More "More-Mooka-Madness"

Today I've officially declared myself a true Mooka maniac! There is no paper safe anymore....

A few weeks ago I prepared some "Zen" papers: dropping Ecoline® from Royal Talens in different colors on wet correspondence cards. The result is always a surprise. For the first time I also added some silver drops (Decorfin Universal satin #800 from Royal Talens), and the cards became very glamerous!
Last week I thought I would use one for the "Get rid of the box" Challenge, but I had too much fun with the A3 sheets to change the plan. So I kept them safe, just in case....
This afternoon was just a case of just in case:

Mooka is made with no more than a white Sakura gelly roll MED, a white #001 and a blue #162 Luminance 6901 color pencil from Caran d'Ache®.
It makes me feel so glad!! Wish you could see it in reality....

Happy Easter and Happy Tangling everyone!

"Mooka", Challenge #111

"Jugendstil" or "Art Nouveau" - first known as "Le Style Mucha"! - has always been my favorite art period. Even before I learned about it, I loved pictures and decorations in this very distinctive style. No wonder it was the subject of my final paper for Drawing & Art History! Need I tell you, that Alphonse Mucha is one of the artists I most admire? My Top 5 consists of Antoni Gaudí, Vincent van Gogh, Mucha (well, I don't suppose it's a coincidence that they are contemporaries....), M.C. Escher and Friedensreich Regentag Dunkelbunt Hundertwasser (I love how this man renamed himself....).
In 2004 we were very lucky that an extensive exhibition of Mucha's work was held in "De Kunsthal" in Rotterdam. My daughter Em, who was then 11 years old, and I went to visit and we were both delighted to see so many beautiful artworks. Drawings, paintings, jewellery, sculptures, furniture, it was all there! Of course we bought a lovely book ("Alphonse Mucha" by Sarah Mucha) to enjoy at home!

 

This morning:

Today this book has inspired me for the Diva's Weekly Challenge #111, which is to create a Monotangle with Mooka. You see, this tangle pattern and I have a love-hate relationship! It's wonderful, elegant, curly and so on, but I often miss the flow or I don't know, what to do with it next. The only time I was pleased, was with
the tile I created for Weekly Challenge #101 (Phicops), where it looks like carved ivory.
The book shows drawings in black and white on grey paper and Eureka! that might be the solution for my obstacles!

Okay, so now I'll have to do it.... 

This afternoon:
After cutting a sheet of "Mi-Teintes" by Canson® into tile sized pieces I first wanted to become familiar with this paper. So I started drawing on a scrap (2 x 7 inches):

I was immediately under the spell.... This wasn't bad at all!! So I decided this would be my entry and I worked further to add the white accents. Here is the completed piece:

This Challenge turned out to be so much fun!!

Thanks to:
Alphonse Mucha for being a style icon!
Rick and Maria from Zentangle® for Mooka (and many more!);
CZT® Laura Harms aka the Diva for this "finally-not-so-terrible" Challenge;
The Diva's husband B-rad for giving Monotangle its name;
You!!.... for reading this "crooked English"!!!

Happy Tangling everyone!

"Boxing Day" because of Challenge #110

Watercolor, acrylic paint, oil paint, inks, paintbrushes of course, markers with thick and thin nibs, oil pastels, soft pastels, Microns in all sorts of colors and sizes, other fineliners, an assortment of gelpens, a countless number of color pencils, name it and you'll find it here at my place. But....I've always disliked pastels, markers and paint, because with those materials I can't achieve the details I want.

I am a fairly "classic" tangler: I mostly use the 3.5 x 3.5 inch tiles (occasionally a white A6 postcard) and a black 0.1 Sakura Pigma Micron plus a pencil. For my mandalas I stick to the color pensils and sometimes I use the fineliners for the outlines. That's all!

The Diva's Weekly Challenge #110 told us "to get rid of the box".... Well, this was exactly the little push I needed, Laura! There were at least five boxes I wanted to get rid of. So I had declared Wednesday to be my personal "Boxing Day". These items became my mission:

1. working FASTER
2. WITHOUT too many details
3. on a LARGE paper,
4. using THICK markers and
5. COLOR, although less important.

This is my first piece:

Tangles: Bales (var.), Warble and Palrevo

It's done on A3 sized paper with black Edding permanent markers 400 and 3000. I absolutely wanted to do Palrevo, because I expected a great effect.... And that just worked out, I love that pattern!!! 

Some time ago this was my daugther Ad's favorite scarf:

The bright colors in the black pattern inspired me. Therefore the second contribution is made with the Edding markers and (neon) highlighters, also from my huge stock of art supplies! The shading is done with Talens Ecoline® (#718 Warm grey), a liquid watercolor, and a cotton tip instead of a paintbrush:

Tangles: MacDee, Buttercup and Palrevo

A detail:

I enjoyed this Challenge very much and I have some ideas for more "Boxing Days"!

Thanks to:
Rick and Maria from Zentangle® for Warble (no online instructions) and Bales (and many more!);
Karry Heun for the most wonderful pattern ever: Palrevo;
CZT® Sandy Steen Bartholomew for Buttercup;
CZT® Laura Harms aka the Diva for the little push with this great Challenge;
You!!.... for reading this "crooked English"!!!

