Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Zingertime!

This is our last week of Alphabet Monotangles...and the tangle is a fun one: Zinger!

I was excited about it, because that is a pattern I like a lot. Thing is, zinger is a filler, not necessarily the star of any given tile. It adds a lot of sparkle and some wonderful detail in any corner, or along any line, but it's rare to find it as the centerpiece. Hence, it was actually pretty tough to get a piece that I liked. For several pages in my sketchbook I played with zinger. *sigh*

It didn't work on a string,
bleh


 it didn't really work "biggified" (isn't Lori Byerly's style just something! I love what she does with EVERY pattern)  anyway, when I tried "biggifying" zinger, it was pretty much laughable.

  
snork  










Maybe REALLY big? Like, fill the page with one zinger? 

Well, I was getting kind of bored with it, when the idea to do something inside a shape, with some depth maybe. So I started with a circle and drew my zingers inside, trying to make it look deep. It was turning out to be another disappointment because I couldn't get it the way I envisioned.

But, I had started, so I called the circle good and looked at it for a bit. Put some rays coming straight out and zingered them. Ugh! What on EARTH did it need? Because nothing I did was turning into a pleasing piece.

So I went back to the beginning. That is, what had always pleased me about zinger? It reminds me of little heads of grass or tiny flower buds. So, just for fun I put a row of zinger along the bottom of the page. Ahhh...this was nice.

At this point, I was really playing, not trying to get it looking good or pleasant. Just one line at a time, playing around with the pattern. Over and over again, I made many little buds on slender stems. NOW it was starting to please me.

Some dotted swirls rising up from the zinger "meadow" ... then since there was motion from the "ground" upward, I thought the "sky" might respond...with a shower of random zingers.

Added a border and some corners et voila!


And looky there! It's a likable piece, after all. Like the sky and the land blessing each other.

6 comments:

  1. this is beautiful, your zinger's are very filigree

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  2. I love your expression 'biggified' lol. I shall call it that now, I won't be able to get it out of my head. I too tried to biggify zinger, I thought I would just do the head in a whole tile and then fill the sections, but then I remembered it is a Monotangle so that was a non-starter too! You have ended up with a lovely meadow, I wish the sun was shining so beautifully here.

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  3. Oh yes you nailed it! I love the little dots that add movement to the li'l zingers. Love this!
    ~ joey ~

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  4. I love it! And I love the description of your process, of pushing through until you had something you liked! Thank you, Heidi Sue!

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  5. Back again after looking at the Lori Byerly's page. Sooooooooo cool. I really want to try this. Fits right in with my minimalist yearnings !

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