Diva's Challenge Week 15

Love Your Curves, Baby!

 

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This week the 15th challenge from the Diva is the opposite of last week's straight line challenge.  This one is all about the curves.  Straight lines tend to dominate my zentangles but I do enjoy a well placed curve.  Doing all curves, of course, was a bit of a challenge but a fun one.  Even though it appears to have a deep sea theme, it was not planned or intended.

This one truly emerged One Stroke at a Time!  I like it - hope you will too.

Diva's Challenge - Week 14

The challenge this week - create your zentangle using straight lines only -  definitely my kind of challenge.  I've always been drawn to the straight line tangles, they seem to dominate my work.  I do like the curves but I find I use them more as seasoning rather than the main dish.  Had to laugh at my first few attempts - little circles and a wave or curve to a line kept creeping in.  This challenge was so much fun I created several - posting 2 here to get started.  Thanks Diva!

I Walk the Line

 

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Diva's Challenge 13

Drawn with non-dominant hand - right!

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The challenge this week - create your zentangle with your non-dominant hand.  Yikes - this was not going to be easy.  Being left-handed in a right-handed world I've learned to do many things right-handed, but most of those are large muscle activities - like playing baseball - if you only have gloves for your left hand you learn to throw right handed!  Likewise with golf - it's hard to hit left-handed with right-handed clubs.  Then again they had left-handed foils and bowling balls drilled for lefties so I fenced and bowled left-handed.

However fine motor skills - they are all done left handed.   The few attempts I've ever made to write with my right hand - illegible - always.

To ease my way into this challenge - I started out just holding the pen and making marks on a piece of paper - needed to find out what my right hand wanted to do - how would it function - what would work and what wouldn't.   What I discovered - it felt better to grip the pen in a different way than I would left-handed.  Instead of holding the pen so that it rested between my thumb and index finger - it worked better to have the barrel of the pen resting between my index and middle finger.  Having both of those fingers on the top gripping the pen with my thumb supporting it from below seemed to provide a bit more control - it didn't feel like the pen was going fall out of my hand.  This grip felt more relaxed than when I tried to hold it the way I would grip it left-handed.

While my lines definitely had a shake to them I made another very odd discovery.  My normal stroke especially when drawing straight lines, is to draw the pen towards me.  Pulling it rather than pushing it.

Amazingly exactly the opposite was true with the pen in my right hand.  I started out pulling - result - messy uneven lines.  I had the most trouble with the start and end of strokes - blobs and shakes galore, but once I got moving, if I went very very slow the line was better.  Still uncomfortable.

Not sure what made me try it the other way - pushing away  - immediately I could tell the difference.  Out came a piece of scrap paper to test this out.  Sure enough if I pushed the pen away from me I had a better start, the line was straighter - I could hit my end mark most of the time.  Back to the tangle, it worked.  As I got closer to finishing it  I could see the shakes coming in again - by this time I think my hand was just getting fatigued from the workout I'd been giving it.

For this challenge it seems that it was necessary to do a lot of things in the opposite way not just hold the pen in the other hand.  Channeling  Arte Johnson here  - Interesting,  Verrrry Interesting!

Zentangle Basics Class

Doesn't this look like a fun group!!

Wonder why they're smiling?

They  just completed a Zentangle Basics class held at the Shepherdess  in San Diego

Thank you all it was a pleasure to share the art of Zentangle with you.  The tiles you created are all beautiful works of art.  Another thank you to Candy for taking the photos and sharing them with us.

 The beauty and wonder of Zentangle can be seen in the mosaics of the two tiles that were created in the class.  While all received the same instruction and used the same tangles you can see the unique art created by each student.  Enjoy!

Class Tile 1

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Class Tile 2

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Diva's Challenge Week 12

Blue Rebellion

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I had a lot of resistance to completing this challenge - ended up waiting to the last minute to attempt it. I really did not want to use color - the part of me that needed to rebel completed the tile above. Once I had the that bit of rebellion out of my system I completed the second tile using blue paper.

The center is a combination of Hibred and Rick's Paradox, the outside edges were just created as I went along. Reminds me a bit of wire work. Will have to play with that one a bit more. The shading really changed it, unfortunately the photo does not do it justice.

Blue Paper

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Diva's Challenge 11

Beeline

 
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The Diva's challenge this week was Monotangle - get creative using just one tangle.  I chose Beeline I really enjoy using this tangle - so many possibilities.