The Diva's Challenge #116-Blind String...

This was a much more zen-like experience than last week's challenge, which I WAY over-tried on! Anyway, here's my zentangle using a blind string...(Gee, I probably could've used this one for Earth Day!)

I had punched holes in these pages to put them in a cute little notebook, but didn't like the results. Too small and cramped. But not a bad size for zentangling, though not regulation.

To see more zentangle wonders go to The Diva's blog! They're just fun to look at! :D

Shalom and have a great day!

a belated Earth Day ZIA...

It's not finished, but I thought I'd better post my Earth Day ZIA (zentangle inspired art) in time for the slideshow at The Diva's Challenge! :) You'll probably have to click on the image to make it larger. (The more I look at it, the more I think simpler would  have been better...and more zen-like to draw! Now I'm using it as a coloring page. More fun than the actual drawing!)

I hope to add more to the border area and maybe add some color. The bit of Float Fest at the north pole is supposed to represent the northern lights. (If you have to explain, maybe it didn't work? lol!)

Hope everyone had fun with this week's challenge! I'm going to look at others' art today. I didn't want to look before I finished mine.

Have a happy day! Shalom!

Finally, a zentangle!

It's been a while since I've taken The Diva's Challenge, so I decided to take part this week. The challenge was to design a zentangle using a box within a box (or something like that!). Here's my interpretation...

You'll notice that I made a watercolor "smear" in the background. I was actually just doodling with watercolors and didn't know what to do with them, so I used this one as my background.

To see other's answers to this week's challenge go to the Diva's blog!

Shalom, and I hope it stops snowing SOON!  :D

WOYWW and the Diva's Challenge...

Lots going on at our place with my dear son, Jordan, visiting for a week. We just got back from an overnight trip to Minneapolis to send him on his way back to Texas. SO, I wanted to do some zentangling for this week's Diva's Challenge which is What is on My Workdesk this week!

I've been using my computer to look up the zentangle patterns for this week's challenge which is to do something "Outside the Box".

 

 

So, I dispensed with the zentangling box all together and made this woodland scene using various tangles. This resembles something I made a while back, but I really had fun doing this! I will add color later. Probably colored pencil since my pen isn't waterproof! For some reason, Alium reminds me of the dark patches on birch trees. It didn't turn out as well as I would have liked, but that's the chance you take when you draw directly on paper with pen! :D

To enjoy browsing what's on other people's desks this week go to the Stampin' Grounds!

For more outside the box zentangles jump on over to The Diva's page!

Time to retire for the night. Shalom and good-night to all you artistes out there!

The DIva's Challenge-Brayd!

My mind works in mysterious ways. I think a lot of our minds do that! As I worked on this ZIA for The Diva's challenge my Brayd reminded me of a rope...

...so I asked myself, "Self, what theme can I go for on this Zia that could incorporate a rope?" For some reason I came up with a nautical/marine theme. Rope...boat...fishing net...sand...sea, etc. I'm not sure the associations are obvious; especially the initial leap from rope to boat. But hey, it's MY imagination, right? :)

So here it is! I especially enjoyed playing with my colored pencils and layering some colors!

To see what everyone else did with the Brayd tangle go to The Diva's Challenge blog and check out the links! :D

WOYWW and The Diva's Challenge...

Time once again to explore the workdesks of the international community of artistes! Don't be shy! Snoop and be snooped! To find out more go to Julia's Stamping Ground!

My desk, alas, is quite uninspired this week. It's a month until my nursing classes begin so I've finally gotten down to the task of gathering documents which must be turned into the College Lab Assistant two weeks before classes begin on August 27. Of course, I procrastinated! I've finished everything except getting a copy of my immunizations from the doctor. I'm hoping to get this done on Thursday when I'm already in town.

Then for the Diva's Challenge we were to use the Mi2 (me, too) tangle. I hadn't tried this one before, so I took a fairly standard tack with this challenge. This tangle is a lot of fun!

I added this photo after-the-fact to show some new attempts at Mi2! ;)

As school looms nearer, I may need to spend some time reviewing my A&P text. It's been 8 months since I've been in school since I skipped spring semester. I feel so RUSTY! Hopefully, I can still fit in some art.

I hope you all have a great WOYWW and/or fun with the Diva's Challenge!

Shalom and let's all enjoy the rest of the summer!

WOYWW! (I forgot!!!)

Feel like peeping or creeping on other people's desks? Julia at The Stamping Ground makes it not only legal, but a desirable human trait! Come join me!

Actually, this is what my desk looked like on Wednesday...not much going on.

So this morning I kicked into gear; day off ya know. So this is what my slant-top desk looks like.

