Leaning in to Art...Leaning in to life

Thinking too much about painting is perhaps a little like reading about your car’s engine. It may be interesting enough, but it isn’t getting you to the grocery store for bread and milk. To the easel!  Christopher Volpe.

Oh my gosh.. I've had such "hankering" or yearning to get back to my painting lately.  I am up north right now so I don't have a lot of supplies with me.  I can keep up with my sketching...the observation of botanicals around me etc.  But I think I need to carry on a bit more.  I can't wait to get back to my studio in Madison.  (another week to go). 

So I am, in the interim, enjoying a "challenge" art project in Zentangle®.  That keeps my pens and pencils busy at least.  Part of the challenge is that the paper (or "tiles" as we tanglers refer to them) are translucent.  (Materials purchased from zentangle.com).  

They are an interesting plastic combination of materials that are somewhat like the clear vellum you sometimes see in notecards.  The project above is a multi-media approach to a lovely tangle called Verdigogh

And actually if you click on that link and scroll all the way down you'll find the video information on how to do the exact project above.

    However...it won't look quite the same without the special transparent paper.  Heavy tracing paper might work too.  Very fun.  Other materials are ink pens and pastel or chalk pencils.  And a graphite pencil too.  

Above is also from the Zentangle challenge project.  The major tangle is Hollibaugh and then the little fish-like tangles are actually on the back side of the paper and just show through.  There is lovely lovely sparkling silver pink ink for that bit.  

All the tiles are 3.5 x 3.5".  The project is every other day for a week or so.  So I'll keep you up to date on how this progresses.

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