Zentangle Zendoodle Delights
I love this doodle-y art form, despite all the controversy surrounding it. I have made tons of pages and content relating to them, but lately have been too busy to actually enjoy creating Zentangles for their own sake. What do you need to make them? Paper, pen, pencil and an eraser. What could be simpler. If you’d like to try for yourself, click the image.
Painting Rocks
Did lots of these last year and had the sudden urge to do another. Found some great photos on Flickr. One cat’s owner had posted lots of their beautiful Neska, so I decided to take advantage. We have got four cats of our own, but they are hopeless at sitting still for the necessary stone pose.
Basics: Rock, paint brushes and spray varnish. Easy, right? Click the cat to see how it’s done.
Inspired by Zenspirations
A slightly different take on Zentangle is Joanne Fink’s gentle ‘Zenspirations‘. She uses simple patterns to create monograms, alphabets, borders and pretty doodles. This page was created by spraying acrylic ink over stencils, then adding washes of watercolor. Once dry, I added lettering, dots, doodles and ‘dangles’.
In Philosophical Mood
Another exercise from Joanne Sharpe’s lettering course. I love doing these. Plenty of mixed media happening too. The backgrounds for this, the last, and the next few pieces were ‘ready made’ by me. Stencil sprayed some acrylic inks, allowed to dry. Then attacked the paper with watercolour washes, some wet-in-wet, some dry. No rhyme or reason. I was careful not to make mud by mixing warm and cool colours. Eventually these will be made into a small journal.
On this page, I used a Sakura Pigma Micron to draw the flowers – just quick little doodles. Did the same for the lettering lines. Coloured in the flowers and stems with my Tombows. Did the lettering with Microns and a bullet-tipped marker – forget which one. Added a little Letraset marker here and there – inside the letters and hearts. Then highlighted and dotted with the trusty white Signo.
Words
A little brush doodling and extra colour added with Tombow dual brush pens. A little 10-minute jobbie, this one,
Word Strips
I like this technique of getting words onto a journal page. I used some ordinary cartridge paper and splashed a load of color on to it. Then, when it was dry, I tore it up into strip and wrote on them. Used a grey marker to add shadows to the letters. On my journal pages I created some backgrounds with stencils, stamps and paint and just stuck the word strips on. Added shadow with more charcoal.
Accidental Art
This was great. After I finished the last page, I turned to the next one in my art journal and was horrified to see the bleed-through from the Promarkers. Then I realised that it was, in fact, quite a cool background. So I just got busy with my markers again.
Shopping Spree
Oh boy, have I got a ton of catching-up to do. I’m just going to post one entry after another. This piece was made with a background of Letraset Promarkers. Underneath, in yellow, are the words ‘art journal’. Then I used a Sharpie to mark out lines and wrote with a Copic on top. Then I used a gold marker to embellish with dots.
Serendipity
Simple little page made by outlining with Sigma Microns and filling in with Tombow Dual Tip markers and water washes. Love these colors so much that I’ve ordered another set to complement them: Tombow Dual Tip, Jellybean. You know you want some too!
Loving Lettering
I’m so ahead of myself with daily creations, I might have to post two a day! That’s after getting quite behind though 🙂
Both these pages were created with markers. The first one was with Promarkers and Copics. The second with Promarkers and Aquamarkers for the background. Doodle some letters, doodle some leaves, fill the bits in between with colour.
