Drawing Strings

Like I always say, "If it's tedious and requires a black pen, I'm in".  What could be more tedious than drawing a tangle of strings? Well, lots of things, actually.

The strings were such a good time, I'm sure that I'll be doing more soon.

.

I also crocheted a couple hats last night.

I just wish that it would get cold enough to wear one.  Today it was 83 degrees.

Peace,

Cyndi

Pretty Paisley

As much as I try to do other forms of art, I always end up pulling out the pens and drawing.  I just love to draw with a nice black pen, then color.

I bought a new book on Friday -  Creative Doodling & Beyond: Inspiring exercises, prompts, and projects for turning simple doodles into beautiful works of art by Stephanie Corfee.  It's good because she goes through different doodling shapes and boarders and leaves space for you to practice next to her doodles.  Okay, can you tell which page is mine and which is Stephanie's?  Of course you can.....mine are on the right.

Here's my doodling from last night.

Zentangle Peacock

Here is the 4th and last zentangle drawing in my little series.  I can't say that I'm thrilled with it.  It needs something on the bottom so that it will be similar in size to the other three.  I've been staring at it for about an hour and can't think of what I want to do to the bottom.  I really wish that I had just made the peacock a little bigger.  Oh well..........

Close-ups

Zentangle Fish

Here's #3 in my four piece card series.  I love fat little goldfish.  The jellyfish were an afterthought.  They could have been better, but as my, Italian, father-in-law always said "whatta ya gonna do".

I think I have an idea for #4.  I was doing some organizing today in my studio/craft room and I found some pictures of peacocks.  I think it will be really fun to zentangle a peacock.

Close-ups

Zentangling Flowers Again

I just finished my most recent zentangle drawing.  I've decided to do a 4 piece series.  I would like to turn the 4 drawings into blank cards.  I need to look into the printing process.

So here's number 2:

Close-ups

Zentangle Flowers and Lena Dunham

I love "Girls" on HBO.  Lena Dunham, who plays the main character, Hannah, is fantastic.  She's not thin.  She's not beautiful.  She's smart, yet insecure.  Talented, yet a total mess.  The actress is so confident with her body, even though she is exactly the opposite of what Hollywood leads young girls to believe they should look like. 

The first time that I saw this actress was in the independant film, Tiny Furniture.  In that movie she played a character exactly like her character of Hannah in "Girls".  Several of her fellow actors in Girls were in Tiny Furniture.

Granted, it's HBO, so "Girls" is sexually explicit and has nudity.  However, the nudity is one of the strongest parts of the show.  Hannah has no problem running around with cellulite jiggling and tiny breasts exposed.  When you see her like that, you think "Wow, THAT is a confident girl!"

I think this is the best thing that TV could do for young women (heck, woman of all ages for that matter).  The characters in this show are smart and real.  The men look like real guys, not department store mannequins.  The woman look like real woman, not starving, size zero, porn stars with boob jobs.  Don't get me wrong.  I dont have anything against plastic surgery.  I just hate to see teenage girls saving their money for breast augmentation before they really even know who they are.  As we all know, beauty fades, and you have to still be able to love yourself when your hair is grey, your skin is sagging, and you don't recognize the stranger in the mirror.

Anyway, while I was watching "Girls" last night, I worked on this zentangle.

Close-ups

Animal Print Doodling

Last night I was doodling around with leopard and zebra print.  I had to add some zentangling at the bottom.

I Love to Color

When I was little, I loved to color.  I remember being so excited the first time that I got the big box of Crayola crayons with the built-in sharpener on the back of the box.

I was one of those kids that always stayed within the lines. It's kind of funny because even though I grew up to live my life outside the lines, if you give me a Sharpie, I'm still carefully avoiding any stray marks.

Visual Journal Pages

Here are my two latest visual journal pages.

On the first one, I did a little gel transfer action.  First, I painted my background with some acrylic paints.  I used some stencils that I picked up at Michaels.  I made the stencil for the "rays" myself, by drawing it on some cardstock and cutting it out with a craft knife.  The palm tree started out as a picture in a book.  I made a copy, enlarging it a little bit.

Then I, liberally, brushed matte gel medium on the front of the copy and on the journal page in the area where I was going to place the transfer.  I laid the palm tree copy, face down, on the journal page, using a credit card to flatten out the palm tree and remove any air bubbles.  You want to make sure that the picture is touching the paper everywhere.  If there is an air bubble, the ink won't transfer in that area.  I waited a few hours for everything to completely dry.  I suppose that I could have hit it with a hair dryer or heat tool, but I wasn't in a hurry.  After it was dry, I spritzed water on it from a spray bottle and started rubbing the paper off.  You have to keep spritzing and rubbing until it's completely removed.  Voila!!  I added some rubber stamping and washi tape and here it is.

On the next one, I did some Zentangling. If you are not familiar with Zentangle, here's a link.

I started out by writing the words to the Rolling Stones song  "She's like a Rainbow".  Then I started zentangling.  I painted some of the areas with paintbrush markers.  I used a Pigma Micron 05 Archival Ink pen to do the zentangles.

                                                                      





Thanks for reading!