Go for it! Zentangle!

Here is a layout I have created today for a challenge on ARTastic Challenge Blog  facebook page. The challenge was to use pen work. 

We were to be inspired by this work by Thea Proctor called "The Game".

Now anyone who knows me that sport of any kind is not really my thing, okay, maybe several years of playing social squash in the distant past with friends - does that count!  Remember the game of squash? I believe it has largely disappeared as a sport.

I was not sure if I would enter this challenge, the thoughts of pen work did not just come to me easily. And, then I remember 'zentangles'.  What are zentangles?  They are a fun way to create beautiful images by drawing structured patterns - tangles. You use combinations of dots, lines, simple curves, s-curves etc.  I have not done much in the way of zentangles so this was indeed fun to do. I  did a goggle search and was inspired by many of the search results to draw my zentangles.

This photo of me was taken last year during a visit to National Arboretum in Canberra, ACT with friends.  I am sitting on part of the installation "wide brown land". Here is a layout I previously completed so you can see the entire wording. They are words from "I love a sunburnt country" by Dorothea Mackellar and the installation was designed on her own writing of the poem.  By the way, this poem was required learning during my primary school days.

My zentangle curved lines were intended to represent the lines of the installation on which on I am sitting.  

I searched the internet for examples of what designs I could use within my lines - in the end I just went with my 'gut' that 'just went for it' with whatever I felt balanced out.  On finishing, the pen work, I felt a little bit of colour was needed so out came one of my alcohol markers and it really bought the piece to life.

Thank you for looking,

Margaret.

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