Playing the Blues

The Diva's Challenge #12: Something Blue!
  This was a toughie. It's been a little while since I had used color in Zentangles. I felt a little intimidated and stumped... like there was a 'supposed to' in the mix. There were expectations (self-imposed) swirling around, so I let it be for a day. When I saw Maria Thomas' post, I was inspired to get out the box I could feel myself in.
   I don't have much to color with, except some really fun watercolor pencils. I figured I would start with a blue string, or even a blue blob. Here is what happened first:

I then used a wet brush to smear the color. I forgot that a little color goes a long way with these pencils and the blue ended up much darker than I was hoping for. Oh well, onward and forward! As it moved along, I felt like I wanted more highlights, so I dug up a white pen (Sakura Pentouch) and tried to add some blinkies. It was a little hard to get it to smear just right, since it's an opaque marker, but after some messing around, it finally perked up. For as light as I thought I was starting out, the whole process felt very heavy-handed. I think I was still working out the box issue, with all of its "shoulds" tucked neatly inside it.

Still looking for something airy and blue, I started another. This time the blue was barely on the paper, just a hint of a string. Using the tangle Artoo as a beginning, this springy tile was more of the feeling of blue to me. After the pen, I added a little more blue and pencil shading.

The last one was a tile that I had started a few weeks ago, but only had gotten a small amount tangled. I added blue after I finished the pen tangles. As I worked on all of these, a little blue "rule" ran through my head. It's always been one of my favorite rules, because in the statement contains the allowance for breaking the rule: Blue recedes except for when it doesn't. The fun was to see what the blue was going to do in the end ...will it or won't it?