Wednesday 26 February 2014

Waking up when it's still yesterday!

The dreaded Monday morning meetings have moved to Wednesday, a slight improvement to the start of the week, but still too early for a true creature of the night as myself. This morning I arise extra early as I was determined to get there on time. When I glanced out if my front window I was fairly convinced it was still the previous night and today hasn't started yet. The crescent moon is so clear and (as I now know) and Venus so perfectly positioned. As early as it is I cannot resist trying to capture the moment. I was surprised to see a similar shot in the evening papers, so I wasn't the only one peering sleepily at the sky at that time.

 

Monday 24 February 2014

A other day, another sunrise

I'm still finding the most perfect spot for capturing a beautiful dawn is leaning out of my bay window of my front room and I don't have to strap on any sensible shoes or wet weather gear. Today's sunrise seemed unfeasible as if impossibly vibrant giant pastel crayons had been smeared across the sky.

 

Wednesday 19 February 2014

Discovering our inner Hitchcock

It's a quiet social tonight and I'm in a small group in a fairly desolate area around South Bank. We've all been given the challenge of Hitchcock and everyone seems to be looking for birds. I'm pretty convinced they'll be asleep so I'm more interested in rear windows. We find some but they're not impactful enough so we scratch our head a decide what we really need is a guess appearance of Hitchcock himself at the beginning of his movies. We find a spot where we can get a crisp shadow and to finish the look, a handy rear window. I encourage my team mate to ditch his flat cap and rucksack, and stuff his jacket with my hat and scarf. It has to be monochrome to complete the mood. I'm pretty pleased with our resultant shot and scored us a big fat ten! Whooo!

Sunday 16 February 2014

Still tangling away

These are some of my latest doodles under the auspices of tangling inspired by the Zentangle® method of pattern drawing. It's definitely becoming addictive and I think I'm getting better at it too.

My favourites from this batch is the one that look like jewel encrusted eggs, never a bad thing, and the loops of Meer, B'tweed and Vega making the loops of a ribbon.

All the Zentangles I've created so far have been in black ink but this week I had a delivery of a set of watercolour pencils so thought I'd broach injecting some colour. After choosing some of favourite organic tangles to emulate a landscape of sorts, I introduced layers of watercolour pencil. Hmm I still not entirely sure yet! This was my first brush (!) with watercolour pencils and I rather like how they work. You have the precision of the pencil point and then get to soften the solid colour with water. I will have another go with the watercolour, perhaps I'll try a wash next time

I have ordered my official Zentangle tiles all the way from the the home of Zentangles, Providence, Rhode Island, so I hope to start creating designs for others,

 

Friday 14 February 2014

A tangled heart

Well I couldn't resist the day being what it is. I've discovered I cannot call it a true Zentangle if I introduced colour of tangle a discernable shape. What is it is a ZIA, Zentangle Inspired Art, don't you know. I'm probably not supposed to call it a Zentangle if it's in my notebook rather than tile but I don't have my official tiles yet, so in the pages of my Moleskine notebook it'll have to remain.

 

a ZIA

Well I couldn't resist the day being what it is. I've discovered I cannot call it a true Zentangle if I introduced colour or tangle in a discernable shape. What is it is a ZIA, Zentangle Inspired Art, don't you know. I'm probably not supposed to call it a Zentangle if it's in my notebook rather than tile but I don't have my official tiles yet, so in the pages of my Moleskine notebook it'll have to remain.

 

Sunday 2 February 2014

Doodling away

I stumbled into a way to add more purpose to the artful little doodles I decorate my notebooks with. Especially if I'm on a long teleconference call, I often find that after we've bid our farewells, I have tiny, elaborate squiggles filling all the white space in the margins. But now I'm channelling this furtive scribbling into something more beautiful, I've discovered and been learning the meditative art form of tangling. A Zentangle® is a miniature abstract work of art created from a collection of patterns, not meant to represent anything in particular, just whatever emanates from your pen.

They're supposed to be drawn on 3.5" square pieces of paper, called tiles. Apparently it's an important 'rule', but said tiles are trickier to find in the UK so I'm being a maverick and creating mine in a little Moleskin notebook so they're a smidgen smaller. I'm following a course and each day I have new tangle designs to practice.

You start by grabbing your pencil and drawing a dot in each corner if the square (imagined in my case) then link these with a line to create the border. Then a pencil string is drawn to create areas of space and shapes in which to begin drawing the patterns.

I do find it very relaxing, as indeed it was developed to do. The inventors are Maria Thomas and Rick Roberts. Rick noticed when Maria was immersed in an intricate illustration project she would get into the zone and enter a trance-like state, in other words - meditating. They realised others might benefit from this technique, developed the whole Zentangle® method, and the rest is history.

The clever thing is that a seemingly complicated pattern is deconstructed into a series of precise strokes. And after you complete you add a little depth, light and shadow by shading with a soft pencil. I probably take longer creating mine than most, I become very particular about slowing down and focusing on getting an even line of tangles. I'm not surprised I've taken to it do quickly, as it appeals to my need for a creative outlet and my love of intricate patterns.

The first few days of the book I'm working through (One Zentangle a Day - A 6-week course in Creative Drawing for Relaxation, Inspiration, and Fun) you have very little in your arsenal, so the finished Zentangle can lack lustre but on day three two of my favourite tangles were introduced and it started to get so much more interesting. I'm still a novice and look forward to advancing my skills, here are some of my efforts from the last week. Maybe next week I'll get to add colour! I've spotted some watercolour pencils that I fancy experimenting with.