a bouquet of Mookas

  For this term of my weekly classes, I've been teaching my students how to draw Mooka. So I think that explains why it's popping up so often in my personal art works... I've been having great fun teaching this month's classes, and I can't wait to convert those classes into online classes.

  This was what a student did in her sketchbook as homework:

Very lovely.

  Here are my tiles for this week's Zentangle challenges. Joey asked us to use Relly-Telly-One. The Diva asked us to use Shattuck and Tripoli. I kept things really simple this week, letting shading take centre-stage.

   Some Travelling Tangles Project tiles:

with Beth Detzler

With a six-year-old kiddo by the name of "Jazz White".
I coloured the tile rainbow colours, cause' every kid loves a rainbow.

  A Cubine tile from Michele Werner...

Before

After

  Lastly, a tile that was created as a thank you present for someone.   :)

  The background was done using Peerless watercolours. The gold accent was done using Finetec paints. Featuring a bouquet of Mookas, Printemps, and Diva Dance Waltz. I'm so pleased with how this tile turned out.

  Thanks for popping by. I'll see you next week. :)

I'm doing swimmingly well.

  I have so many things to show you this week!

  I thought I'd spend February filming videos, and doing more personal projects... But I ended catching a terrible case of the flu that took me three weeks to recover from. :( 

  Other than the flu, February has treated me well enough. Chinese New Year happened. I had reunion dinners with both my in-laws, and at my mum's place. Here are some fishes I painted using Peerless watercolours to celebrate the holiday.

  I had a workshop at Bukit Batok East Community Club. The CC's staffs who attended the workshop were very creative and engaged in creating beautiful Zentangle art works.

  Here's their class mosaic. One of the tiles is mine. :)

  Group photo!

  I completed a couple of tiles for Travelling Tangles. Here's one from Jules Mack.

I had to black out the lower left circle because the watercolours made the black ink bleed.
I do like how the coaster turned out, though.

  Here's one from Sandie McClellan for the September Cadent Swap.

  And this lovely tile was from Debra Huff.

  I added watercolours for the background and then pushed the “bracelet” forward by adding Diva Dance Waltz. Subtle shading was added using Polychromos coloured pencils.

  Debra also sent me a tile for the Embedded Letter Swap.

  I was very tempted to add a frame around Debra’s tangles. But eventually decided to expand her work outwards. I thought about filling the tile out, edge-to-edge... but I chose to stop here. I’m very pleased with how it turned out. :)

  Over the week, I found a new gelato place at Bedok...

  Today also happens to be my first year wedding anniversary. ^-^

  Alex and I celebrated it early, last Sunday, by going to watch "Black Panther" at Cathay Platinum. The theatre had extra wide, plush seats, that could recline! The theatre's staffs also served us some finger food (directly to where we sat). And there was a little lamp that you could switch on if you needed to see what you were eating. It was a great experience.

  That day, I wore a peach-coloured vintage tulle dress that used to belong to Alex's grandmother. :)

  Lastly, here's a tile I did this morning for Diva's challenge. We were supposed to use a heart-shaped string on a Zendala.... I did do that, but I didn't exactly follow the string.

The background was created using Caran d'ache's Neocolor II.
I bought a set of 30 for $20! What a steal!

  Thanks for popping by. I hope the year of the dog has begun just as well for you as it has for me.

pumpkin

  Here are my tiles for this week's challenges... The top tile is for Diva's Challenge: Halloween. I don't think I've quite gotten the hang of drawing Gourdeous....

  The bottom tile is for Joey's Challenge: Cylinder String, featuring Diva Dance. I used all the versions of Diva Dance, including my version of Rock and Roll. It's a simplified version of the tangle, and you can find step-outs to it via this link.

A Zendala inspired by Margreet Krijgsman.

Here's a tile I did in my sketchbook for #InktoberTangles
It's Oof with auras. I really like this version of the tangle.

  And here's another page in my sketchbook:

 The top tile was done just for fun. The bottom tile featured Q-belle for #InktoberTangles.

  I hope you had fun with InktoberTangles. If you did, there are other challenges going around for November, namely #Giveatangle2017 and #Gratitangles. I hope you'll continue your habit of drawing once a day. And to everyone that took part in InktoberTangles, thank you for playing along. I hope you'll join the challenge again next year. :)

to the click of my heart

  Here's my tile for the fourth day of #InktoberTangles. Featuring Diva Dance Waltz and Aquafleur. I saw a tile done by a CZT where she drew Aquafleur in this way and I knew I absolutely had to draw it this way, too. I used Tombow markers for the colours.

  And here's my tile for this week of Joey's challenge, featuring Poke Leaf:


  The lower left corner of the tile was actually an oopsie... I tried something that didn't work out so I just drew over the entire area with black ink and added Printemps in silver Uni-ball pen.

  And here's the nine tiles that I've drew for her challenges over the past nine weeks:


  I'm completely thrilled with how it turned out! I tried to have each tile have its own personality but work together as a whole drawing, too.

  And here's my tile for Diva's challenge, featuring Striping. The little secret is that this was done in a page in my sketchbook. And what happened was that I messed up.... I was drawing a beautiful Waybop and having a good time, and then I made a bad decision that I really REALLY didn't like. So I just... I just decided to glue a white tile over the oops. haha

  But it fixed it, though. I absolutely love the colours that I picked. It's just two Tombow markers 725 bright pink and 676 purple. If you live in Singapore and you'd like to purchase Tombow markers (singles or in sets) visit this link. They're having a promotion right now all the way till' the end of this year!

