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!!

Book Review: Beastly

A Brief Summary: Basically a retelling of Beauty and the Beast if you couldn't tell from the name and the recent movie. Kyle/Adrian is the biggest douche bag on the planet. He gets a curse put on him for being so conceited at a school dance and is turned into a beast. Cue the entrance of an average and abused girl (Lindy) and some weird semi kidnapping/hostage situation equals romance, gardening, and love oh my. Oh yes, and all of this is set in a present day high school/Brooklyn.

If I could choose one word to describe this book, it would be "eh." It wasn't breathtakingly amazing. It wasn't so horrible it caused me physical pain to read it. It was a cute, no thinking involved book. However, like all things in life there will be things that certain readers do not like, no matter how good the book and here are a few things that I could have done without:

1. Lindy (an annoying name in itself)really grated my nerves. At first she didn't bother me but the closer I got to the end of the book the more I didn't like her. She was incredibly weak and was portrayed in a very child like way. Especially in her interactions with Kyle/Adrian. We are suppose to think that she's extremely intelligent but we never got to see it.

2. Kyle/Adrian went from having no interest in this girl to falling in love with her basically because he had no other options. We didn't even really get to see it happen. It was another one of those cases where the author just tells you what happens instead of showing it and developing it.

3. Scattered throughout the novel are some chat room images that K/A is participating in to get some support with his transformation. While, I didn't mind these snapshots, at times I found myself more interested in what was happening with SilentMaid than any of the actual characters the book was focused on. Which means, the real plot was somewhat lacking.

4. Kyle/Adrian did some really creepy things. I don't want to spoil too much but I'm just going to say a)alley watching people and b)the dress. Anyone who has read this will probably know which scenes I'm talking about.

Now, just to be fair I'll list a few things I did like:

1. The first part of the book really interested me. I liked seeing K/Andrian be a jerk and get his ass handed to him. I quite enjoyed reading his snotty nosed spoiled kid persona more than his over the top polite and weird prose that no one would ever talk like persona.

2. Something about Will's character (the blind tutor K/A's father hired) made me really like him. And I also liked the twist at the end with the maid.

3. I liked that Lindy didn't start out as drop dead gorgeous. The way I interpreted her later descriptions was that the more you fall in love with someone the more beautiful they appear to you. I know some reviewers thought this was more gorgeous girl in disguise, removal of glasses/hair tie equals=beautiful hottie a la "She's All That." I think through Adrian's own transformations and through falling in love with her he was able to see past her flaws and see the things that made her beautiful. I've seen this in my own life. I found my first boyfriend to be decently cute when I first started dating him, but the more I fell in love with him the more attractive I found him.

Overall, I would recommend this for young adults/teens that want an easy beach read. Definitely don't waste your time on it if you don't have a lot of time to read in the first place. I haven't seen the movie, but I doubt it's much better...although, at least it has some really hot eye candy for some of the movie.

Subliminal Messaging Through Teen Fiction

One of my favorite things to do is to read and I believe it's a good idea to instill a love of reading in children. Although, how to go about doing that is not something I really know how to do. But, this is not the subject of this blog. Normally, before buying a book I do some research on it on Amazon. You know, read the ratings (the 1 star ratings as well as the 5) and occasionally I'll stumble on to their forum section, either before I buy, or after when I'm about to leave a review. I always get annoyed with the parents on there complaining that "OMG, there was a kissing scene and I can just not believe the author would put that in there! I am just beside myself with rage. The author had the AUDACITY to ALLUDE to *whispers* s-e-x!! My wonderfully perfect child is only 14 and should not be exposed to that kind of nonsense!!!!RAWRRR down with books!" Despite the fact, that if they were truthful with themselves, their children are exposed to a lot worse watching tv, getting on the internet, and in general, interacting with people. 

Anyway, my point was suppose to be that I can't stand when adults freak out about what a book is teaching to their children and while I was reading today I found myself having an "adult" moment. I tend to read young adult fiction for the most part (although I do love all different kinds) and yes before you start bashing me, I know they are formulaic. Just like 95% of all books out there. I'm okay with formulaic and I'm okay with things being unrealistic. Because it's fiction. I need to stop now before I go off into another rant. 

Back to the topic at hand, I found myself thinking about the message these books sends to young girls and if they could be partially to blame for some of the problems youth find themselves in. Yes, I just died a little bit inside for even having that thought. 

In young adult books, the love interest is almost always the first boyfriend the girl has ever had and he is always her soul mate. Combined this with all the other media outlets and it gives off the impression that if a girl doesn't get a boyfriend by the time she's 16 or 17 she's weird and if she does get one then he should be the one. And if he isn't, then there is something wrong with her. I just wonder if we portrayed relationships a little bit more realistically if it would have an effect on how girls feel about themselves and what to expect out of relationships.

This doesn't mean I am now completely against teen books. I still enjoy them and I will probably encourage my children to read them if it something he/she enjoys. But, I will be sure to point out that people rarely marry their first boy/girlfriend. I had more things I wanted to talk about when I was thinking about writing this blog earlier, but they've evaporated from my mind. If they return to me, I'll edit this.

P.S. If you like the picture I used for this blog you should visit www.bookshelfporn.com Don't worry, I promise it isn't dirty...unless you get aroused looking at awesome pictures of libraries and books. It's okay if you do, no judgement here *shifty eyes*