Zentangle challenges and art journalling

It's school holidays here and spring. This week I've been away to Melbourne for a few days and have done some spring cleaning since I got home. First room to be cleaned is my study - haven't seen the top of my desk for some months and it had to be fixed!

My recent lack of Zen-spiration has ended. I'm drawing often and being more creative in what I draw. You'll see some results in this blog.

Diva #334- Crazy 'Nzeppel

I drew my first tile for this challenge after going to see an exhibition showcasing 70 years of the House of Dior. You can see the dress shape I used as my string. More on the exhibition below.

My second tile used a similar string to that used by Molly in the video. BTW - the Sakura America website has so much fun stuff to explore - check it out. Here's my tile.

Art journal

While exploring Melbourne CBD over the last few days, I found an art shop. Couldn't resist buying more coloured pencils and a new art journal. The journal is 5 inches square - perfect for Zentangle. Here's the journal and some of my drawings. I'm hoping to do one a day. We'll see how that goes.

House of Dior

My friend and I went to Melbourne to see Shakespeare played in a recreation of the Globe Theatre. We saw Much Ado About Nothing - hilarious! Nothing beats seeing these things live.

While in Melbourne we went to the 70 Years of Dior exhibition. I loved the exhibition so much I went back the next day for another, closer look. How can dresses make you feel so happy? I don't wear clothes like this. I don't read fashion magazines. I'm a jeans and boots girl and don't even own a single dress. But this exhibition made me feel joy. I had chills, it was just so breathtaking. Here's just two of my photos.

A bit of rock'n'roll

Last night The Husband and I went and saw one of my favourite singers, Dan Sultan. Dan knows how to rock a stage. And because it was held in a night club and not a theatre, the audience were able to dance. Loved it. 

Have a great week and thanks for dropping by.

Miss L

Tangle challenges and other Zen art

Last week I wrote that I hadn't been doing much drawing and that I'd lost my drawing mojo. That is something that I know happens from time to time. I tackled that problem head on by downloading a few video lessons from Eni Oken's webstore. Results are below.

Last weekend I went skiing again. Fourth day this season. It snowed all day. Had lots of different types of snow ranging from hard, icy balls that hurt, to super fine powdered sugar to clumps of torn tissue paper. 

Below is me near the end of the day when the sun finally came out.  The photo underneath me is BoyBoy mid-snow ball fight with me. Magnificent, unreal superb day with my two favourite men in the world. 

Diva #333 - Cosy

For my first tile I used the same tangles as the guest hosts combined with the string Suzanne Fluhr used. I liked the process but not how Ennies turned out. Have to take more care with my take offs and landings.

For my second tile I did tangles that relax my hand. I added some colour as I already had some coloured pencils out for another tile.

Made by Joey

The mosaic challenge continues and I continue to learn new tangles. 

Other drawing

Lately I've been watching some videos by Eni Oken. The challenge for me here is to take what Eni teaches and apply that to my own style of drawing. Here are some tiles featuring Eni's version of Peaknuckle, and tiles using Jaysix and Shnek as well as working on my rounding and line weights. 

I'm exploring Eni's tangled words video. In that video Eni uses a tangle called Mooka 3D. I need much more practice with that tangle as my style of Mooka doesn't work with the 3D effect yet. 

Other art

Last week I attended a painting event with my buddies from work. The event involved creating an artwork in 2 hours by following the instructions of a teacher. It was lots of fun and hard to imagine how we could end up with a painting so quickly. We did it and have the photos to prove it.

Have a great week and congrats for getting to the end of this post.

Miss L

A return to tangle challenges

It's been a few weeks since I've posted on my blog or completed any Zentangle Challenges. I have been doing some drawing but nothing worth showing online. I also been commenting on other blogs although I do visit from time to time.

I guess I'm having another period where my Zentangle mojo falls. Experience tells me that I'll get it back.

Spring is here in SE Australia so the bloom trees are in full flower and spring bulbs are filling the air with scent. It was even warm enough for me to wear shorts for the first time in months. But the Snowy Mountains have been in blizzard conditions on and off for the past two weeks. It's the best ski season in over 15 years. Naturally we are going down again this weekend, our 4th (and last) ski day for the season. 

Diva #332 - square strings

I got my inspiration for this tile from a tile I've appreciated in the Zentangle Mosaic App. The original tile was posted by Arva in Germany in April this year.

Made by Joey

Joey's challenge is to continue to create a mosaic. I haven't been keeping up with this but challenged myself to get up-to-date today. Not sure that was wise as I can see where I was getting tired and sloppy. Here's my tile and my partial mosaic anyway.

Unlike Joey, I'm creating my tiles as individual tiles then seeing how they all fit later. It will be interesting to see the outcome of everyone's work.

Skiing

As regular visitors would know, I've gone a bit crazy for skiing this season. I'm thoroughly enjoying the time with my husband and son, and the new strength and fitness I have in my body.

Last trip was only 10 days ago. We skied from 8.30am to 3.30pm with only one 20 minute break. Any sitting down during the day was on chair lifts. We did 27 runs, travelling nearly 25km downhill. Most of the runs were intermediate and we got to take BoyBoy on parts of the mountain we used to ski on before he was born. At the end of the day BoyBoy (who does NO exercise whatsoever) had enough energy left for a snow ball fight with me. I gave as I good as I got, while The Husband tried to be invisible. 

That was to be our last trip but a major blizzard arrived the next day, lasted several days and laid over 1.2 m of new snow over the resorts. We are going back this weekend. 

Here's my beautiful BoyBoy at the bottom of Pretty Valley. Snow is so deep that the lifts are having to be dug out.

Have a great week and thanks for dropping by,

Miss L