I've missed the last few Diva Challenges. When things get difficult I get a bit social media phobic, which is silly, but there you are. I've read the blog each time and looked at all the wonderful creations, and even done some drawing late in the evening when the kids are finally in bed and I can breathe for a few minutes. But posting anything has been too confronting. Funny that this challenge takes all the pressure off.
Drawing with the off-hand is surprisingly stress-less for me (see this post from way back in 2014 as to why that's so, if you are so inclined). There is no way it can be like the things I draw with my usual hand so my brain just switches off its self-criticism motor, which is normally in over-drive, and I just go with whatever happens. So what we have is shaky and shonky, and the lines don't all join up in places, but I kind of like it. About halfway through I questioned the wisdom of choosing Auraknot, but in for a penny in for a pound and I managed better than I had expected to.
I went back and revisited the diptych issue. Reading through some of the other blogs, I realised I had not quite got what a Zentangle diptych involves, so I had another go. Two cards this time, with a paper hinge behind. The two halves are more echoes than reflections, but it works. Next is to cut a tile in half and attach the two halves either side of a whole tile so they swing out like doors and thus become a triptych. If I can get up the courage to cut a tile. Whole other thing than simply folding one. Aaargh. I'll work up to that.
And finally, as promised some weeks ago, my "Jetties as a string" tile. This is the last of the "use tangles as strings" tiles that I began with Lianne Wood back in 2015. So this little tile spans about two-and-a-half years from start to finish. Slack, but I got there in the end.
Tripoli, Jetties, Meer, Flux, Bunzo, Coaster, Printemps, Pearlz, Purk, Finery, Tipple, Zander, Crezn't, Chartz, and two that I can't for the life of me remember the names of. I'll find them and put them in. Bear with me.
Yes, I missed last week's challenge. And I was almost a week late with pressing publish on some lovely comments (I moderate all comments. Prevents spam), for which I apologise. Thank you, everyone, for your lovely comments. I do value them. Things happened and I wasn't online. I haven't been online very much at all lately, and last week I didn't even manage to keep up with the Diva or the other blogs I follow. I looked at a couple of Challenge responses and then events overtook me, and that was that. There's a bit more of an explanation, along with a drawing technique, on my art blog, if you are so inclined.
Things are a bit less ga-ga this week, so here I am again.
This week the Diva posed us an interesting challenge. If you are going to be absolutely pedantic a diptych does not have to be reflected, just a hinged painting on two panels, but I did actually go with the instructions, so reflected it is. Which was a lot of fun. I don't think it would have been anywhere near so interesting to do if the reflection aspect wasn't there. But do you know, I found it really difficult to fold that tile. Part of me felt like a vandal. It was like the first time I made a note in a textbook (which I owned, by the way. I have ever since treated reading textbooks as having a conversation). I may as well have been sacking Rome. Once done, however, it seems churlish to stop. Tile done. Not the greatest, but not bad for a first go.
This is it lying flat. Flux, Squid, Dex.
I was going to gatefold it rather than wingfold it, but I had this idea of mounting it on red card. Which wasn't really successful.
The same on red card. No, the image is not squashed, it really does look this distorted.
Weird, isn't it?
So instead I stuck it, folded the other way, to my book stand on my desk, using my kneadable rubber (so many uses). I'll do this exercise again, gatefolded I think, and also on separate tiles with a paper hinge.
And suddenly normalcy is returned. This bends the same amount as the one on red,
just in the opposite direction. Go figure.
I was going to post the tile with the Jetties string, but today's photos were taken very late as my daughter had borrowed my phone for the day and my camera is on the blink, so I rushed to get the challenge photos done and forgot the Jetties tile, and now the light is fading. Maybe next time.
Instead, in keeping with the idea of a diptych, but extending it (because I really do not know when to leave well enough alone), here's a set of three tiles that I did a number of years ago. If I hadn't sold them (yay!), I would be joining them and mounting them differently. I think on wood with metal hinges, in a concertina set up. That could be really interesting.
Cipher (yes, it got given a name), Tripoli, Jetties, Rixty, Shattuck, Web, Squid,
Msst, Hollibaugh, Nipa, Paradox, Waves, Tipple, Ixorus,
and a great big stripey snake thing (what is that, exactly? Barberpole?)
And now my brain is full of Patrick Woodroffe and his beautiful diptychs and triptychs (no, seriously, follow that link. His work is stunning. A great loss), and I'm thinking of Zentangle wooden panels, amongst other things and wondering about the possibilities.
