Diva Challenge #184: ING

I'd come across the ING step-out just a day or so before the latest Diva challenge, so I already had it on the mind and was ready to give it a try.
Here's  my first attempt, on a traditional 3.5 inch square playing field

For some reason, it seemed like my ING needed windows. It started out with just a few, but then they grew, and grew. I like it, although once I was done drawing I realized that shading was going to be a real challenge - one in which I'm not sure that I came out on top! 

The pattern was so geometric that it seemed reasonable to stick with its lines and flow into florz and - what is it, static? Honestly, the name for the lightning-shaped lines never sticks in my head since it's simple enough not to require a step-out for reference. 

The ING steps are simple enough to memorize and the shape is flexible enough that it then rapidly made an appearance on three Bijou tiles

I like them all for different reasons. On the first how the ING practically disappears among the static lines and paradox, but the whole effect has some real depth and interest. The second (on which I accidentally forgot to leave a border!) is really the simplest treatment of ING I could imagine, and plays up the folded-paper look. The last one was drawn in the semi-dark while watching a movie, and shaded only with pen. I decided to use it as a planter for some zingers and random leaf shapes, which leads me to my last tile, a clear tangleation of ING in which I tried making the lines curved instead of straight. 

Then, using the resulting shape as a string, I filled it up with some paradoxical roses and a few leaves before throwing in some cadent in the background. 

For whatever reason I grabbed my purple Micron for this one, and I admit I don't really know how to shade when I haven't used a black pen. So I did the hatch-line thing a bit, which I don't much care for... 

I'd probably like this whole thing better in black with some real shading! 

So 5 tiles later, I think I'm "ING-d" out. It's such a distinctive shape that it sort of takes over the tile and not always in a way I find super-pleasing. Still, it was a fun little experiment for the first couple of days of this week.