she sells seashells by the seashore

  Here's what I've been up to in the past weeks... First off, some tiles from the Travelling Tangles Project.

  Let's start with this beautiful circle tile from Elena Greer...

  A tiny Bijou from Yvette Campbell. 

Shading done using Peerless watercolours. White highlights done using a Uni-Ball Signo Broad pen.

  Joey van Oort sent this tile to me for the June 2017 Flower Swap.

I tried to have the tile look like a flower. It was coloured using Peerless watercolours, and the white highlights are from a Uni-Ball Signo Broad pen. 

  I did some prep-work for my Zentangle classes... Tiny coloured squares made using watercolours.

  Which I think inspired what I drew for this week's It's A String Thing #235 (top). My tile for the Diva challenge is below it. We were asked to use our name as a string.

  Lastly, here's a pretty seashell I drew using Caran D'ache's Neocolor II. I really like how it turned out and am looking forward to creating more of such painterly drawings using my Neocolors.

In case you were wondering: the ballpoint pen is included in the picture because that's what I used as the outline for the shell.

  Thanks for dropping by. I hope you're having a great weekend.

not everything is black and white

  Last week was crazy busy for me. But I've finally found the time to slow down and get some ink on paper. :)

  Are you still keeping up with Inktober? I've been diligent in creating something for all the prompts but I've not been posting anything on my social medias.. which is a little odd. But I guess you do what works for you, yea?

  Here are my tiles for this week's Zentangle challenges:

For "It's a String Thing" #216
The colours in Abeko were done in Coloursoft coloured pencils. The background was done with Peerless watercolours. White auras were added using a Uni-ball Signo Broad pen.

Joey's 3D triangle... The string has gotten lost in the background. But basically, one side of WUD followed the edge of the string, and Frunky was used within the triangle itself.

  I happened to choose to draw my tile for Joey's challenge on black before I got to know that Laura wanted us to do something on black paper this week. So here's another black tile for her challenge:

And if you notice, I've changed my chop. It's on the lower right on this tile and is a stylised version of my Chinese family surname. I'm excited to use it in my future tiles.

   I think chops can be extremely personal. In Chinese calligraphy, your chop is hand-carved and your skills as an artist will not only be judged based on how your calligraphy looks like, but also where you place your chop and how it looks. A Chinese painting missing the artist's chop can be worth very little. Imagine that- just because of a tiny signature...

  I also feel that in my personal artistic journey, I've felt a need to change my chop/signature every time I felt a new chapter of my life starting... Have you changed your signature before? Or do you still use the very first signature you had?

happy birthday to...

  August was kind of crazy this year.

  From the 1st to the 9th, The Hubby and I went to Bali for a holiday. The 9th also happens to be Singapore's National Day. Our nation celebrates with a huge parade and lots of fireworks. Then on the 13th, it was one of my best friend's birthday. On the 16th it was my mother-in-law's birthday. On the 23rd, it's my mum's birthday. And we are finishing the month off with MY birthday. woohoo!

  Speaking of birthdays; it's Adele's It's A String Thing Weekly Challenges' fourth birthday. Here's my tile to celebrate:

Four candles, and Knightsbridge. It took me two tries to get the idea I had in mind correctly onto paper.

  And then aside from all of these birthday celebrations, I have begun to try to start new opportunities for Everything Is Art. I joined the UOB Painting of the Year competition. And I'm getting back into the swing of teaching in-person Zentangle classes. It's been wild.

  But I still have found time for other artsy things. Here's my tile for Joey's challenge: African Artist. This tile will eventually join eight other tiles to form one large Opus-sized art work. :) I'm excited.

One tile a week; nine tiles in nine weeks. It's going to look great. I can feel it.

  And lastly, here's my tile for Diva's Challenge: Fragment D1.

  I've made a little booklet for seven Bijous. And this is one of the tiles that will go into the booklet. I'm planning to turn it into a class. We'll see how it goes. ;)

  Want more inspiration? See what I did in my sketchbook in the past week in this blog post.

planning to plan

  I'm queen of starting-new-projects-but-never-getting-around-to-completing-them... So there's not as many completed projects for you to see this week as I would have liked. But some is better than none, eh?

  My tile for last week's It's a String Thing challenge:

Zinger plus Pixioze.

  Some colourful tiles for the Travelling Tangles Project:

  And some ATCs that I want to swap with others. The green one is going to someone living in California. And as of now, the purple one is still available. Let me know if you'd like to swap an ATC with me. :)

  An update of my June Tanglelendar. This month, I'm trying to focus on official Zentangle® patterns.

  And lastly, here's a tile done during a class that I taught. Featherfall in a circle with some basic shading. I might re-create this idea in a proper Zentangle tile because I like it that much.

  Thanks for dropping in to see what I've been up to this week. I'll see you again next week. :)

it has been a challenging week

   My submission for last week's Diva Challenge: Crux. Such a pretty tangle.

