Weekly Challenge #90

This week's challenge for I am the Diva was a string challenge. Normally I'm not a huge fan of strings. I feel too confined by them and they don't flow as well to me. I've been altering the IX tangle and it has somehow turned into one of my favorite new tangles. Its been creeping its way into all of my drawings lately.

I went in search of pencil to draw the string outline and I stumbled across a pink gel pen. It was fun mixing in color as I went instead of coloring everything in at the last minute. To see all the other entries click here!

"Maybe" A Short Film

ABOUT THIS FILM

Film maker:

jgrey

Synopsis:

Lost in his thoughts, a man is joined at the bus stop by a young woman. As his imagination runs wild, he can't help but wonder: maybe she's the girl of his dreams...

Genre:

Drama

Running time:

2:20

Zentangle Challenge 88 Entry 2

My first attempt at the IX challenge was not my absolute favorite drawing of mine. After looking through the other amazing entries I decided to try again but this time I went the route of simplicity and color. I really need to see about either getting a scanner or finding my camera. These phone pictures simply do not the drawing justice. To see the other entries click here!

Zendala Dare #25

Below is my entry for The Bright Owl's Zendala Dare #25. In places I seemed to ignore the lines of the template so I'm not entirely sure I did this challenge correctly. It was fun to try anyway. I choose not to believe there are rules when it comes to anything art related, thought I do wish I had left more white space in the middle. You can also tell I started getting bored with the vines. They got very messy, very quickly. I like the repetitiveness ...but only to an extent. Then I get impatient, wanting to get to the next tangle. Click here to see the other entries!

My Turning Point on the Road to Zentangles

When I first stumbled upon Zentangles I read just about everything I could find on it. I looked at hundreds of other drawings by all sorts of zentanglers - the certified, the experts, and the zen inspired artists. I spent a ridiculous amount of time on tanglepatterns scouring through all the different tangles. I tried doing the random strings. I tried drawing objects and filling the inside. I tried doing squares of tangles. None were producing anything I liked too much. I had a few "ehhh not bad" moments. But none where I was like "Yes!! This is it. I want to show people this. I want to hang this in a frame and put it above my desk!" That was when I decided to throw all the advice I had read out the window and draw like I normally do.

See I'm not one of those people that is scared of drawing. I draw all the time, especially flowers, trees, foliage, etc. What I found was that most of the advice out there is for people with very little drawing knowledge. People who see a blank sheet of paper and feel a little overwhelmed. Most of the time when I look at a new tangle, I don't even bother with the directions. I can usually figure out how to draw it on my own, in a way that is a lot more intuitive for myself. With this drawing I posted, I started in the upper left corner with a few criss crossed lines and then just drew as I liked from there. No shapes to constrain me. Just my mind and a piece of paper.

Music From...

ABC's Promo For the New Fall Season

I was watching ABC the other day when I saw a promo for the season of 'Once Upon a Time', 'Revenge', and a few others. I fell in love with this song so of course I immediately took to the internet to search the lyrics and find out who it was by. Long story short, the song is called "A Little Taste" and it is by Skyler Stonestreet. I was excited to find that I was one of the first 20,000 people to see this video!! I've really been into this type of music lately. Kind of seductive/sexy. Sometimes jazzy. It reminds me of burlesque?

If you like the song above, I highly recommend:

• Cat & Mouse by Nikki & Rich
• The Mating Game by Bitter:Sweet
• Switch by Jazmine Sullivan
• Under My Skin by Gin Wigmore
• Anything by April Smith and the Great Picture Show

Zentangle Challenge 88

I've recently stumbled upon this type of drawing called Zentangle and it is my new obsession. I don't follow most of the typical rules used in Zentangle because they don't really work for me. The first step is to draw a 'string' and then draw inside the boxes your string creates. My mind doesn't work very well that way so I typically start with a tangle I really like and then work my way out in whatever shape it takes. Technically this makes my work zentangle inspired art and not a true zentangle. Either way, it's incredibly relaxing and as soon as I started playing by own rules my drawings started getting much, much better.

I decided to start following "I am the Diva" to partake in the weekly challenges to learn new tangles and find some inspiration from the other amazing drawings. Below is my entry for Week 88 (sorry for the bad quality, my phone was dying and I've misplaced my camera). The main tangle is IX in the middle. I put a little of my own spin on with using curvier lines. Click here to see the challenge and the other entries.

Book Review: Elsewhere

For some unknown reason, this book really struck a cord with me. Perhaps, it was just the fact that this book dealt with death which is always a touchy subject. I cried multiple times while reading this and I'm not sure if it was due to hormones or the book. I feel like it was a combination. While this book was geared towards young teens, which was shown through the writing style, the content had a more adult feel to it. And by adult, I do not mean sweaty, groping in the dark.


What I liked:

• The new perspective on what the after life may be like. While there were some holes (like I know that these two young characters are technically in their 20s, but when they're physically like 10, do they stilll.....you know...or anything else? Did they before but then stop once they got to a certain age? It's just very confusing and I found it slightly distracting) overall it was simple but well constructed.
• Some characters actually had distinctive voices.
• I loved how people could communicate with animals in the after life.
• That Liz actually reacted like a teenager upon finding out she died and took time to mourn.

What I DISLIKED:

• The prose felt very simple and young to me
• The romance just kinda hit out of nowhere. We didn't get to actually see it happen, it was mostly told.
• Liz was sometimes a little annoying, especially towards the latter end of the book when she was suppose to be more mature mentally.
• There were some plot holes. Like the fact that most people in Elsewhere are old. But if they're all aging backwards then technically their age demographic should mirror the real world demographic. Unless there are different areas of Elsewhere and only people who have died in the past 15 years are allowed in that area. 
• I wish there was one more chapter maybe showing the future couple in their new lives!!