Diva Challenge #62: Spiral Vs. Paradox

This week's challenge comes from CZT Marizaan van Beek from South Africa.  The challenge is to use spiral with paradox.  The basic string is to be the spiral and then tangle paradox within the spiral.

A couple of months ago I started the tile below using just spiral and paradox - still needs a bit more work.

Diva Challenge #38 - Better Than a Pair of Ducks - aka Paradox

The challenge this week - a monotangle using Paradox - probably my favorite tangle.  Once you get the hang of it and remember to turn your tile - the possibilities are endless.

What's that quote about life happens while you're making other plans?  That's exactly what happened while working on this challenge.  I had yesterday all planned out - lots of time spent at the studio working on tangles and this challenge, get home to post it (before the last minute!) and then kick back and enjoy a little football.  Oops - not gonna happen - little did I know that when the power went out about an hour before I was going to head home that it would turn into a long but OK evening with no power for me and about 4 million other folks in our region!  Power back on during the night - all is well but they are warning that the system is fragile from a total blackout and power up so it's nice that the temps dropped about 15 degrees from the last few days.

Back to the challenge - first up I decided to break out the pyro pen and woodburn one.  It is burned on a 4" basswood tile. I rather like the way it turned out.  Used a template to draw the initial octagon and then freehand from there.

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This one I used a pentagon as the string and then let the experiment begin.  It's not a typical Paradox in that it does not spiral into the center in the traditional way of drawing it.  Instead I used the Paradox stroke - first by drawing 5 lines all the way around each leg of the shape. Then reversed course and drew 5 lines going in the opposite direction.  Next just repeated the 5 lines and the reversing it until reaching the center and completed it the standard way.  Does that make sense - easier to do than write it out!  Have not decided how I want to shade it so posting as is - for now.

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This last one - an old one -  not really for this challenge - just because I like it and wanted to include it here for future paradox reference.

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Love Paradox - did a few others but will need to scan and post later.

Diva's Challenge 26

Spiral Out - Keep Going

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 The Diva's challenge this week - use a spiral as the string.  Right from the start I wanted to use paradox in some form.  Can there be a more "spiral" process than the constant tile turning with paradox -  but it just wasn't happening. When I was finally able to let go and just watch to see what would show up, the first tile appeared - not a hint of paradox to be found!  I didn't post it right away as it felt like it needed something in the background - wasn't sure what - just didn't feel complete.

Tonight while prepping for tomorrow's class I was creating several strings to share as examples.   I wasn't looking to tangle any of them. One of the two-pencil strings just happened to be the spiral above.  I'd found my string for paradox without even trying.  Or maybe it found me!