I worked on my first Creative Classroom assignment. I won this class through the Sketchbook Challenge. My finished project was this "Have a Sunny Day" card. We were supposed to work on blending with colored pencil. I'm not an ATC or stamper person, so I worked with what I had including a pencil illustration I found in an old children's magazine.

Then I worked on this zentangle inspired art for the Diva's Challenge. It was supposed to be made using the Olympic logo. Don't know why I went with all organic inspired tangles, but that's where it went! :D

And some close-ups just for artsyness's sake...

It's been a fun day of drawing and coloring! Shortly I'll have to get out and do some weeding in the garden.

Enjoy YOUR day!
Shalom.

A little zentangle fun...

The Diva's Challenge for this week looked REALLY HARD!  In reality, it was pretty easy once you knew how to do it. The tangle for the week is the auraknot. Here are several versions I drew. Some heavily influenced by the examples shown on the video, which I'm including at the end of this post.

The plain black and white versions...

And the more colorful versions...

This is so much fun! Here's the video...

To see more creative interpretations of auraknot, drop by The Diva's blog! :D

Shalom all!

The Diva's Weekly Challenge-Home

I loved this challenge! I stayed up way too late to finish this, but I love it! My least favorite part is the mooka. They're so pretty when others draw them, but mine seem to fall flat. Anyway, here is my ZIA.

I live in northern Minnesota which is a place of woods and lakes. I used a "part" of the Afterglo tangle for the trees. The Asian Fans in the sky represent the Northern Lights, aka Aurora Borealis, rolling through the sky. Hepmee represents snow, which makes up a major part of our year! The pokeberries remind me of all the red berries that grow in our woods to feed the birds and bears and the shiny threesome of pokeleaves represents the ever present poison ivy which blankets our woodsy land. Of course I couldn't leave out Riverstones and Agua along with Lilypads! This ZIA feels very much like home to me!

To see more of these "homey" zentangles and ZIA's go to the Diva's blog!

Shalom!

WOYWW!

ALREADY??? I don't even seem to have time to do any new projects and suddenly it's WOYWW time again! WOYWW (or What's on Your Workdesk Wednesday) is a great chance to hop around the globe perusing other people's artsy workspaces. If you find this thought intriguing, hop over to Julia's Stamping Ground blog and start clicking on links!

My space isn't looking all that inspiring at the moment. I've begun a ZIA for The Diva's Weekly Challenge, but it's difficult to tell what it is yet. We're supposed to make a picture representing our home using tangles.  Anyway, that's what you see on my desk.

On my slant-top desk you'll see the rainbow willow I drew a couple of days ago. I just finished making leaves on it this morning. I kind of like it!

I've still got lots of ideas for my scripture journal, which I want to get back to working on. But for tonight I'm going to work on my ZIA so I can get it linked up over at The Diva's Weekly Challenge.

Hope everyone has a great WOYWW!

Shalom!

A few sketches...

I find myself struggling slightly with this week's Diva's Challenge. Cadent and I just don't see eye-to-eye! Something about me and anything geometric. When I try to do it in a looser form I get even more lost! But here is my simple rendition. Actually, it's unfinished, but this is all there will be, hee, hee.

P.S.-Here's my second attempt. I decided to give it another try after seeing so many fantastic examples on other people's blogs!

Not the greatest, but I'm overcoming my cadentphobia! :D
The image of a little miniature nature vignette floated through my brain, so I jotted down two little framed sketches. I may play with this idea some more. It's fun to draw something small and quick.

I'm getting close to the end of this sketchbook so I may go back and fill in all the white space with some small drawings.

To see more zentangles for the Diva's Weekly Challenge click here!

I also wanted to show you the ATC that Jane from JB's Bits 'n' Bobz sent me for the 3rd Anniversary of the What's on Your Workdesk Wednesday blog hop!

It's so very British! Even the air mail envelope with the Queen Elizabeth stamp is a keepsake for a plain old American like myself! Thanks, Jane! :D

Have a great day and shalom!

The Diva's Weekly Challenge

The Diva's Weekly Challenge was to use eccentric circles when drawing our string. This is how mine turned out. (I couldn't resist making it a little juicy!)

If you would like to see lots of wonderful examples of zentangles for this week's challenge go to the blog list here! :D

Shalom all!

The Diva's Challenge #73-Bridgen

I did a little playing around with the tangle called Bridgen. It was kind of fun, but I think I went overboard using too many other tangles. It lacks the elegance of The Diva's, but it was fun trying lots of other tangles. :)  I changed my photo because a couple of you commented that the tangles would show up better with a straight-on shot rather than the picture I took at an angle. :D

I did a lot of shading within the tangles with the raspberry colored pencil, but it doesn't show up in the photo.

To see more zentangle inspired art, go to The Diva's Challenge blog!

