I don’t know what’s come over me – it seems my bah humbugness has cracked a little and a bit of festive creativity has crept out. Technically these are not tangle patterns nor zentangles as they resemble real objects (one of the zentangle rule no-nos), but they’re close enough for me 🙂
The Holly and The Ivy
Snowflakes
I’ve just noticed that I missed out the result of my print module in my blog updates – so here it is:
These items were screen printed with black acrylic ink. I arranged my own drawings into a collage which was then transferred to the screen for printing. There were a number of other experimental prints with different colour combinations, but these were the ones I liked the best.
I’ve finished another module, and this time it’s graphics and illustration. We were set the brief to draw natural forms and then collage the observational drawings before selecting areas for simplification, stylisation and ultimately producing artwork based on the illustrations. My drawings were mainly based on hedgerow seed heads, as you’ll see. The theme was also 1950’s prints, such as those by Lucienne Day, hence some of the colour schemes and styles. Finally, we had to put our artwork onto various items to see how they worked in different sizes.
To get the images on the mugs, I used Letraset’s Safmat inkjet sticky back transparencies, and to get the image onto the candle, I printed onto tissue paper stuck to a paper carrier page and then melted it into the wax with a heat tool.
I’ve just finished work on my jewellery project! And I have a very big blister on my thumb to prove how much work I did on it too… The brief was to make a wire basket using natural form as our reference. The wire had to be designed around a repeating motif and for bonus marks we could attach pierced and hammered metal pieces. And here it is:
I think it has taken around 20 hours to make, with the binding of the inch and a bit square motifs taking about half of that. Each of the five metal sections took around 40 minutes to pierce using a jeweller’s saw, and the blister resulted from hand sanding them this morning. And it all started from my drawing of a hollyhock seed head in Week 1.
Here’s what we did at Craft Club last Saturday: I’d have posted them sooner, but they weren’t perfected until late the Friday before! Read on to find out where the pitfalls are…
Dear readers –
I have been spectacularly unsuccessful in trying to give away this fabulous handmade book of my tangle patterns in honour of my 10,000th blog view! The idea was that a subscriber would win it, but I have now emailed three of them using the addresses submitted during subscription, and none have replied. Not sure if that’s their spam software playing up or what.
So, just a reminder of what’s available:
The cover is hand-tangled with my own designs [it’s taken ages!] and will be personalised with the initial letter of the winner’s choosing before being sealed with a gloss varnish finish. It’s a hand-crafted book [which took ages too!], with hard cover and sewn and glued spine.
Inside are colour copies of all my tangle patterns from January to June 2011, and the eight tags contain hand-drawn tangles, with tips on shading, creating patterns and a unique and unpublished, exclusive tangle pattern.
This time, please reply to this post, stating why you would like to win this fabulous prize. I’ll pick the most ‘deserving’ and post the winner on 31st August, so you have plenty of time. Hopefully this way I can actually give it away!
There’s just a week to go before I finally start my extended diploma in art and design course at Leicester College, and I must admit looking forward to it. We were set a summer assignment to create an A5 size postcard, with the front being a collage describing ourselves, and the reverse carrying the college address and a description of what we’d been doing over the summer.
I started work on it last week, and yesterday I finished my submission:
And this is the second part of the demo/workshop day to be held at Kim’s Crafts (Hinckley Branch) – mini-suitcase memory boxes:
Ok, so I’m guessing it will be at some point while I’m asleep tonight, but I couldn’t wait a moment longer before sharing my celebratory prize with you! In recognition of a fantastic 25,000 views in less than six months, I have created my largest zentangle-inspired artwork (ZIA) to date. And it’s a giveaway!
Entitled ’71’, this A3-sized pen and pencil ZIA contains all seventy one tangle patterns I’ve published on this blog. This unique prize can be yours!
To have a chance of winning this one-of-a-kind prize, all you need to do is to create your own ZIA incorporating only patterns from my blog and share it with me by posting a link to your blog entry (preferred) or emailing a scan/photo of your creation via the link at the top of the sidebar (if you don’t have a blog). I don’t mind how many of my patterns you use, nor what size of ZIA you create. I hope to be able to create a gallery on my blog of all the entries to this challenge, celebrating your artistic exuberance. And to be fair to all-comers, I’ll select the winner by random draw of all entries. Entries close at 23:59 GMT on Saturday 10th September.
And thank you all for your interest, encouragement and for following my blog for the last five months 🙂
As promised, here are pics of my handmade travel journal. I decided that I would take an art journal with me on holiday and I’d keep to a plan of drawing/writing daily – after all, I’d have the time! Well, that didn’t quite work out between sun and sangria and nights of cards and local honey rum, but I have finished it:
I’ll be showing the group at the Craft Club on Saturday how to make the journal, and there will probably be a tutorial coming on here later.