Here's the tile without black filling in or shading.

And here it is after.
I made videos on how to draw Cadent. You can find them on my How to Draw (this tangle) series.

  And here's my tile for this week's challenge:

Drupe and Poke Root.

  My submission for this week's Joey challenge:

I don't know if this is still considered to be Knightsbridge when the grid is that random...
But there *is* a "XII" string as its foundation.

My tile for IAST #143:

Sand Swirl, N'zeppel, Tipple, and a small area of Swarm.

  And here's one last tile from Travelling Tangles. A collaboration done between me and Chris Titus.

Want to take part in a global Zentangle collaborative project?
Join us over at Travelling Tangles' Facebook group.

  Thanks for viewing my tiles. I appreciate all the comments you leave on my blog. :) Till' next week... Keep tangling!

the start of something new

  As always, I've been creating lots in the past week.   ^-^

My version of Mooka. You can view my step-outs to it via this link.
Initially, I wanted to add Tipple or SharlaRella to the background, but I settled on keeping it really simple.

Moving on to something more complex.
Abundies, Fleavy, Printemps, SharlaRella, and Mooka (at the top left corner).

I used lots of SharlaRella this week, didn't I?
Paired with Zengems and my very own tangle, Singapore Sling. You can see step-outs to Singapore Sling via this link.

  Unfortunately, I didn't take part in many challenges because none of them really spoke to me. I did, however, participate in Adele's "It's a String Thing #128". Here's my submission for the challenge:

We used String #129, with Paradox and Hypnotic.
I decided to do a monotangle. I love the string, though, and I had so many ideas that I wanted to try... Definitely going to use the string again soon.

I have trypophobia- the fear of holes, and this tile triggered it a little... I had to set it aside once or twice when I would overthink things.... I'm happy with how it turned out, though.

More Zengems! Paired it with Flux and Crescent Moon.

With this one, I was trying out Chainging. Did the gem in the centre, and then thought a simple background would look better.

  Here's the something new that I mentioned in the title of this post:

  I'm starting a tangle-a-day project. I know that Carole Ohl sells her own tangle-a-day calendar, but I was looking for something smaller... Just a small square for each day that I could complete within ten minutes as a warm up. I created this calendar that is printable in A4 format and I'm sharing the template with all of you for your own personal use. I also give permission to all CZTs to share this with their students in class. Please do not sell the template, or upload it elsewhere. You can download the calendar page from this link. I hope you have fun with it, and enjoy using it as much as I have had so far. I'll also be uploading February's calendar a few days before the month starts. So look out for that in a future post. :)

  Class things:

Kristen, a student of mine, brought in her daughter, Bella, for a class. I had to think of a way to introduce the Zentangle method to Bella whilst still teaching Kristen new patterns. I think the class went superbly well because Bella has decided to join future classes. Woohoo!

Here's a white tile that I messed up and painted over with black acrylic.
I love the tile now. And it's not a mistake if no one sees it, right? The Zentangle idea of "No mistakes; only opportunities." is very very true here. hehehe

Finally, an original tile with another pretty gem on it.
I like how the yellow and green leaves look neon in colour.

  That's about all I have for this week. I hope I've inspired you to try something new. Don't forget to try the tangle-a-day calendar. I love all the comments all of you leave, and I'm thankful for each and every one of them. Until next week, keep tangling~

is there such a thing as too much creativity

  Happy New Year to everyone! We've been busy here at Everything Is Art. Planning new classes... Trying new tangles and strings... Doing more Zentangle inspired works... Is there such a thing as too much creativity? I just have so many ideas floating in my head. Not that I'm complaining! I'm really happy about it. And I'm also really excited to show you some of the tiles that the people at Everything Is Art have done over the past week or so.

  I did some full pages in my sketchbook:

This one was done with a Sakura Souffle pen.
You can read a review of it by clicking here.

And this is an almost-completed page. I want to add shading to this piece after.

  Onwards!

  Here's my tile for It's a String Thing #125:

I wanted the "Tipple" to sort of fall in a weighted fashion. You're meant to tilt the tile a little.

Joni's tile for the challenge.
I like the belt thing she did with "Sprocket".

  Here's a sneak preview to a new time lapse drawing I'll be doing:

The time lapse will be of the Zentangle patterns around the jewel. I'm planning to do a tutorial of how to draw jewels with black coloured pencil as shadow soon.

  And here's some coloured Zendalas I did:

This one didn't use many recognisable Zentangle patterns.

This one used African Artist, Pinepple, and Crescent Moon.

  I also taught Zendala classes last week. The students did great. Here's one by Muniza:

Last but not least, here's a tile Joni and I did for Diva's weekly challenge.
"Lauraknot" and Diva Dance.
I did the Auraknot; Joni did the Diva Dance and shading.

  I did too many tiles, so I'll be posting the remainder of them later on in the week. (Update: that post is up already. You can view it by clicking this link.) Until then... Keep tangling! ^-^