Happy Tangling everyone!

Weekly Challenge #109 is ready!

Ready.... but with a big sigh, pffffft! Weekly Challenge (the Diva's #109) really was a tough one. To be honest, this time there was not much "ZENsation" for me....
Please don't get me wrong, I absolutely find this "drawing around" technique magnificent! Normally this technique - which is still unnamed - wouldn't have cost me so much effort, if I could have applied it in a mandala. That is: with color pencils! Perhaps I'll try that sometime.
The only thing I knew for sure, was I wanted to use the Drupe "frame" as a base. Altough there are so many, many tangle patterns to choose from, I found difficulties by picking the proper ones for the borders, avoiding copying others.... So I decided to throw in some evergreens that never let you down, just to play safe.  After many attempts (which should not, I know....) this was on the tile:

Tangles: Drupe "frame", Knase, Eke and some hatching

It doesn't look so bad after all, but I have mixed feelings about it.

Never say never! Thought I didn't want to do this again, but now I feel these certain jitters....

Thanks to:
Rick and Maria from Zentangle® for introducing this new technique, Drupe, Knase and Eek (and many more!);
CZT® Laura Harms aka the Diva for another challenging Challenge;
You!!.... for reading this "crooked English"!!!

Happy Tangling everyone!

Tinkering (yes, part 2)

A lot of tinkering with my blog lately! With and without help from Em I learned how to add gadgets to the sidebars and how to edit them, or delete.... Since the first tinkering there are now a logo, a slideshow, more tabs and some quotes. Here and there I changed the layout, the text and the color a little bit. I've also adjusted the step-out for Orbs-la-Dee. The first steps are more clear now!

The "Who's that girl?" page is ready and I started uploading my mandalas to the "Miraculous mandalas" page. Another 40 or so to go....

Besides all this I created an account on Flickr to upload my zentangles and ZIA's. Only the first page of the photostream is in the slideshow in the left sidebar. Please follow the link if you like to see the rest of it. Flickr will open in this window.

I must admit, thinking and writing in English takes a lot more time than I had foreseen. Thank you very much, Interglot - translation dictionary! The google translator is also frequently consulted, but often acts like a joker when I enter a sentence or a phrase, LOL. And I'm most grateful Em protected me from some enormous bloopers!

Incredible: since the beginning of this blog on January 31 there were no less than 733 visitors (about 
11:00 PM tonight).... I really appreciate that you dropped by too!

Challenge #108: exploring Whyz

With some very touching photos on her blog our Diva commemorated her grandma, who passed away on Friday, February 22. It's obvious that she will leave an empty spot....

But as always, life must go on and yesterday Laura posted her Weekly Challenge #108. The first one of the month is "Use My Tangle" time. She chose Whyz, a tangle pattern created by CZT® Jane MacKugler. Last evening I gave it a quick look, and this morning I thought I still knew how to do it.... No way of course! Whyz is certainly one you have to play with, it's much trickier than you might think at first sight. And absolutely worth the try! Laura did a good thing to let us focus on this one.

Normally when we are challenged to do a pattern, I take its upper or lower case initial as my string (see Quandary). After exploring Whyz on my scribbling pad there was also one big one I did to examine it better. Well, that made the perfect string: two "whyz" instead of one:

And this is the result:

Thanks to:
CZT® Jane MacKugler for bringing us Whyz
CZT® Laura Harms aka the Diva for another nice Challenge
You!!.... for reading this "crooked English"!!!

Happy Tangling everyone!

"Spring Holiday"

This week the children had their "Spring Holiday" in this part of Holland! Great, we really needed that very much....

Ru went out with his friends several times and amused himself with his computer. On Tuesday and Thursday he had to work in the supermarket from 18:00 till 21:00, but that was as usual. Wednesday Em travelled to Nijmegen to meet her blog-friend. They did a photoshoot for their blogs. She also wanted to earn some extra money and today she went to the glasshouse, where she normally picks gerberas on Saturdays from 7:00 till about 13:00. It's a busy time there right now because of  "Mother's Day" in the UK (March 10)!
Because most of us have to wait till May: voilà, here is a bouquet for you all:

 
Tuesday morning I went for a long walk, together with a group of about 16 other women. We do this every fortnight. It's surprising how many different routes there are around your home! In the afternoon my friend Mar came in for a little chat and a cup of coffee. We had a cozy time together, as always.

This afternoon I went shopping with Em. Some weeks ago she passed her driving exam and she likes to drive my car. I'm not sure my car likes her to drive.... never mind, she has to maintain her skills. We were lucky to find some nice stuff in a thrift store. I bought a bunch of color pencils (including my favorite "fire-engine red" from Bruynzeel), 2 cardboard boxes with a "pied-de-poule"  (= houndstooth) pattern just like Bitten, a hinged photo frame and 2 small clocks with a photo frame:

 Yes, I have plans with those.... and it certainly has something to do with:

Happy Tangling!