Zentangle Mandala

As part of a unit on abstract design, I taught my class how to do zentangle. It starts with a square or circle, in the case of the mandala, divided into sections with freeform lines, and each area is filled in with a design. It is supposed to be done without really thinking about it...the zen for meditation...the tangle for the repeated designs. Here is one student's finished project.

Woven Fish Painting

This was a project I taught to my art class. Start with two identical pictures, identical size, and paint or color them in two different ways. I used two sheets of 10 x 12 watercolor paper so I could paint it with watercolor, but any paper works. My students used regular printer paper and either colored them with markers or crayon, or they printed them in two different color schemes.

To weave the two pictures together, cut 1 cm strips of one picture horizontally, keeping them connected at the ends. Slice the other picture into 1 cm strips vertically and number them as you cut them to save confusion was you weave.

Starting somewhere in the painting that is important to match up, weave one strip through the picture until it matches up. (I started with strip #6 to match up the mouth). Continue to weave on either side, matching as you go. It won't look perfect. You may have to trim the strips slightly as you go along to prevent it from becoming too distorted, unless you like the distorted look.

Hint: I kept the first picture connected at the ends to make it easy to work with. But it makes it necessary to trim the slices as I weave through. You can keep them connected until you've woven enough pieces through to stabilize the weaving, then cut through the ends to give you more room to weave.

Alcohol Ink Tiles

Wondering why I asked for alcohol inks for Christmas? I took nine of the tiles I made from alcohol inks and put them together to make my New Years card. They are a really fun project that Sandy Maudlin showed the class how to do. Very relaxing. Glenn gave me the supplies for Christmas. Thanks, Honey, for feeding my addictions.

Stella's Portrait

Portrait of Stella, Diana Petty's little girl. She's got red hair, but you can't really see it in the photo. So I made the white hat green, emphasizedd the reds in the eyebrows and eyelashes, and hoped it would come across as a red-head to be. Done on Fabriano, which really was much easier to use than I expected.