  If you were wondering the process of how I created this drawing... I drew a string in pencil, then added the stripes in pencil too. Then I added the colours... Let them dry. Erased the pencil lines, and then outlined the outside of the tile and the loops that were sticking out of the tile with a black 0.8 Micron pen.

  Lastly, I wanted to tell you a little story... 

  Tuesday earlier this week was a tough day for me... It didn't go so great. And I was set to have a class that night. I'm a strong believer of leaving your baggage at the door of the classroom. People pay me good money to learn the Zentangle method from me, to learn new creative skills from me, and to have a good time in my classes. So when I step into a classroom, I make sure I'm 100% present in the moment. So all that hubbub that happened earlier that day... that all melted away when I stepped into the classroom.

  And I was genuinely happy to see my students. I am so blessed to have wonderful students who bring such great energy, creativity, and joy to every class. Then one of my students, her name is Diana, took out a small click eraser. "It's a gift for you," she said. And a huge smile spread across my face.

  See, last week, I saw that another student had a similar eraser in her pencil case. I loved it. I'm overly excitable and get happy over small things. I mentioned that I had only seen large click erasers- never small skinny ones. And I gushed over how cute the small click eraser was.

  So Diana had heard the conversation and gone out to get me a small click eraser. It was wonderful. I'm still smiling now as I recount the story to you. :) That small gift brightened up my crappy day so much. I love teaching tangling to others, and it's small moments like these that I hold close to my heart.

Inktober Tangles Week One

Here's a tile I did for Travelling Tangles Project. It was sent to me from Laura van Erp. She did the two little Paradox-Cadents. (If you'd like to learn how to draw them, you can watch this video.) I added Diva Dance Waltz and Hollibaugh, then used watercolours to complete the background, and finally, added some Printemps using a white Uni-ball Signo pen.

  Here's my seventh tile for Joey's challenge. Featuring the lovely Printemps.

  A little Bijou in my sketchbook for Diva's challenge.

  And here are my first three tiles for Inktober Tangles. Bunzo, Dicso, and....

... Feeling Knotty. I really liked exploring the different ways I could draw Feeling Knotty. If you'd like to find the prompts to the Zentangle version of Inktober, you can visit this link.

paint with the colours of the wind

  Here's my tile for Joey's challenge:

  Here's a tile from Raye Burnett for the Travelling Tangles Project. Raye started with Flux on the corners. So I decided to echo that with a lot more Flux-y tangles. Ando is featured, along with Fe-Ba for the background. And I don't know whether the top band in the quarter circle has a name but I've been using it in my tiles quite often lately. Shading was done with Tombow marker 977, and highlights were added with a white Uni-ball Signo pen.

  There's a beautiful golden glimmer to it that the camera didn't pick up, so I took a video to show you, instead.

  On a personal project front, I did some tiles in a rainbow format to play around with my Tombow markers.

  These ones made up a circle, like a China plate.

  And here's one tile with very beautiful edges.

  If you live in Singapore and would like to purchase some Tombow markers, I sell them at the lowest cost possible. You can find out more via this link.

  In other news, I will be going to an event to work on part of the art installation titled "Tree Canopy" by Japanese artists Hirotoshi & Nami Sawada at the Tower Wing of Shangri-La Hotel Singapore. The event is happening this coming Tuesday, 12th September, from 7:30pm. I will make a post about it the day after. :)

back-dated post

  For some reason, this post was hanging out in my draft box and was never posted. (Oops.) But in any case, I thought you'd like to see the nice things I created.

Flukes and Hamadox. Simple yet so elegant.

If you look closely on the bottom left side of the tile, you'd see that I had tried adding dots using a white pen but ended up not liking it...

  Luv-a and Diva Dance Waltz.

A variation of Shattuck and Florz, with a rainbow background done using Derwent's Coloursoft.

  This one is Bales with watercolours.

  And another with watercolours featuring Diva Dance Waltz with Paradox.

  Thanks for looking!

Go big or go home.

  My mum, Joni, and I had a workshop at Bukit Batok Zone 3 RC. We are in the process of creating a large 4m by 1m (13 feet by 3 feet) community art work. The purpose of the project is to get more people to find out about the Zentangle method, and also to create an art work that can be displayed at an art fiesta that Bukit Batok East Community Centre will hold in July.

  This was the first of three workshops that we will hold in June for Bukit Batok East Community Centre. I prepped the four canvases by painting hearts in neon pink acrylic paint. The idea was that the participants would learn a few patterns in each workshop and add them to the white areas on the canvases. Here's the progress so far:

Joni is on the left-most. I'm the tallest in the photo. heh heh heh

Look at my cute apron.

Trying to build the confidence of the participants.
"There are no mistakes," we say.

  On that note, I wanted to show you a page from one of our students, Connie. We taught "Garlic Coves" re-imagined, and she completed the page this way. How wonderful.

  Here's my tile for last week's Diva (diptych) and Joey (Vano) Challenge combined. I recently got a full set of Tombow markers and decided to add shading with them. They're water-based so they don't have that strong smell that alcohol-based markers usually have, which is great. I've been loving them so far.

Vano and my version of Diva Dance Rock and Roll.

  Thanks for stopping by. I hope you've been inspired. :) Until next week, keep tangling!