Friday, December 27, 2013

Upcycled lacy ATCs

About three years ago I started this piece using an old handkerchief with hand-done, tatted lace edging. I had tangled on the fabric part and put tissue paper over top of that to mute it somewhat. I liked parts, but it wasn't really going anywhere.

I've been wanting to try doing some Artist Trading Cards with more materials than paper, pen and pencil so I thought, "Aha, I'll cut it up and go to town!" The border is mottled tan and brown and gold which doesn't show up very well. The little holes in the lace are quite a shiny gold, which also doesn't show up very well. Too bad.
The original, partially done artwork.
I measured and sliced and had 12 ATC-size cards ready to play with.

There were two with no lace. I used one of them immediately because I wanted to send an ATC on the theme of 'wings'. Here's that one. The hummingbird is from a magazine. I coated it, rubbed the paper off the back, and stuck it on the card.

Here are the four corners. They all have small round brads stuck through the cards. In the lower left card the brads are not the large brown 'pearls', those are ink; there are two smaller dull gold brads.

Next, some of the side pieces. Two have small brads. The colored one happened because I glued on a colored strip at the top and then tore off most of the tissue paper, leaving very clear brown tangling which I didn't really like.

And here are the last three. The third one has just a wee strip of the lace on the right edge. It was one of the 'waste' slices from cutting up the original large piece.

Sunday, December 15, 2013

Renaissance tiles

In the beginning there were white tiles with black ink and shading. Several years later along came black tiles with white ink and highlighting. And recently on the Zentangle scene, Renaissance tiles: beige, with brown ink. A few weeks ago I was given three to try, which was much appreciated as I had yet to order any for myself.

This was something a bit new so I went to some tried and true, favorite tangles. I used brown, dark brown (Sakura's sepia), and white inks. For shading and highlighting I tried a brown Verithin colored pencil and a Zenstone.
Tangles: Crescent Moon, Paisley Boa, Paradox, Phuds, Zedbra
Opting once again for the tried and true, I did some little wonky houses using the same materials as above and adding various brown Prismacolor colored pencils.
Tangles: Crezn't, Dust Bunny, Flux, Knase, Knightsbridge,
Palrevo, Pearlz, Printemps, Tagh, Tidings, Tipple, Wud

I wanted to try doing a wash on the paper before tangling it. Not a good idea. The paper quickly begins to rub off and the water seems to leave the paper more porous so the ink bleeds somewhat. I didn't get the nice clean lines I like. I left an area blank so you could see some of the wash.

I finally tried Aquafleur (love it) and experimented with a square grid tangle I'm working on. I used some regular Prismacolor pencils for shading. They go on better but their waxiness makes them look a little grainy and it can't be softened with a tortillion (blending stick).
Tangles: Aquafleur, Aura, Black Pearlz, Knightsbridge, Pearlz,
an unintended variation of Boo-kee,

and a square grid tangle I'm working on.

There is a slight greenishness to this paper that I don't really like, but once the brown ink is on, the green diminishes a lot. Don't try putting a wash on this paper, and I'd advise against hard lead pencils such as Verithin.

Working on toned paper is a bit of a challenge and great fun. I think I'll dig out some gray paper and try that.

Thursday, December 12, 2013

How I did it: a tangled tree

I've been a little busy lately, but mostly I've been inexplicably fatigued and not able to do all that I expect from myself. It doesn't help that I have new ideas popping into my head at a somewhat alarming rate!

I am very pleased with this piece of artwork and fortunately remembered to take a few photos as it was progressing. It was done on an 8"x10" piece of archival mat board. Here is the acrylic wash I started with, and the very first of the ink tangles, Finery.

More tangles added. I wondered if there might be two more trees in the background on the left.

Even more tangles! The tree now needs some fine-tuning including tiny branches, there's shading to add, and the background needs doing. 

The above version sat around for quite some time while I waited for inspiration for the background. I thought that tangling it would take away from the wonderful tangles in the tree, but I couldn't think what else to do. Then it struck me: stay with the soft, washy look. So I used colored pencils, added some hills, and evened out the sky a lot.
"Tangled Tree" (c) 2013 Margaret Bremner
Now I need to frame it!

Tangles that run in lines, rather than tangles that fill areas, are particularly useful for branches. Some of my favorites are Prestwood, Paisley Boa, Puffle, Coaster, Unyun, Wud, Knase, Finery, Firecracker, and striped bands. Square grid tangles can often be adapted. And of course, anything is possible, one stroke at a time!

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Boo-kee

Weekly challenge #147 and Laura invites us to try her own tangle Boo-kee. It's quite a simple tangle, but deceptively so. Like most simple tangles it lends itself to myriad variations.
Tangles: Black Pearlz, Boo-kee, Caviar, Knightspeak, Pearlz

Then I went off on many tangents! What fun!

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Around a corner with Meer

There's been a recent discussion among some of the CZTs about using the tangle Meer in a border design and what to do at the corner. I like a challenge so I gave it some thought and came up with the idea of twisting it.

Then I realized that it could also be 'folded' at the corner. Use straight rather than curved lines and simply eliminate the triangular corner bit from your tangle. If you want the pointy corner effect you can always add a little something extra there.

A number of suggestions were proposed by other CZTs and I thought I'd give them a whirl too.

Bonnie Browning suggested "leaving the corner blank and put Paradox or something like that in the corner that is still lines, but different" (example: top left below).

Jean Theurkauf offered a few ideas:
  • "use a different tangle in the corners, like  a medallion" (example: top right below)
  • "have the borders overlap each other like pieces of wood might" (example: lower left below)
  • "try putting a diagonal line in the corner, and bring meer straight right up to that line" (mitering) (example: lower right below)

Jean Smerglio shared a couple of diagrams showing "a way to do tangles that do not go around corners well. I have to give credit to Carole Ohl (for) one; she used it in her calendar."
I've added two more:

And on a side note, if you're wondering what Carole Ohl's calendar is, check out this link.

UPDATE, FEBRUARY 2014 - ANOTHER METHOD!
I woke up this morning with another method for sending the tangle Meer around a corner lurking in my brain. This one keeps nice, square corners, if that's something you'd like. Later I realized that this is basically the mitering idea proposed by Jean Therkauf, but you don't have a diagonal ink line through the corner.

If you want to use Meer around an entire rectangle, you'll notice in the example above that the diagonally opposite corners will match, and be different from the other diagonally opposite corners. Here we go:


Sunday, December 1, 2013

53 more ATCs

I'm involved in another big ATC swap, this one amongst CZTs world-wide. Here is a photo of all 53 of my cards. Later I'll show some of the cards up close.