In the meantime this was much more fun than I thought it would be (after the folding trepidation), and as usual I have been absolutely blown away by everyone else's Challenge responses. This is such an inventive and gifted community. Thanks to Laura for spurring us on each week.
No archived challenges today because I kind of went nuts on this week's Diva Challenge.
At the beginning of 2015 I had a lesson with Lianne Woods, the lovely CZT in the Sydney area. If you are on the east coast of Australia, it is worth looking her up and booking a lesson. Anyway, she was getting us to blow up tangles and use them as strings. We got the basics down on several tiles, but I didn't finish them in the time we had, put them in my box and sort of forgot about them. Last week I found them and finished them, keeping as much as possible to the style of tangling I had used at the time. Each one had some patterning already done. The Bb string tile had been closest to completion, I like the addition of the sepia pen and am glad that wavy bar was drawn through the middle. Sometimes you don't know what to do with an area, but it comes to you later. Then this week's challenge came and I realised that some of the tiles fitted the challenge parameters - to use stripes as strings. (There was a Jetties, which could have qualified too, as the stripes in the balls were tangled in. I might share that one another time.)
Even without the challenge I would have shared a couple of these, as I really like the idea of using tangles as strings. Thank you, Lianne!
Hazen string, Squid, Paisel, Msst, Tripoli
Bb string, Zander, Crescent Moon, Finery, Opus, Coaster, Shattuck, Nipa
W2 string, Onamato, Hibred, Finery, Shattuck, Meer, Purk, Akoya,
can anyone tell me what that last one is? I don't seem to have it in my journal.
And then, because I felt I should do an actual tile specifically for Diva day, there's this. Three very broad stripes. I am interested in how my style of tangling has shifted in the last two years, although that could just be because I need my glasses script updated. I suspect that seeing double when the tile is closer than arms' length is not a good thing (she types wryly).
Meer, Pearlz, Flux, Crescent Moon, Mooka, Fescu (doing a Sand Swirl thing again),
Nipa (without the circles)
I missed last week's challenge as I was away. As in right away. I went to my brother's farm outside Murrumbateman (a little town about 40 minutes from Canberra), and was without internet. Or news. Which was lovely. The television is satellite only, and bounced from Alice Springs, right in the centre of Australia, so it was kind of weird that I knew when their next rodeo was on, or where to get framing done in Alice, but knew nothing of what was happening in the rest of the world. Which given the way that week was seems to have been something of a boon. Ignorance really is bliss.
One of the cows dropped a calf. She is unbelievably cute. We dined on one of the steers (Space Ghost - he won awards on hoof and hook and was incredibly delicious), and there were fresh farm eggs. Plus I went in to Canberra a few times to catch up with friends and have beautiful meals with them. And I got painting done. As in real honest-to-god painting, in oils on canvas. And tangled in the evenings while watching television with my brother and sister-in-law and nephew. A very good week.
The kids stayed home with their dad and everyone managed without Mum for the week, so I am thinking I can really do this again sometime.
I was looking forward to seeing this week's Challenge, but when it came up it left me rather bamboozled. Something inspired by the Earth? Or something on a recycled support? Really, I was unsure. But Laura the lovely Diva was kind enough to clarify. Inspired by the Earth. Gotcha. Still, it took a couple of days for me to work it all out in my head. Lots of reading and research, which was fun. I know a fair bit more now about the Gaia Hypothesis than I did. And weather patterns. And the shapes of the Earth's tectonic plates. But nothing was really singing. I didn't want to just do leafy, organic patterns because I tend to do those most of the time anyway. And then I remembered the Earth's electromagnetic field, which protects us from the worst of the solar winds and stops our atmosphere from being stripped away. So the weekly challenge turned out like this:
Imagine you are the Sun, looking straight at our Earth, but able to see into it, in cross section. There are the inner core, outer core and mantle. The crust, so fragile and thin, is just a line, the biosphere and atmosphere are rendered in Fescu, with the ionosphere as the white halo. And then the magnetic field loops out in bows. Behind the Earth the solar winds push the field out in a great stream so that it looks like Earth has a tail, or long hair, but the Sun can't see that. If I were doing this challenge again I would fill every space between the loops with Meer, but it's still okay as it is. Not perfect, but okay.
Our planet is really quite fragile. That field goes and we and everything else are just toast. We should be grateful for our Earth and take much better care of it. It could all be gone so easily. The politicians and their corporate masters won't bother, so it's up to us to speak up every day and call them to account.
