Diva Challenge #141 Duo-Tangle Fengle and Qandry

My Answer to this weeks Duo-tangle is simple. This has been a very uncreative week for me. And there is a very good reason too.
Anyone ever heard of simultaneous equations, or even quadrilateral equations? Yes that's the mountain I've been climbing this week. Really?!!! Why do kids need to learn this stuff? In my opinion they are all useless.  The extent of my mathematical abilities is knowing how to balance a check book, and whether that sale is worth it or not. That's why I'm an artist. I don't know many artists who are mathematicians, and kudos to those who are. My daughter who says learning to speak Japanese and French was much easier than learning what they are teaching her in math class is an artist as well. Numbers don't compute to her. Numbers don't compute to me either; especially when you start mixing letters in.

Well, I won't allow her to give up so we have been going through tutorials on you tube, and just battling it out with the numbers and the x's and the y's.

So after all of that here is my answer to the challenge for this weeks Diva's Challenge.

Challenge #140 - Pointillism

Our challenge was to work on a tile using "Surrats" method of Pointillism. I remember my first attempt at pointillism. That was about 20 years ago. Ah boy saying that makes me feel old. The 8 by 11 peice took a few days to complete. At the end of it, I remember being in pain. My fingers hurt, so did my wrist and my shoulder and neck muscles. And it was then that I decided that Pointillism was not something I would do again unless someone was willing to pay me for the work I did.  The payment would be used to visit a good massage therapist.

Twenty years forward, I've learned how to nurture my artist hand and arm by doing specific stretches and exercises so that those important muscles don't cease up by repetitive movement.

So here's my answer to Pointillism this week. I've kept it as simple as I could have, and taken a few breaks in between. Sorry I cannot remember the name of the tangle used.

BTW - Is anyone on google plus? I now have a follow button - **hint hint***

Challenge #139 - UMT "8's Porte Dos"

Did anyone here me screaming at Laura yesterday? Here's why. She chose the most difficult Zentangle there is for this weeks challenge. (For me it is) I have tried this tangle before and just could not wrap my head around it. So I put it into my "never to try again" file. Praises go to its creator Jane Eileen who has made it look so easy, and uses it so well.

But I made a promise to not back down from a good challenge so armed with pencil and eraser, I gave it another try. It took a while. A long while, but finally it all began to make sense. By the end of creating this tile, I realized 2 things.
1. The ribbon is pink to honor the fact that October is breast cancer awareness month and
2. This reminds me of another piece I did that was tied together with string that would be challenge #122 - Grid (unlocked)

At the end of it all "8's Porte Dos is not that bad. It just takes a little patience and the try and try again factor. After all that's what a challenge is there for right?

Zendala #76

In keeping with the boarder theme from last weeks Diva challenge, I decided to try it again on this Zendala. Honestly I expected something different but still happy with the way it turned out.
The template for this was amazing so thanks to Erin for posting it.

Have a great week all!

Diva Challenge #138 - Fun with Borders

Laura the Diva, threw out a great challenge for us this week. Taking inspiration from Maria Thomas, and her blog post "Bordering On...". Maria talks about finding inspiration from the things that surround you.

Ever since I started the art of Zentangle, I've been more observant of the patterns around me. Including this one that I see everyday. It adorns my bedroom furniture. I always thought of how I could make this into a tangle pattern but never tried.

Faced with the challenge this week, I was totally up for it.  The intention was to practice, and create the step outs.

So here we go. A few pencil trials and a few micron trials. A bit of shading here and there, and we're off.

 I wanted the border to be the star so I kept the "zinger" in the middle simple.
I think there is more that I can do with this, so I will play around with it a little more.

Have a great weekend all and thanks for visiting.

Zendala #75

Hi all, Happy new week. Mine is in full swing! How about you? Luckily I have found some time to actually print out this weeks challenge template, work on the challenge, get it scanned and posted. wooohooo! things are really getting back to normal around here.

My offering of the challenge is not that spectaculer. I drew a blank yet again when I put pen to paper. grrrrrrr!!!! don't you just hate it when that happens?

Here is a link to my "catch up" post for the ones I missed for the last four weeks.