Commission for a Zentangle Book

The second of two posts today. – Edited – picture of book cover.

I have been approached by Jane Marbaix, a UK Certified Zentangle Teacher (CZT), who is writing a new book on Zentangle – she already has more than one in print – she had found my tangle “Y-Ful Power” and wanted to feature it. She asked me to submit the step-outs for it, and also a piece of art using this tangle, and some text giving details of the inspiration behind it. She asked if the art piece could somehow reflect the story of my cancer journey this year, as the publishers were keen that the book should inspire people.

I was a bit daunted at first because the deadline was so short, for which she apologised; she said she needed it within three weeks, but effectively for me, that meant by the end of the week, because my next chemo treatment is due then, after which I will be fit for nothing for another fortnight. Her timing was actually very good because I was just starting to feel better for my third week in the cycle, and I’ve been able to pull out all the stops and get it done in time!

I felt a bit daunted for another reason too, which was that I have very little experience in expressing my thoughts, feelings and experiences in the form of art. This is definitely something I have felt the need to work on for some time, because I have been wanting to get into art journaling. Hopefully next year after the chemo is finished and I am getting my life back, this will start to happen, and it’s good to get in a bit of practice in advance!

I feel extremely flattered to be invited to contribute to a published book. To be sought out like this and invited to take part is very exciting indeed, and I am so pleased that Jane is so delighted with what I’ve come up with – I wanted really to do this thrilling project the justice it so richly deserves. Jane is one of only a small number of UK-based CZTs and it’s very good to be able to support and encourage her in this way, and to give her a bit of publicity.

My original thoughts on a suitable design for this ZIA (Zentangle-Inspired Art) came to nothing and got chucked out – my thinking was too literal, and my initial sketches were a disaster! I spent most of that first morning trawling the Internet for inspiration until I decided to look on my own Pinterest boards to see if anything struck a chord, and I found this image of the most amazing and beautiful spiral staircase.

I have no idea where this staircase is located. I have always been fascinated by spiral staircases and the intriguing shapes they produce, and in this context, I could see this as a picture of my journey – a journey of the heart from darkness to light.

Here are some pictures showing the progression from initial pencil sketch to the finished drawing.

 

 

The initial pencil sketch shows the spiral staircase emerging from a 3-D heart, both of which feature prominently my tangle “Y-Ful Power.” I wanted the bottom part of the picture to be dark. The small heart on the right is an attempt to get the perspective right – I had some trouble with this!

The next picture shows how I began the first tracing of the shapes, using my light pad – a flat panel illuminated by LEDs for the purpose of tracing. This is an extremely useful tool which I acquired a few months ago on Ebay, and had yet to put through its paces. I have wanted a light box for many years, and am very glad that I did not invest in one at the time because these new panels are so much more convenient – lying flat on the table with very little thickness, and the LEDs do not make it hot.

The next picture shows the first tracing complete.

 

 

I have drawn a pencil grid over the spiral staircase and the heart, for the placing of the dot grid to construct Y-Ful Power, which you can see complete on the first draft I made from that tracing, on plain paper.

 

 

I was still not happy with the heart, which looked rather flat, but which I thought might be improved with some shading. I made several attempts at drawing the heart, using different grids, until I was satisfied.

Here is the completed draft.

 

I didn’t like the overlap of the rays of light from “Footlites” on the left, and these needed to be altered.

My first “fair copy” of the drawing did not pass muster because the bottom of the heart was very dark, and there was not enough contrast with the background, into which it appeared to merge without trace! It looks better on this photo than it does in real life. I had put too much in the way of embellishments on the Y-Ful Power on the bottom of the heart, and this needed to be reduced. I wasn’t keen on the way that the embellishments followed the line of the handrail of the staircase, either. There were some other problems too, such as the hole in the centre of the spiral coming out too small and losing the impact of the spot of light towards which the butterfly is moving. Also, I didn’t like what I’d done with “Finery” on the bottom right – the black embellishments were too strong. (I edited this scan and made it come out a bit too dark – the shading isn’t that strong on the original.)