In keeping with the plan to catch up on all those Challenges I missed (well, most of them, but anyway...), here's one I did while on the farm. Challenge 304, using Waybop. Quite a fun little tangle that. I've been using it a lot. Funny how some tangles you just take to, while others take a while to catch on. I've certainly caught on to this one. I did Waybops that were more standard, but I really like the way this particular one turned out.
Diva Challenge 304, Waybop, Betweed, Msst
I also had a go at some of the Renaissance tiles, both square and round. They make me a little wary, so it's good to practice something that pushes me out of my comfort zone. Good old Bunzo again. Maggots in carapaces. I have jokingly called this Bunzodala.
Diva Challenge number 194. And look, it's the day of the challenge and here I am posting. Eliza Murphy set the challenge - draw with your off-hand.
I'm going to admit up front - I love this challenge. I was actually excited to do it, instead of the usual fretting over how to approach it. Usual routine, looked at what was already there from people, read through their processes and the comments, had a bit of a think. But instead of the usual procrastination that follows I headed straight for my desk and got started. My poor son had to come and remind me it was time for school (he loves school - he'd go on the weekends if they let him).
This one seems to have thrown some people a bit of a curve ball. We are so used to having the fine motor control our main hand affords us. And we know we are expected to be neat. Ever since learning to write, ever since learning to colour in, it has all been about control - "keep your lines straight, write neatly, colour inside the lines". And there are good reasons for this, but it is not all there is.
My spouse was born left-handed. He is of an age where lefties were looked down on and he was made to write with his right hand. He did it, but his handwriting was awful. His handwriting is still awful. When he got his PhD the joke was that the title doctor finally explained his handwriting.
I'm right-handed, but I have long experimented on and off with drawing and writing with my left hand (enduring fascination with Leonardo da Vinci, who was not only ambidextrous, but could do mirror writing. Great brain exercise if you can cope with the bizarre results of trying). When I was in Year 8 of High School we did a sculpture component. We were each given a plaster block and told to sculpt it (after working out designs and plans and having them okayed by the teacher). I could barely make a mark on my block. I told the teacher, who said it's plaster, stop being pathetic, get on with it. For two days I worked away, barely making scratches and becoming more and more tired and frustrated. Third day, I couldn't move my arm or open my fingers without large amounts of pain. Turned out I had severe muscle strain (and was in a sling for a fortnight). At which point the teacher decided he'd show me how silly I was and he'd carve part of my block for me. He gave up after a few minutes, apologised and declared my plaster block as hard as concrete.
To cut a long story short (too late!) I spent the next few weeks writing and drawing with my left hand. It was revelatory. Our abilities do not reside in our hands. They reside in our minds. Fine motor control is another issue, but ability...
The drawings I produced were different, looser, but had their own beauty. My mum has the drawings I did then, or I'd scan a couple and put them here. Writing was do-able, but like my poor spouse, it wasn't tidy. Calligraphy got set aside for the entire time (Most nibs are cut for right-handers. You can get left-hand nibs, but they are still difficult to use. I've had left-handed students. Most give up because it is such a trial. I feel so sad for them. Thank goodness our Sakura pens don't rely on handedness.)
So here's what I did. I liked it up until I added the Bunzo. I have to learn to ignore the string when appropriate. It's there as a guide, not as a dictation. Put your finger over the Bunzo and it's suddenly a much nicer tile. As it is, it looks like something out of Doctor Who and the Green Death.
Squid, Flux, Bunzo, Tripoli, Nipa, Fescu
Here are some things I found useful, if you are feeling daunted by this challenge:
Firstly, relax. Because it is just a tile and because you'll do better if you relax.
Try not to get the pen in a death grip. You'll actually have better control if you hold the pen gently.
Experiment with line creation. If you are shaky pushing the pen, try pulling it, and vice versa. Eg. using left hand, if you are shaky pushing the pen from left to right, try pulling it from right to left. Obviously reverse if you are using your right hand.
Be confident. Hesitant lines are never as attractive as confident lines. Even if you don't feel confident, just go for it. Seize the moment, draw that line!
And in the end, have a laugh, (I certainly did after I got over the maggot crawling over the hill). So here's a laugh for you (it is actually one routine followed by two songs. I have put this up for the opening routine, about two minutes long, so don't feel daunted, but by all means go on to the songs. Flanders and Swann were marvellous).
