Zen Art Challenge with Mindful Creativity – Days 15-22

Yay! We have reached week 3 in this months challenge. I know I am late posting this but life is crazy right now and I left this post in my drafts section. Normally I schedule the post and it works out great, however, this time I failed miserably at it. I had been trying my best to do only mono tangles, but as you can tell towards the end, I had to start combining them. Also, You might notice that I have eight days included instead of just seven. This is due to how I combined them. The fourth and final post will include all the tangles up into the end of the month. You won’t want to miss it!


Day 15 – ‘Unknown’

This border tangle looked way too snake-like for me, so I just went with it. I penciled in a log because I am just not sure if I am going to keep it or not. I felt like this tangle needed a background. Until I figure out what the background should be, I am just going to leave it penciled like this. What are your thoughts on a possible background? Let me know in the comments below, as I am always open for suggestions.

Day 16 – Breach

This is hands-down one of my favorites so far. Instead of doing each petal the same, I thought it would be wonderful to do a variation sampler of sorts. I love the way it turned out and how different each pattern came out. I embellished the ends with another tangle called beadlines. I think it finished it up nicely and complimented the main focus tangle.

Day 17 – Lacy, Day 18 – Jasmine, Day 19 – Deelish

I decided to mix all of these up into one mandala. How awesome did it turn out? You be the judge. I will say that I really enjoyed forcing myself out of my comfort zone with this one. Started the center out with Lacy. I decided to use stippling as the shading for the center of each square, I think that it gave it another dimension. The next layer is Jasmine. Now I will say that I did not like the examples of this tangle at all. it didn’t make sense to me as a grid pattern. It made more sense to me as a full circle or a border pattern, so I used it here. I did a little embellishing adding a single petal between each, but it worked out fantastically. Finishing it off with Deelish. This pattern is so versatile. I decided to bring the stippling out to the border to give the whole piece a finishing touch.

Day 20 – Strimonds, Day 21 – Zixts, Day 22 – Balloya

So as you can tell, I decided to do another combination piece. Combining tangles is always something that requires a little thought in how you want the finished product to look like.  In the very center, I decided to add the Strimonds as the centerpiece. This pattern is a great filler for most but it didn’t appeal to me, so I didn’t want much space to be covered with this tangle. I surrounded it with my rendition of Balloya. All of the examples have this pattern with three sides, however, I knew that I needed this to be the bulk of the piece. Finally, I decided to embellish the outer area with Zixts. Its such a fun tangle and worked well with Strimonds, as they looked very similar. All in all, I really can appreciate the color shading which brought a little, fun, into the piece as well.

I would love to know what your favorite tangle mentioned in this post was. Please let me know in the comments below.

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Lunchtime Challenge

So, today, I had a few minutes before returning from lunch, so I quickly sketched up this doodle. After looking at it for a while, I became very proud of it. Its not any bigger than a fourth of a page, but for some reason it intrigued me. So when I got home, I decided the only thing it needed was a finishing frame around it.

All I used was a sharpie pen and regular printer paper, nothing fancy, nothing expensive and yet I truly feel like this is a piece of art. Let me know what you think about this in the comments below!

Lunchtime Challenge

Just like with every one of my doodles, I never knew where this one was going when I started with it. And just like with every doodle before, I just kept drawing until I thought it looked fine.

The one thing I will say is there were several times during this drawing where I thought I was going to have to trash this. I have been attempting more abstract drawings because perfectionism is something I struggle with. One of the amazing aspects of my lunchtime doodles is that I have none of my more expensive art supplies that assist me to make perfect lines.

Have you ever started a project and wasn’t sure about where it was going, but ended up loving the finished product? Let me know in the comments below.

Gift – Teal & Blue

I have a dear friend who is in love with teal and blues. She is also an artist friend of mine and I knew that she would appreciate and one of a kind art piece for her home. I had so much fun drawing this and perfecting it. it was worth all the time and energy when I watched her reaction when she opened it.

I am so blessed to have people in my life that not only appreciate my artistic abilities but encourage them as well. This special lady is just one of those mentioned.  Here is a close up so you can see the detail and shimmer in the finished product.

Zentangle Sampler

So, I did it, I decided that I was going to take the patterns that I use the most and create a sampler page using just those. I started this by just drawing a bunch of circles. After I drew all the circles, I just decided how I was going to split it up based on the designs I wanted to incorporate.  The problem is that I don’t know these Zentangle names. So let me know in the comments below!

So far I have these added:

Paradox

Fescue