So I re-drew it, yet again. This next photo shows the final drawing complete, or so I thought until I realised that I had left out some shading that I wanted to put on the underside of the spiral staircase. (The rest of the shading shows more true to the original than on the previous photo.) I was a lot happier with the heart, “Finery” and “Footlites,” in this final rendering.

 

By this time I had scanned the image, and done a bit of digital tidying up, and I didn’t want to do all that work again, so I printed it out, and attempted to add some shading to this scanned image, which I then scanned again. This was a mistake because the result came out very grainy, so it was “back to the drawing board” as I had to decide what to do. To save myself a lot of work I decided to add the shading digitally, to the underside of the spiral staircase. This is the final drawing.

 

 

I was a little concerned at how blue the shading (real and digital) appeared in the image – I tried desaturating it and converting it to greyscale but the result was the same. I am hoping that the printers will get a true greyscale image when they prepare it for the book. I have now sent the files of the drawing, the 2 step-out sheets for Y-Ful Power, and the text to accompany the drawing, to the publisher as well as to the author, and the publisher says that the scans are fine, so presumably the picture prints out OK in a true greyscale.

Looking at these pictures, superficially they appear pretty much the same, but it’s a bit like those “spot the difference” pictures! There are subtle differences which probably only my perfectionistic nature would fuss about, but this is going to be published, and I wanted it to be the best I could make it – I’d never be satisfied knowing that something I had drawn was being published, that I wasn’t 100% happy with.

A Word about Shading

In the past, I have always shaded my Zentangles with a soft (4B) pencil and then blended it with a paper stump. However, being graphite, the shading didn’t usually photograph or scan very well because it is slightly reflective. I have wondered for a while about suitable alternatives, and recently discovered soluble graphite pencils – watercolour pencils in shades of grey that can be applied and then blended with a water brush. I bought a Derwent Graphitint pencil recently in Warm Grey (Shade #19), one of a range of greys that they produce, which I think probably doesn’t have any graphite in it because it is completely non-reflective. Blending with the water brush is easy, and the results are very good, so this is going to be my shading tool of choice for the future.

The symbolism in the picture

You can see that there is an emphasis on upward movement throughout the picture, from the dark beginnings to the light in the centre. The symbolism is best expressed by quoting an extract from the text which will accompany the image in the book (this may be edited by the publisher for length):

“My piece of Zentangle-inspired art depicts my journey from my bowel cancer diagnosis in January 2015, which is essentially a journey of the heart – it is all about attitude. It is not the circumstances and events in our lives which define us, but our attitude to them – we can either cave in under them and complain and be miserable, which will affect everyone around us in a negative way, or we can face them head on, and make use of them, to help us become a better person, which will have the added bonus of inspiring those around us. This second choice is the one I have made. Only once, on the day of my diagnosis, did I say, ‘Why me?’ and immediately afterwards asked, ‘Why not me?’ A positive attitude also helps towards a positive outcome to the illness and its treatment…

“This has been a wake-up call and a life-changing experience, which I have attempted to express in my art. The upward journey has not been a straightforward one but has taken some circuitous routes. From a relatively dark and cluttered existence I am rising towards the light; the butterfly represents metamorphosis from one state to another, taking flight from a lowly existence into the brighter light of hope and joy. Before this event, my life was going on much as before, in a fairly chaotic fashion, and looking back I realise just how much time I was wasting, and how little I was doing for – or even thinking of – others. This journey has changed my priorities.

“The upward journey is from a heart full of gratitude, and a desire to make a difference in the lives of others. My new motivation is to help others, to inspire them, and to become a better person…

“Where will this journey lead? Who knows? Hopefully to a cancer-free life, but to have made a difference is all I ask.”

Tangle Patterns Used in the Piece

I included a list of the sixteen different tangles that I used in the piece:

Y-Ful Power, Cvetic, Lily Pads, Lotus Pods, Footlites, B’twined, Miander. Copada, Bilt, Intwine, Finery, Zinger, Verdigogh, Float Fest, Barber Pole, and Heart Rope. I wonder if my fellow tanglers will be able to spot them all!

