InkTober Week 4: The shortest post ever!

Flash post! Lar and I are celebrating our 25 years of marriage, and the festivities are about to begin! But I wanted to share my InkTober week 4. (I'm afraid I don't have the pictures of the individual tangles, but they will appear on next week's post.)

Have a lovely week!

InkTober 22: Week 3

My friend Rhonda had a birthday last week, and we celebrated it this week. I wanted to make something to honor her joyful spirit, with her favorite color, purple. I remembered a series of Phi tiles on the 7F5RStudio site that celebrated friends. I used the string.

Rhonda: joy, kindness, laughter, energy

I wanted to do more cards for Meals on Wheels, but my neck and shoulders were not in agreement! So I pulled out a design I had done last year using Gourdgeous, and spiffed it up a bit. I was really pleased with the colors. I used Prismacolors and mineral spirits to blend them. They are quite vibrant! What do you do when life gives you pumpkins (like a stiff neck)? Make pie!

InkTober came next. Here are the tangles:

And the overall piece:

Here's to wonderful fall days!

InkTober 2022: Week 2

I mistakenly felt like I hadn't done any art this week, at least nothing on paper. I spent hours in the garden cleaning up Hurricane Ian's debris (still) and hours inside working on decluttering my studio and art closet. Those hours would definitely contribute to improving the flow of energy, and consequently, creativity. When I began gathering photos for the blog, I realized I had done more than I remembered. That felt good!

Two important birthdays in one week: my niece, Gala, and my friend, Rhonda. I really enjoyed making their cards. Gala's card used the autumn leaves piece from last week.

Here's Rhonda's:

Moving on to InkTober, I enjoyed a morning--yes!--shading what I had drawn and posted last week.

Before

After

The week's tangles

While waiting for Lar to come home, I gave my "friend" Narfello a go. 

Aargh. I always struggle with this one! I finally got it, in pencil, and inked over it. One day...!

Yesterday I enjoyed a class with Lynn Meade, CZT, on Escher-inspired tessellations of birds. The proceeds from this class went to SOS Children's Village, for relief in Ukraine. I haven't quite finished the whole piece, which is 7 inches in diameter, but I wanted you to see the birds. (They kind of remind me of Narfello!) I'll post the final result next week.

Solidarity with Ukrainian children

This workshop was yet another example of the talent and generosity that grace our Zentangle world. Beate Winkler, CZT in Germany, is teaching Zentangle to 60 some Ukrainian refugees in her area. There is also a FaceBook group called Zen Bird Club that has already had 4 Zen Bird classes, and plans to have 4 more. (The next one will probably be held on December 4th. If you're interested, check out #zenbirdclub , #zenbird5 , #zenbirdescherstyle.

Wishing you fun explorations!

InkTober 2022: Week 1

 Are you familiar with InkTober? Originally created by Jake Parker "in 2009 as a way to improve his inking skills and develop positive drawing habits", it has become a worldwide event. Stephanie Jennifer, of 7F5RStudio, has made this challenge easier for tanglers by providing tangle prompts to use. You can find the tangles and stepouts for it here.

For this year's InkTober piece, I decided to use a distress ink background with some Autumn Leaves Magicals. Starting a few days late, I decided to go with the flow rather than limiting myself to one prompt a day. First, a page in my sketchbook to show you the isolated patterns for the first 7 days.

Here's how they look so far, without any shading, and with some others thrown in just for fun. (Rule follower that I am, I just felt like jumping around this time and that feels good.)

I'll be featuring an update every week here.

Wanting to focus on the gorgeous foliage colors and transitions I spoke of last week, I did this piece. And I did some more. Done. And I did some more. There. Finished! (I realized that sometimes I stop when I'm done, but before the piece is finished. Something to be aware of.)

I hope you can join me for InkTober, whether it's for a day, a week, or the whole month!

Transitions in the Dance

Autumn. New colors. New temperatures. New patterns in our daily routine. New light. So many people say it's their favorite season, including myself. But it represents a transition to shorter days, longer nights, and that can be challenging.

As my body tried to alert me to changing barometric pressure, changing light and changing temperatures this week, I thought, "It needs to learn about the weather app and leave me alone." But that's part of my life, with its thunky stiff joints. This too shall pass. In addition to the autumn changes, we had Hurricane Ian sweeping through. (We are safe and warm and dry and grateful for this good fortune that many cannot claim.) And this intense weather had me looking out the windows, watching the swirling treetops and intermittent moments of calm and marveling at nature's power. "Sometimes storms come through to clear the air." Usually after a hurricane, our skies are a perfect azure blue. For now they are still grayish white. But the sun is popping through, and we know that blue skies lay ahead.

Inspiration came from those hours in front of the windows, and from a birthday gift of more Lindy's Magicals. (Thank you, Lar.) The Autumn Leaves set showed up at the perfect time. After making some distress ink backgrounds in Walnut and Vintage photo, I made some swatches with the pigments and a background.

More to come...

And other stuff, before the pigments came.

Illern, by Annett Rumpler

Colors from "Prairies Meadows" set. They stole the show!

An ugly duckling tile. Yuck. 

But when I painted the Ukrainian inspired "Kivka" pattern on top,

 it suddenly transformed. So glad I didn't give up.

Inspired by Debbie New (7F5RStudio). I don't think it's a pattern

in the middle, intersecting BeadLinz with auras?

In this time of transitions, may our dance move freely, smoothly and with gratitude and appreciation.