Moons

Moons are all over the place in this Zentangle I did last night. There are full moons, crescent moons, and what seem to be little baby moons bouncing off other moons that are inside other moons. A true tangle of moons :)

Lava Juice

This tangle was created as a nod to our friends in Hawaii and to celebrate one of the finest trends of the last century: the lava lamp! Ever since I attended the Zentangle certification seminar, my eyes and brain seem to be more tuned into patterns.
I have finished my exercise of using EVERY one of the 102 original tangles. Now I'm feeling like I want to corral all the miscellaneous tangles into one place. Great. One more thing to collect. Let's see, there's been fabric, beads, paintbrushes, papers, threads, pens, pencils, fonts, now tangles. (I'm sure I've missed something on the list.)

In visiting the Zentangle® blog this morning, I found this beautiful quote by Maria Thomas, who, with Rick Roberts, is the 'parent' of this enchanting art form. Why are people drawn to Zentangle? I think this says a lot....


"The comfort of patterns has been with us since we were children. Saturday morning rituals of waking early, snuggling with my brothers and sisters in our PJ's to watch our favorite cartoons before our parents awoke. Then after breakfast, out to play with our best friends -- two full days to look forward to. Ceremony and patterns, in our life and in our thoughts, are comforting, even though they change gradually to form new ones as we get older or as our surroundings change. So it is with Zentangle, the comfort of familiar patterns, flowing repeatedly from our pens, welcoming the reality of new ones, sneaking in whether by choice or other wonderful phenomena . . . "   Maria Thomas

My friend, Lee Tougas, took a Zentangle® class, and used the "filling spaces" approach to create these beautiful needlework pieces. The one on the left has a different type of stitch in the boxes behind the birds. He is also working on one that is more traditionally Zentangle (black and white), which I will post once it's completed.

Finished mixed media

A little glue, a little paint and now 'he' is done. This is the entire painting that happened in last Friday's Mixed Media Workshop at Gallery 510. So much fun... can't wait for the next one!

"The painting is not the art. The painting is the evidence that art took place."

Mandalas

I'm not quite sure why mandalas are so intriguing. I know from just poking around for info, that they represent unity and harmony. What I know from my own experience is that they are soothing to play with and look at. The mandala on the left is magazine pieces collaged onto a hard canvas surface. It's not quite finished as the process of gluing sort of got on my nerves, which seemed counterproductive to a meditative experience! But I like to look at it now and then and especially when the photo happened, I saw it more flat somehow, and enjoyed looking at it that way. 
      The Zentangle mandala on the right was a very different experience. There is something very hypnotic about the process of using a little black pen to fill the spaces in a mandala.  Once you make a mark, you make it 8 or 16 times around (depending on how many sections you created). In turning the piece to make each mark, it does something to the brain. (Maybe like rides at an amusement park?) It's sometimes like going backwards and forward at the same time. Delightfully dizzying, yet calming at the same time. And even though the mandala looks very orderly and planned, there is no plan, and one stroke leads to another, for some very surprising shapes and dimensions!