ZENDALA DARE #93 & THE MISSING CURVY GRIDLOCK!

I'm a few days late out of the gate on this one, but I finally finished with The Bright Owl's Zendala Dare #93 - Snowflake Surprise.

Just from checking out the other posts on the linky machine, I'm going to assume that I'm not the only one who had some.. well... issues with this one.  For me, it was mostly that I AM SO OVER SNOW THAT IF I SEE ONE MORE SNOWFLAKE THIS WINTER I MIGHT DO SOMETHING DRASTIC!!!  Ugh... snowflakes.  BUT, I guess, therein lies the challenge???

I wasn't the only one who looked at the template & scratched my head & thought... how do I fit a 6 pointed snowflake into this 10 pointed mandala?  Well, I finally figured it out.  I went through & nixed a bunch of lines, & came up with this.  Only problem... well... not really enough room to tangle anything... so I added some lines, & called it a day.  & here it is.

tangles used: ...uhhhhhhhh nope

 This weekend I found my missing 2nd go at Diva Challenge #156 - Curvy Gridlock.  I was in an experimental mood, so I decided to use a bunch of different markers on the same piece so I could look at how different/similar they are (how they lay down, saturation, color consistency, other junk like that.)  Then I decided to throw some gouache on it too... just because I've been enjoying using them lately.

tangles used: exis, brax

Lets seeeeeeee... the light blue is obviously the gouache.  The darker grey-blue is a Tria marker, the dark turquoise-ish color is a Prismacolor, & the slightly lighter turquoise-ish color is a sharpie.

Even though I have an almost literal TON of "art/illustration markers," lately I've been enjoying playing with sharpies.  Most recently, I've become fascinated with bleed through.  Particularly in my journal.  I'll draw something on one side of the page & color it with sharpies, then flip it over & use the bleed through pattern for something else. 

OK - so that's it.  I'm having a real bad case of the Monday's today.  It's been a very very Mondayish Monday. 

Comments of any kind are awesome, so please feel free to drop a line & tell me what you think - positive, negative, or otherwise. 

DIVA CHALLENGE #155 - "A LITTLE WHITE SPACE"

This week's Diva Challenge #155 is to attempt to do one of those things that a lot of us seem to have some trouble with - leaving a large white space on our work.  Us pattern lovers just want to fill the paper up to the brim - & then some! 

I've got two for this week's challenge - one that I spit out in about an hour on copy paper at my desk at work using whatever pens & markers were hanging around, & a ZIA that I have been torturing myself with day & night for the past 4 days.

Here's the one that has haunted me for a few days:

tangles used: bloom, chainlea

 I must have made a dozen sketches of different fill & layout & colors before finally making a decision.  This is done on a 6.5" x 4.5" piece of mixed media paper.  The outlining was done in various sizes of Micron's, & the color is LUKAS opaque watercolor.  I'm not happy how the large single bloom in the center that I filled by using chainlea turned out.  It is SO FRUSTRATING when your pens decide they don't want to behave.  In case you ever wondered, Microns do NOT like being used over these opaque watercolors.  Otherwise, I'm pretty darned satisfied with this one.

Here's my quickie - & yes, I love green.

tangles used: sproxy, coil

This one is a tad messy for my taste, but from a distance/when shrunk I think it looks pretty neat.

I actually did last weeks Diva Challenge #154 - Valentangle, I just never got around to scanning them... then when I did, I thought they looked really messy on my computer screen.  But whatevvvvs, I'm going to post them anyway...  Here goes:

 These were all pretty much just intended to live in my sketch book, but the ones on white paper were on the same page as something I wanted to cut out, so out they came too.

In other news, it's beautiful outside right now.  A week ago we were hovering around the low 30's, & today it's 70-some-odd degrees outside.  I want spring to be NOW! 

As always, critiques, criticism & cryptic messages (?) are always welcome, & if you just want to say hi, that's cool too!