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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Zen Art Challenge with Mindful Creativity – Days 8-14

Here we are, week two of the Zen Art Challenge and I am very pleased with the way the first week went. This week seemed to push me a little future out of my comfort zone and forcing me to create pieces that I otherwise wouldn’t have attempted. This is great for me because I need that push sometimes.

Now I don’t participate in a lot of challenges, frankly because I’m crazy busy, but I love the relaxed challenges like this one that has allowed me to express myself daily and educate myself on new patterns.  Learning something new every day is a goal that I’ve had for quite some time. Whether it is a weird factoid, a crazy pattern, or some hidden gem about a family member; learning something every day has helped me stay focused on always bettering myself as a person. You should try it! One day I will have the time to keep track of all these nuggets I learn, but for now, I make mental notes on these.

Okay! Without further hesitation, I present to you week two of the Zen Art Challenge for the month of July!


Day Eight – Snow White Flower

The wonderful thing about this pattern is its simplicity. I have never been drawn to a flower such as this, but it would make a beautiful art piece just in of itself. I toyed around with different ways to integrate this pattern, and truly the best way is to group it. Although you can face this either direction I thought they were beautiful all facing one way. I also added some fescue at the bottom just to fill in some lines and then a swirl frame just to add an interesting element.

 

Day Nine – Turned Over

This pattern was… how do you say? Complicated? Let me explain. The pattern itself is great as a string, It flows wonderfully. I thought of using it as a string separating some other designs, but in the end, I felt like they looked better as a single unit.  They looked like flies, and what eats flies? Well, I’m sure a lot of things, but I decided on the Frog. Now, something you should understand is, I do not draw people or animals. I can not ever get the proportions correct and it ends up frustrating me to no end. But, I thought I would try a little Frog. The environment I put the pattern in looked better than the frog itself, but it was the best I could do today. Maybe later in life, I will focus more on animals, but for now, I’d like to just enjoy abstract patterns and mandala.

Day 10 – Urban Spinner

What can I say about this pattern? At first, I was very skeptical that I could even do the pattern, but I at least knew I didn’t want to draw a whole page of this tangle. I have been trying my best not to join the tangles together through this challenge and instead challenge myself to complete only mono tangles per day. This is where I was torn with what exactly to do with this one. Wait, torn? YES! That’s it! And that is how this one was born!

Day 11 – Triaxal

This tangle was very very boring to me. I decided to spruce it up with a lot more tangles and designs without using any of the tangles from the other days of the challenge. Overall, It seems like the ones that I am the most unsure about are the ones that I get the most responses on. Most of my followers loved the colors that I chose on this. Since I am still learning colors, I just tried to make it look pretty.

Day 12 – Tulips

Okay, I went way overboard on this tangle but just look at the results. I couldn’t believe that so much has been added to the original tangle. I felt like this looked like lace or a Christmas tree. Either way, because the tangle name was Tulips, I knew that I needed to make sure it looked like a garden! I love the way this one turned out and it looks way more difficult than it was to draw. If you want to add some things to a tangle to make it look more intense, just remember that whatever you change, change it the same way each time.

Day 13 – Liefie

When I first saw this tangle, I was a little hesitant. I wasn’t sure how I could turn this tangle into something that I could actually be proud of. In my opinion, this tangle was complete. There was no way to build on it until I figured out a way to introduce it in the shape of a mandala. When I was done with this, I was proud of this dainty work of art.

Day 14 – Feather

There is no way I could NOT like this tangle. I use it so often in one form or another. I couldn’t help but turn this into a beautiful crown fit for a beautiful island princess. Of course, it didn’t start out that way. I wouldn’t lie to you like that. All I know is that I love grouping tangles like this together. By the time it was over, it looked like this. Sometimes I don’t plan out the piece and it turns out sorta Meh, however, this one made me brush the eraser shavings off my shoulder in an “I meant to do that the whole time” sorta way.

So, here we are at the end of week 2 and I am just loving this challenge a little more every day. What was your favorite tangle mentioned in this post? Let me know in the comments below!

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Zen Art Challenge with Mindful Creativity – Days 1 – 7

I was in the middle of my day to day operations with my creative business when I received a message from my friend Shri informing me of this zen art challenge. I was a little hesitant because this is my birth month and typically is one of my busiest.  But, with the relaxed rules, it seemed like the challenge for me.  This challenge is a different zentangle pattern per day, drawn anyway you would like, and on any day you would like. Her challenge is to learn a new pattern and use it in a new way each day. Essentially, practicing every day will make you better at it.

Although this has always been my mindset, sometimes I sit down and wonder what will come out of the pen or pencil in my hand. This gives me a vacation from thinking something up, instead it pushes me out of my comfort zone and forces me to think outside the box to create something new. I have enjoyed the challenge so far. I am hoping to post weekly to show you the ones I have completed so far. So let’s get started!


Day One – LaFlor

This pattern is one that I learned previously but haven’t really experimented with it since I learned it. I decided that the best thing for me to do here is to fill my sketchbook as well as experiment with some color. Let me tell you that I really feel like I should have penciled this out first because the bottom one looks a little off to me. But here it is:

Day Two – C-Yeah

This pattern is completely new to me. I thought that I would continue with the color theme and try to do something different. However, I feel like now that I have experimented with it a little, I could see it as a part of my floral designs I love to do.

Day Three – Spinrose

Okay, This one I actually really love. When I first looked up the pattern I was not amused by its simplicity. But I knew that I could make something amazing out of it. So I drew it out like the instructions say, and I drew it again, and I even drew it a third time.  Then all at once in clicked! I knew I was making a mandala from this. I am so happy with how it turned out and I hope that you are too!


Day Four – Pystyl
This pattern is new to me. Its not a crazy cool pattern, but I had to make use of it anyways. Other than making it a flower, I really didn’t see the pattern going beyond a stand alone piece. Which is okay by me because I like to add little elements in my drawings that I have seen and use them in a way that is a little non-traditional. With that said, I am pretty sure that I will be using this one in the future.


Day Five – Boundary
This pattern was  very fun. The possibilities were endless. I love everything that I have seen with these, but of course, I am always drawn to the mandala and therefore, I worked on integrating this in my current piece. it worked out perfectly, in my opinion. Once I was done with the mandala, I wanted to add some design elements at the bottom that would elongate the mandala. Almost to the point of it moving towards a dream catcher.

Day Six – Kurllz

This pattern was so weird and it has gotten several reactions from those that have seen it. Either it looks like beads on ribbon, which was the objective, or it looks like tape worms. There is no in between. Regardless of what anyone else says, I love this pattern and will definitely be using it in the future. It just works wonderfully as a divider for multiple patterns on one page.


Day Seven – OOF
I need to confess something about this pattern. I hate it, well, hated it. I felt like it was beautiful in the right setting but by itself, it just wasn’t very appealing to me. So, in the way that I do, I had to figure out the best way to display all the elements of this pattern without taking away from the pattern’s simplicity. I only did it by creating an overlay of  rings to make it visually interesting enough for me to be able to share it with others.

Okay so there is the first week of zentangle patterns. Check back again next week as I share patterns 8-14. Let me know in the comments, which of these patterns are your favorite and which are you least favorite. I look forward to hearing from you all! And remember, if you want to join in this challenge, it is never too late.