Details of the Book So Far 

The book title will be “Inspiring Zentangle Projects,” and will be published in May of next year, all being well. Jane has now sent me a jpg of the cover. She says that between now and publication, this may be changed, but this is the working version.

 

 

It is being published by Arcturus Publishing – I visited their website today and they’ve got some very intriguing titles on there, including several adult colouring books, and to my great delight, an adult dot-to-dot book! I used to love doing these as a child, and the adult ones look highly complex and interesting. Definitely something to try! I expect you could colour them afterwards, too. They do quite a few art and craft books, and one of Jane Marbaix’s earlier Zentangle books is in the catalogue, too – “Mandala Zentangle.”

I hope you will all buy a copy of her new book when it comes out!

Recycled Mini-Album Pages–Clocks

This post is about the penultimate page of the mini-album, and deals with one of my dad’s most absorbing interests.

He was a keen and expert horologist. He collected many clocks during his life, and was a skilled clock repairer. Over the years he amassed a comprehensive set of tools for this purpose, including a watchmaker’s lathe to complement his larger engineering lathe. He was always sketching on scraps of paper – ideas for repairs, clock movements, etc. This album would not be complete without some pages on his passion for clocks.

I recently acquired a gearwheels stencil, an “ArtMask” from Carabelle Studio, called “Rouages Steampunk.” Strictly speaking, it is a mask rather than a stencil, because it is the background that is cut away. I tried to make a gearwheels stencil once, with the gearwheels, rather than the background, cut out, and it all fell apart and I ended up with a fine collection of acetate gearwheels! (I am using them as masks, and for sticking onto projects, so they are not wasted.) Anyway, in this case, I wanted the actual gearwheels to be gold, and the background to remain black, so I did a bit of reverse stencilling. To do this, I first painted the whole page with metallic gold acrylic paint, and while it was still wet, I laid the mask on top and secured it top and bottom with some masking tape. I then wiped away the gold paint through the holes in the mask. To start with I used a baby wipe, but this was too wet and it spoilt the design underneath, so I had to wipe off all the gold paint and start again. A piece of kitchen paper wasn’t sufficient for paint removal, so I took a fresh baby wipe and wrapped it in kitchen paper and used that, which was better. For the second page, I dried a fresh baby wipe slightly with my heat gun, and the results were fine.

I am pleased with the metallic finish on this background.

The next step was to lay down some images as the next layer of background – a scanned image of a diagram of a clock escapement, and some photos of various clocks my dad repaired. I decided to fussy-cut the background away and lay them down so that the background would show through.

Here is the first clock page complete, with the addition of photos and embellishments, and the trademark white border. The images in this case were laid down with soft gloss gel medium, so as not to interfere with the reflective surface of the gold background. The clock face was a cut-out, which I had distressed and kept for another project – it had been in my stash for some time.

The first photo I chose was of some clock parts my dad made from scratch, to replace some worn ones in a clock he was repairing. He would always try to reproduce as faithfully as possible any clock parts he replaced, to be in keeping with the period – for instance, adding metric threads, or modern gears in an antique clock would be an anachronism, which would have offended him, not to mention reducing the value of the clock. Next to this photo is a picture of my dad’s little repair notebook, packed with his tiny, almost illegible writing! (He was a doctor, after all…) In this book he kept a record of all the repairs he carried out on people’s clocks, and could refer back to this, the next time a clock became an inpatient in the clock hospital. At the bottom is a photo of a church clock movement he repaired.

In the above detail shot of the title, you can see one of the Friendly Plastic gearwheels I made several years ago, with added gilding wax and Glossy Accents (neither of which shows up very well on this photo). This was stuck down with Pinflair glue.

The next photo shows the second clock page with the photos added. A bit more of the gold gearwheels background is left exposed in this one, but there is a fussy-cut clock movement laid over the left-hand page. On the right hand page you can see a photo of one of Dad’s antique clocks – his oldest one, a 17th century Cromwellian clock that my grandfather picked up cheap in a sale “because it’s only got one hand,” when they were made with only one hand!

With the addition of borders and some text, the page is complete. You can see the tag puller on the right – more details about the tag below.

