Weekly Challenge #91: "Beads of Courage"

This week's challenge was in honor of Laura's son Artoo's second birthday.  Artoo suffers from a rare neurological disorder called Moebius Syndrome.  Recently Artoo has begun participating in a wonderful program called Beads of Courage.  Created as a way to help children cope with chronic illnesses, Beads of Courage allows children to tell their story of courage and strength through strands of colorful beads.  Artoo's strand, already over fourteen feet long and not nearly complete, was the inspiration for this week's Zentangle creation.

I, personally, am rather pleased at how my drawing came out this week.  I used real lampwork beads as my inspiration.  It was also a good exercise in shading.  I love the use of shading in Zentangle, I just often get lazy and leave it out.  This is a good inspiration to start using more shading.

-Jennifer Gayle

Weekly Challenge #90- "String Theory XIII"

This week's challenge had us going back to basics.  One of the foundations of a Zentangle is the string. It is a guide line drawn within a tile that helps inspire the placement of the tangles in the design.  This week we were challenged to use this string as the foundation of our Zentangle:

You can find this string and others, as well as an explanation

on the importance of strings as TanglePatterns.com.

I found this week's challenge particularly challenging.  Like many others I have developed a habit of not using strings when I design my Zentangles.  Forcing myself to work within the confines of the string really made me stop and think about the tangles I wanted to use and how they interacted with the surrounding tangles.  I am not particularly thrilled with the outcome, but I believe the challenge has inspired me to start playing with strings and to push myself to go out of my comfort zone.

-Jennifer Gayle

Zentangle Ganesha

This week I have been focusing my energies on creating Zentagled Ganeshas for a friend in the zentangle community.  Dilip Patel, the first CZT in India, has made it his goal to collect 100 zentangled images of the Hindu god Ganesha.  He has invited those of us in the Diva's circle to participate.

My first Ganesha comes from this week's Diva challenge.  We were to use the new tangle 'IX'.  Honestly it is my least favorite primarily because of my unsteady hand.

For the other three, I searched the internet for images of Ganesha.

I hope that I have honored the Lord Ganesha well.

-Jennifer Gayle

Weekly Challenge #87- "String Theory v. XII: Pinwheels For Peace v. II"

Today, September 21, is the International Day of Peace.  In celebration our weekly challenge was to create a 'Pinwheel for Peace'.  Our pinwheels would contribute to Pinwheels for Peace–originally started as an art instillation by two Florida high school teachers with only 500, 000 pinwheels in 2005.  On September 21, 2011 the number of pinwheels contributed to Pinwheels for Peace, including contributions from the Diva Challenge, had grown to 3.5 million.

I was first introduced to Taoism and the symbol of the Yin Yang my freshman year of high school during our unit on world religions.  Since then the Yin Yang has been an ever present symbol in my life (it is actually a permanent symbol at this point).  I have best heard it described as a balance of opposites.  When trying to decide what to draw for the International Day of Peace I thought back to this balance of opposites.  What is peace if nothing else but finding harmony among those with differences.  So, for my pinwheel I went back to my old friend because, like in so many situations, I believe he conveys exactly what I wanted to say.

-Jennifer Gayle

Weekly Challenge #86- "Break Free!"

This week's challenge was to 'color outside of the lines'.  We were to break free of our boundaries, which could be as simple as breaking the lines of our Tangle borders, or be as elaborate as our mind could take us.

While my Tangle seems simple enough, I had only two patterns and I stayed within my tile, for me this was a great break towards freedom.  While I love the pattern Jalousé (the linear one) for its whimsy, I probably would have never used it for that very quality- it's just not my style.  And Binial (the string of 'bubbles'), I loved it as soon as I saw it, but knew I would never find a way to use it.   That is, until I was encouraged to break free.  So, this is my take at freedom...

-Jennifer Gayle

Weekly Challenge #85: UMT v. VII Copada

This week brings around another new month, which means another 'Use My Tangle' challenge.  This month's tangle comes from Margaret Brenmer, CZT.  Her wonderful tangle Copada was inspired by the onion topped domes of the East.

Copada in its base form is a linear tangle.  I sat for several hours staring at a blank sketch book trying to come up with an inspiration for this week's challenge.  At one point I was digging through my bag of sketch books when I caught my thumb on my circle template.  I decided to see what Copada would look like in a circle.  I was really pleased with the sun-like effect that it achieved.  I combined with Verve to complete the effect.

-Jennifer Gayle

Diva Challenge #84- String Theory v. XI: Blind-Sighted

This week's challenge was all about giving up control and leaving our design to fate.  Our Diva, Laura, challenged us to close our eyes, put pencil to paper, and draw our strings blind.  (For those of you not familiar with Zentangle, the string is a light pencil drawing that is the foundation of the Zentangle drawing.)  

I had every intention of photographing my string before I started drawing, but I was so excited when I figured out what I was going to do that I was halfway done before I realized I forgot.  If you look closely though you can see some of my pencil lines.  

I decided to make this a Monotangle.  I've been playing with some new Tangles lately and Diamonds and Squares is one of them.  My string seemed perfectly suited to some experimentation.

I hope everyone is having a safe and happy Labor Day weekend!

-Jennifer Gayle