Retreat at the Beach, Then Zen Again!

November is not the best time to travel from warm sunny Florida to Massachusetts and Rhode Island, BUT. . . . That's where Retreat at the Beach and Zen Again were!


At these two different art retreats, I learned so much that I want to share. First was Retreat at the Beach, a fantastic workshop with Cheryl Moote in Falmouth, MA. We experimented with mark making, colors and paints, stamping, etc. In the end, it was all put together into a small book.

💕Jennifer Cottrell and Dorian Eng 💕

So much inspiration!

Mark making and color exploration!

The wonderful Cherryl Moote!

Jane MacKugler! 😍

Immediately after Retreat at the Beach, 25 CZT's boarded the "big bus of fun", and went on to Providence, RI for ZenAgain with Rich Roberts and Maria Thomas, the founders of the Zentangle method. There, we joined 100 other CZT's for an inspiring 2 1/2 days of pure Zentangle!

Taking flight!

A photo op with Rick Roberts! Woo hoo!

Sowing the seeds of a Tangled Garden!

Sue Clark and myself! Sue was my
 first CZT teacher! (and now, great friend)!

Great friends!

The theme was "The Tangled Path", focusing on planting seeds of creativity, and blooming.

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Of course, we had to have a bingo night . . . . but with Rick

and Maria, it was full of tangling and laughing!

Hollibaugh technique used in a Zendala tile
inspired by the artist, Ernst Haeckel.

This is an example of Ernst Haeckel's
sea creature  illustrations.

Even more techniques were introduced, we had an evening of great dancing to Rick's rock band, time to visit with "old" friends and make new friends, and generally try to connect as much as possible with the other 110 CZT's. Whew!

Maria Thomas tangles on torn up sheets to use as napkins!
What a treasure!

The start of another napkin by Maria.

The final "icing on the cake" was having time to walk around Providence with my friend Randall Craven. We visited the RISD (Rhode Island School of Design), which was wonderful!

More Dingbatz!

Randall and I went off a search

for Dingbatz!

A beautiful example of marginalia: decorating the margins of a manuscript.

Ilminated letter

Our final stop: a delightful Swedish cafe for hot cocolate!

Life imitates art!

  

On being a teacher and a student!

At the beginning of August, I had had the opportunity to participate as both a student and a teacher of Zentangle! I was able to teach a wonderful group of new tanglers at Jerry's Artarama in Fort Collins, and the next day I was in the role of the student, taking a class. I have to say that I enjoyed both roles equally well!

Our (very) talented class at Jerry's Artarama in Fort Collins. What a fun group!

As you can see by both of these tile mosaics, they were "naturals" at tangling!

The next day, I took the student role and went to Patricia Dusty Darrah's class in Denver. We worked on Fantasy Letters as Zentangle Inspired Art.

First, we discussed tangled that would be good fillers for our letters, spent some time practicing and "warming up", and then started tangling.

The next step was to color the tangles, cut out the negative spaces (a new skill!), then mount the letter on a black background.

(No band-aids were harmed in this phase!)

Here is the final letter, mounted onto a black background.

Illuminated letter: the process of a Zentangle-inspired-art piece.

     Last Saturday, I had a wonderful time participating in an Illuminated Letter workshop at Sue Clark's house. (See her blog at: www.TangledInkArt.blogspot.com) Seven of us created Zentangle-inspired-art pieces on Opus tiles, which are 10"x10". We all shared ideas and inspirations, and had a good start to our pieces. . . . . and a big "thanks" to Pat Mathes for pointing me in the direction of David Nicholl's tutorials on drawing Celtic knots!
After 5 hours, (which included a pot-luck lunch!) we took our tiles home to finish individually.

 



 I had SO much fun working on this piece, from finding the right letter form, to dividing the tile with strings, to playing with composition and tangles! The possibilities are truly endless!

      That being said, here are some photos to show you the process of this Opus tile:

ENJOY! .... and happy tangling!