Shalom!

29 Faces Challenge-Day 28 and The Diva's Challenge #72

Cheapy watercolors on Bristol with a smidge of pen...

Okay, so I like blue and green hair!

For more faces go to Ayala Art!

The Diva's Challenge for this week is a monotangle using the Crescent Moon tangle. A monotangle requires that we use only one tangle in different variations. Here's my attempt!

I'm thinking I do better with a free-form shape rather than a square when it comes to zentangle inspired art! Anyway... :) To see more zentangles go to The Diva's Weekly Challenge!

Shalom!

29 Faces-Day 24 and some others...

Got up way too early this morning. Blahhh.... :) I may have to take a nap before work, lol!

Anyway, as long as I was up I thought I might as well do a little Bible study. Then I figured as long as I was sitting at my art desk I would finish up a face for today and a ZIA (zentangle inspired art).

I've always loved illustrations of gnarled trees with faces, so I invented one of my own. This is my 24th face for the 29 Faces Challenge!

I'll post this on The Twenty Minute Challenge as well.

I also finished up my second zentangle for the current Diva's Challenge. (My first was kind of iffy!)
I'm still not doing a great job of  the pea-knuckle tangle. It's hard to get all of the S shapes uniform and to line them up correctly. I included my favorite inapods and I've always wanted to try the pokeroot and pokeleaf tangles, so here they are. I added a little color for interest.

Thanks for stopping by!
Shalom and have a great day!

29 Faces-Day 21 and The Diva's Challenge

Yup, two, two, two challenges in one! My apologies to The Diva. I sort of just stuck today's challenge onto something I was already making, but with my work schedule this week I thought I'd better get it in right away! Maybe I'll find time to do another zentangle later...maybe not.

SO, for my 21st face I decided to make a face using tangles! Here with her pais hair, inapod eyes, and btl joos mouth is the...Bride of Beetlejuice...

She also sports a purple featherfall boa and onamato necklace, not to mention her printemp cheeks. To the left is my first miserable attempt at the new pea-knuckle tangle. My second attempt at the right is a little bit of an improvement, but this is one of those I have difficulty lining up right. Well, it's a start!

To see more from these challenges go to The Diva's Challenge and Ayala Art blogs!

Have a great day everyone, and...
Shalom!

The Diva's Weekly Challenge...

Well, I don't own a sepia pen, so I shaded this little bookmark with a colored pencil.

Bookmarks are something we can always use more of...or we can give them as gifts!

For more zentangle fun visit The Diva's Weekly Challenge!

Shalom!

The Diva's Weekly Challenge #69-Groovy!

Hippy alert! To be honest I almost passed on this week's challenge. The groovy tangle looked too much like "scrumble", which is a tangle I have a lot of trouble with! However, on the way home from work the word "Groovy" just stole my heart! Yup, I'm an old hippy... Anyone who lived a few miles outside of Boulder, Colorado between the years of 1966 to 1980 has a warm spot in their heart for all things groovy. I thought, "This is too FAR OUT to pass up!" So, here is my rendition of this week's challenge...

Peace, baby... :D

Disclaimer: I intentionally didn't look at anyone else's tangle before doing this, so if there are thousands of peace signs out there...I DIDN'T COPY! lol! Oh, and for those of you with Wordpress blogs, I promise I am visiting your blogs, but it's just too hard to leave a comment! :(

I'm off to visit other groovy people for the Diva's Challenge!

Shalom! (Peace, of course.)

The Diva's Challenge #68

I'm having a terrible time with Blogger right now! Trying again! I found the limitation to two tangles, Hybrid and Strircle, in this week's challenge kind of frustrating, but eventually came up with some ideas! :) I wasn't crazy about the color combination, but...live and learn, right?

To see some fantastic tangles go to I Am the Diva and check them out! Happy doodling and shalom!

The Diva's Challenge...

The Diva's Challenge for this week involves making a zentangle inspired piece of art having something to do with the earth, in honor of Earth Day. This can be interpreted ever so loosely as anything to do with the earth, such as vegetation or rocks. I was already working on this Calvary zentangle and thought it would do nicely since it depicts vegetation, rocks and the earth's atmosphere. I enjoyed working all of the different tangles in to depict various aspects of the picture, though we all know that a tangle is not supposed to represent anything real. :)

I'm hoping to do a second piece for this challenge, but I thought I'd submit this now, in case I don't get around to finishing a second one. I'm not 100% satisfied with this. I think the clouds and sun may be too cartoony for the serious subject matter, but experimentation is what it's all about and we learn from every piece we do! :)

To see more zentangle art go to the Diva's Weekly Challenge page and click on the artists' links!

Have fun tangling with those tangles!

Shalom!