week. I have just drawn a basic Z string tile. The latest tip from Zentangle HQ is that Graphite is the New Black and so I coloured the top left corner with graphite before tangling over it. I also drew Fassett in the other sections with graphite and ended with a Fassett dripping out of it. That bit hasn't worked so well, it may end up with a Bronx Cheer on it in the future :-) 

I prefer this globe:-

Stacked Tiles

I am so excited I can hardly sit down to write this post, my Zentangle Primer arrived this morning. I ordered it from TanglePatterns.com because at the time it could only be bought from a CZT, although you can now order it direct from Zentangle.com themselves. I would like to say that the customer service from Linda at TanglePatterns is exceptional, with almost instant response to my inquiries, and I am so pleased that I went through that route.

I have only had time to have a quick scan through the Primer, and saw straight away that there was a lot to absorb so I decided to do The Diva's Challenge first so that I could turn all my attention to the book. No doubt I will be mentioning The Primer in future posts, but just from the brief look at it I can tell already that I am not going to be disappointed with it.

I don't know about you, but I have bought several books about this method of drawing and have mostly been a little disappointed in them. There have been lovely pictures of completed tiles in them, maybe one or two tangle patterns I hadn't come across but mostly nothing new that I haven't already read about on the Internet. Two exceptions would be Chris Letourneau's Made in the Shade and Zen Mandala's by Suzanne McNeill which both had a lot of information in them that I was looking for.

I can tell already the new Zentangle® Primer is definitely not going to be a disappointment. Yes, some of the chapter titles obviously cover the basics, which it might be thought I would already know, but there is a lot to absorb in even these chapters. Then of course there is information about reticula and fragments which I have been consumed with curiosity about. I am delighted to at last find a book that is worth the price paid for it. 

Anyway on to The Diva's Challenge this week - nearly :-D 

There have been great celebrations around Ireland this weekend as it is 100 years since the 1916 Easter Rising, a pivotal event which would lead to the formation of the Irish Republic. Of course the main celebrations were in Dublin outside the General Post Office where a lot of the fighting happened. All the big wigs attended including the President, Micheal Higgins. 

They are making a special point of celebrating the women who fought and supported the cause, although to be fair the women were acknowledged at the time and the beginning of the Proclamation of Indepence included the words "All the men and women of Ireland". 

For The Diva's Challenge this week I have used the colours of the Irish Flag for the stacked cards. In the centre I used Xplode to represent all the flags waved at the celebrations.

Joey's Vl

Joey has given us a string with a narrow top and bottom section this week and is looking forward to seeing what we do with it. I didn't find any problems with what tangles to use in the space, and in fact all my tiles this week have stuck to the string, even the gold one.

In my first tile I used flux, Betweed, Tribee, Measles and D'Rua and I didn't highlight the string in any way.

My second tile was the gold tile. This didn't turn out as well as I hoped and perhaps I will return with another later on. I used Tring with Gra-vee wrapped around it and highlighted the string in gold. The Twing turned out a bit small and looked too similar to the Gra-Vee.

My last tile was drawn with a Graphite Background. Over on the new Zentangle® Mosaic App Maria has a post called Graphite is the New Black which is about using Graphite in the background and she has created a hashtag so that they can all be found together #GraphiteIsTheNewBlack. I used Bumper on the top and bottom, filled the V section with Pokeroot and then filled the background with Graphite Pokeroot.

Shattuck

I am still really enjoying the new official Zentangle®App which I spoke about in my post yesterday. For anyone who can't find it in their App Store there are links posted there. It is so great that it has been officially announced and is available to everyone, not just the CZT's. I have seen several of you over there and look forward to coming across more of you and seeing your work. My mosaic name, in case you are looking for me, is Yorkshiretortoise - just the same as here but no gap in the middle.

One of  my favourite features is the ability to create your own folders (mosaics) to catalogue and store photos of all your art. You can make all photos and folders public or private, your choice. As soon as I have finished posting this I shall be going into the app. to create a folder just for The Diva's Challenge.

The challenge this week is to draw a Monotangle of Shattuck. I have created a 4 tile ensemble, my intention was to have different variations on each tile (8 variations in total), but I discovered that was a bit ambitious and I ran out of ideas, so I made opposing tiles the same instead. There was just one variation I wasn't sure about. I filled the main lines of the curvy Shattuck with small orbs. After I had done it I wondered if in fact this would be counted as Tipple and therefore make it a duo-tangle? Anyway it is done now, so it is a Monotangle with a row of Orbs as embellishment. *nodding*

The string was a simple arc across the centre of the tiles and this has meant the tiles can be rearranged  to look totally different:-

There was one last variation that I wanted to do but I was afraid to spoil what I had already done. I took the two photo's I have just shown you and then did a final tweek. This is what it looks like now, the change is on the upper right hand side. Which do you prefer, the clean lines before or the shiny black after?

Roman Numeral lV

I am so excited, Zentangle.com has produced a Zentangle® Mobile App. which is now available to everyone, not just to CZT's. I read about it in their latest newsletter and naturally I downloaded it straight away. I tried to find a direct link for you on their site, but I couldn't however here is a link to the Zentangle Mosaic App review that was listed in the newsletter and it contains a link to the download sites. 

It is called Zentangle Mosaic and is just what I wanted. It is free to download but if you wish to use all the features then there is a subscription. You can subscribe monthly or yearly. I had a quick look around the free version and decided I wanted to try all the features so I subscribed for just a month, that was yesterday but already I have decided I want the annual subscription. The app will be a great boon to tanglers who don't have a blog of their own so that they can share their creations, but the biggest boon to me is the ability to save photos of all my tiles into different folders (called Mosaics on the app), you can decide which you want to be private and which you want to share with the other users.

I have created a mosaic on my app to keep all Joey's Roman Numeral tiles, it is private so it can't be seen by others on Mosaic yet, but at the end of the Numeral run I shall put them all together and post them here on my blog. Today it is V for the string and Joey made me laugh with her High Five joke turned into a string. It just seemed as though chord was made to outline the string. Pais I like because I do like tangles which go round and round, but I am not good with the composition of it. I never seem to be able to get it to drift and go behind each other like on the step-out examples.

Next came my gold version, I did away with the high five string and just used the five numeral in its standard form.

T U E

I have drawn a ZIA which is a trio of Zendalas for the Tackle It Tuesday Challenge this week. There are not many tangles beginning with U and even less that I like to draw so I ended up just using Up and Across. Ennies, Ecoism and Eez are the E tangles and the rest are Tri-bee, Tizzy, Tagh and a variation of Twing.