Thursday, September 18, 2014

Diva Challenge 185: Phicops and DivaDance

This week's Diva Challenge is to use Phicops and DivaDance alone as a "Duotangle." 
I had to try Phicops the first time I saw it, a couple of months back: I think the 3D aspect is what initially attracted me, and I like the organic feel to it as well. I've also used DivaDance as a filler and decor element pretty much since I started in on this whole Zentangle thing in late spring. So this should have been a piece of cake. The funny thing is that I've had trouble doing Phicops from memory nearly every time. My lines always end up curving the wrong way, connecting the wrong points, and it looks awful. So I had to take quite a bit more care with this set of tiles! I also have never felt like I could get DivaDance to "flow" for lack of a better term: I always felt like those
bumps on the line broke my concentration and ended up sticking out and looking wrong. Someone posted a link to a YouTube video on the tangle, and it make a world of difference: I now can draw it without lifting the pen and it feels far more natural.
Anyway, on to the tiles.
Here's my first:

I used a spiral as my string - got inspired by a Shelly Beauch post I found via Pinterest. And I really like it! 
I thought about adding color, but I wimped out on this one. That's OK: I went nuts with it on my next series of three quick Bijou tiles.

Actually, I think I went a little overboard on the first one. ;) 
The second, which I just barely washed with a little blue watercolor, is my favorite, although I do like the orange background on the last one. In a change from my typical order of operations, I laid down the color first, waited (impatiently) for it to dry, and then tangled over it. 
Oh, all the color here is from my growing collection of watercolor pencils. I have just a couple of Inktense ones; the rest are actually from a $4 Ikea kids' set! 

Finally, I decided to try something really different

Here my goal was to make it appear that the phicops was lit from the inside. I am reasonably pleased with the result, which also looks a bit like I was inspired by the gradually changing leaves outside my window! 
The whole thing also reminded me of a pill bug or possibly a trilobite, which I decided to play up in my last Bijou tile:
I think he's kinda cute! 

All in all a very fun challenge, but I'm definitely ready to go back to the full stable of tangle patterns for a while now! 

8 comments:

Kia said...

some interesting work here. I like the spiral of the first one and I also really like the rainbow one. Well done

Gloria j Zucaro said...

Wow! Such intersting and unique pieces. Great job.

Anne's tangle blog said...

A lot of beautiful stuff, they are great!

Suzanne Fluhr said...

Wowza! You were certainly dedicated to this challenge. I could barely eke out one composition. I had never used either tangle before, so there was definitely a learning curve I had to surmount. I am really impressed by the 3D effects you achieved in your first one. I enjoy seeing what other people do (after I try my response). It inspires me to keep trying to improve.

Tangles and More said...

Looks like you had lots of fun playing with these two tangles and created some unique and colorful tiles as well.

Unknown said...

I love your colorful first bijou

Omer said...

beautiful works. Creative and imaginative. Love the color touches.

Poppie_60 said...

Fabulous tiles, my fave is the top one, beautiful and bold - love the spiral :)