MCC Time to Tangle with Colours - More Wk 1

Links: MCC (My Creative Classromm), Marie Browning,
           Glenda Waterworth (Seussisms post)

I struggled rather with the final assignment for the first week. My first mistake opportunity for learning came as I tangled, since, all the patterns I chose except the border are based upon grids. Next time I shall pay attention to the need for balance between grid-based & organic flowing tangles.

Secondly, as I worked with the Derwent Coloursoft pencils, I realised that I was getting an awful lot of debris & the layers began to 'stick' or 'catch' upon one another - particularly visible in Jester (top right). I switched to using my Polychromos pencils which, being oil-based, don't crumble & give off debris, but I still struggled to blend. I tried smoothing out the blending with the Tombow Blender Pen & found that it made no difference with either brand of pencil. Sitting & thinking about this I've concluded that I was much too heavy handed in my laying down of colour  &, possibly, the Tombow Blender isn't compatible with either Derwent Coloursoft or Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils.

Analogous Pencil Colouring
tangles: Cubine, Flukes, Jester, Pearlz, Screen
Derwent Coloursoft (Flukes & Jester) & Faber-Castell Polychromos (Cubine, Pearlz & Screen) both
blended with Tombow Blender Pen on Canson XL Series Mix Media 98lb/160g paper

MCC Time to Tangle with Colours - Wk 1

Links: MCC (My Creative Classsroom), Marie Browning

I was thrilled to discover that MCC were proposing to run a second tangling course taught by Marie Browning & so I signed up as soon as I could.

The class is taught using Tombow Dual Brush Pens & Irojiten Colour Pencils. I have a good selection of colours in the Tombow Pens but, since the Irojiten pencils are at present not easy to get hold of in the UK, I shall be using my tin of 36 Derwent Coloursoft pencils which are wax-based like the Irojiten.

The assignments for each week are optional, however, I always learn more when I actually engage with my materials & know from experience that a particular product can vary greatly in its performance depending upon what type of paper it is used upon. I shall include what I choose to do for 'homework' here in blog posts but for reasons of copyright I will not be giving detailed technical explanations.

The first assignment involved using the colours we find combined in the natural world to start a reference tool in the form of a notebook or Pinterest Board. I decide to work with the latter option using my own photographs to create a board which you can find HERE.

For my second assignment I chose to use oval shapes with a cool colour scheme to create a piece of Zentangle Inspired Artwork (ZIA) in my Black Page Album Moleskine.

Cool Colours ZIA
tangles: Cadent, Cubine, Hollibaugh, Nzepple, Printemps, Quandary, Triangles, Tripoli
Tombow Markers outline watercolour blending & indirect Blender Pen colouring on
Canson XL Series Mix Media 98lb/160g paper

The Challenge of Borders

April's Challenge (Number 13) for the Chocolate Baroque Zentangle Group is a tangle based challenge focusing upon borders.

I drew my own string (above) & then watched the tile evolve totally dispelling my preconceived ideas about a sun with rays.

tangles: Barberpole (tangleation), Wire Wrap, Zig Zag Border