A couple of detail shots of this page. First, the top of the page, showing the gearwheels border I created, and the blue-painted clock movement (another church clock that he repaired) overlaid.

At the bottom of the page are photos of two models of different types of clock escapement that Dad made from perspex. He used these on an overhead projector to illustrate the difference, during his lecture “The Clock Doc – or Horology in a Nutshell,” his presidential address at his local medical society. Typical of Dad, he spent many hours making these models, and they were up on the screen for only a few minutes. They are now in my possession.

Preparing to make the tag. You can see the semi-circular shape I have punched out, and the printed clock face image ready to be punched out with the same punch.

The clock face tag puller attached to the tag.

The tag in situ, showing how the tag puller fits exactly into the semi-circular hole.

Because the two pages glued together to form the tag holder came at the end of the clock section, the reverse of the tag is different. Here you can see the stamp I used – one from the Stamp Attack Butterfly Doodle Dallions set.

I used some Cosmic Shimmer Lapis Cobalt Aurora fine embossing powder to stamp the image, and then three different Perfect Pearls (Plum, Kiwi and Turquoise) applied like watercolours to colour the image. After this I punched out the shape.

To complete the tag puller, I distressed the edges with Black Soot distress ink.

Here is the reverse of the tag, with the flower tag puller attached.

This picture shows the tag in place, with the flower tag puller nesting into the semi-circular hole.

The background and border on the clock side of the tag. I used an Artistic Stamper stamp for the background (“Cogs”), stamping with Versamark, and adding some Cappuccino Perfect Pearls with a soft brush.

Here is the completed clock side of the tag, with some journaling with my white marker pen.

Here is the reverse side of the tag, completed. As this lines up with the final page of the book, I decided to make this one a summary of all my dad’s qualities and accomplishments as celebrated throughout the book.

All that remains to be done on the book now is the final double-page spread, and then a couple of pages of information about how the book was constructed and embellished. If there is room, I shall add a couple of blank pages at the back for notes and further photos.

Recycled Mini-Album Pages–Tigers

As promised to my faithful followers, here are the Tigers pages! This has turned out to be one of my favourite sections of the album, not least because it is one of my earliest and fondest childhood memories. It might seem somewhat out of place to have a section on tigers in a book about my dad, and it was certainly an unusual episode in his life.

Sometime in the mid-to-late 50s, there was a wonderful vet living in Plymouth by the name of Fernley Slee. He specialised in zoo and circus animals and had been consulted by Chipperfield’s Circus, who had in their possession two tiger cubs with congenital cataracts. Not feeling up to performing the surgery himself, he asked Dad to do it, and he readily agreed. Lily and Rajah, the two tiger cubs, were certainly the most unusual patients he ever had.

He took us as a family to see the tigers at Mr. Slee’s house. They were wandering freely about, and even at my very young age I was impressed by the unusual way they walked, with their shoulders moving up and down, and although they were about the size of a large domestic cat, their gait was quite different. They were very friendly, and very interested in everything.

My mother owned a white pigskin handbag at that time, and she put it on the floor beside her chair. The next thing she knew, one of the tiger cubs had got hold of it and was chewing it! When she rescued it, the corner had deep tooth marks that remained in the bag ever afterwards! People would often look a bit oddly at it, and she would say, “Oh, it was bitten by a tiger” which was certainly a conversation stopper!

I am so glad my dad never threw anything away. Going through his study when we had to sell my parents’ house, I was delighted to come across an envelope marked simply, “Tigers.” Inside were the photos which I have scanned and used for these pages.

I recently came across an online image of an art journal where the edges of the pages had been cut back at different lengths, and I decided it would be nice to incorporate this idea into my book. After cutting the pages, I painted the cut edges with black acrylic paint.

A couple of years ago I painted the face of a tiger for my art journal, to go with the William Blake poem “Tyger tyger burning bright.” This painting went across the centre of the book so the photo has a line down the middle.

This is how the tiger painting ended up in the book.

I took the original photo of the painting and edited it in Serif PhotoPlus to get rid of the central join, and printed it out to fit my page. I could have done a fresh painting of a tiger for the book, but decided to use the one I already had, to save time, and also to keep the thickness to a minimum.

After sticking the printed image into my book with regular matt gel medium, I went around the edges with pan pastels to soften and darken the background, to help it blend into the page background. I used more pan pastels to create the dark tiger-skin effect background. This design did become darker and less visible after spraying with the Rustoleum spray seal, but this is what it was like at the beginning.

Starting to work on the tiger picture border.

Working on the Tigers title.

The background for the second page – again done with pan pastels.

Working on the border for the second tigers page, using acrylic paints. You can see the borders I painted on the curving cut-away pages on the right.

The photos stuck down with regular matt gel medium, and work beginning on the border. You can see the operation taking place in the right-hand photo.

The completed title page. Acrylic paints and a combination of black and white pens, and pan pastels. I am very pleased with how the tiger appears to be emerging from behind the border. I photographed these final shots using my new scratch paper as a background. I Use a scratch paper to clean my brushes and rubber stamps onto. It’s amazing how much paint would otherwise end up in the water pot! This way, you get to save paint (money) AND get another piece of art into the bargain!

The finished second page, with journaling to describe the family’s encounter with the amazing little tiger cubs.

Finally, the third page completed.

I think this unusual episode makes a fitting addition to the book, and it’s a nice opportunity to add a bit of richness and colour. I really enjoyed working on these pages, not least because I love tigers so much!

Recycled Mini-Album Pages–Cars

I have now completed the Cars pages. I began by printing out some “Cars” text in various sizes, and at the same time, to fill the page, I printed some material for the Professional Life pages.

Fussy cutting the cars text.

I applied the text to the page using soft matt gel medium. The pieces were rather delicate and I thought they might tear if I used regular medium.

Once they were dry, I made a wash with titanium white acrylic paint and acrylic polymer and roughly painted over the cars text.

I had a rummage in my card strips box and made a selection, for some “go faster” stripes for this page. I was rather pleased to find the offcuts from the recycled Christmas cards that I used for the pages of this album! Seemed fitting somehow. Recycling the recycled.

I thought the page looked a bit dull so I added a small suggestion of colour with white and brown pan pastels, which also had the effect of muting the brush strokes on the page. I fixed it with my Rustoleum spray sealant (great stuff, but it really stinks!!).

Now for the fun part. I had printed and cut out several car badges and stuck these down with regular matt gel medium, and then cut the card strips to form the “go faster” stripes which were laid down with a suggestion of randomness. You can still see the “cars” text echoing the title and forming a subtle background.

I completed the first Cars page with the addition of a border – I was pleased with how this turned out because it looks almost suggestive of car tyres!

The second “Cars” page shows the cars my dad owned during his life (with the exception of the first one, a Riley, which I do not remember, and have no photo). I wanted to keep the look of the page consistent, and also to introduce a somewhat vintage appearance, so I edited the photos in Serif PhotoPlus, creating a duplicate layer which I desaturated, and then erased away the actual car, so that the colour from the bottom layer popped. Unfortunately when I printed them out the colour balance wasn’t quite right and I had a bit of touching up to do. I fixed the photos first, with Rustoleum clear sealant, and then used various distress inks as watercolours to alter the colours somewhat. The MG Magnette (second down on the left) had no colour added because it was dark grey anyway. After this came the first MG sports car – an MGA in red. This car was, in my opinion, the most attractive of all his cars – it had such beautiful lines. The MGB sports cars (top right) had to be printed from a downloaded image because for some reason I have no photos – he had two (if not 3) of these, all in British Racing Green. He loved his sports cars!

A good number of years before he retired he bought his first Porsche. He drove this for many years, well into his retirement. The second Porsche, a Boxter, was the last car he ever owned, which he was still driving aged 89!!

I am quite pleased that the border on this page, which was determined by the page of the same size further back in the book, looks like a chequered flag! Although he wasn’t into motor racing, it seems appropriate with his love of sports cars.

The final step was to add the journaling and final embellishments to tie the page together.

This takes us up to the end of the second signature of the book.