Tangled Tile II

This one is also an early attempt at a ZenTangle tile. I tried to break free of the boundaries a little bit. I think I was less successful. The string of beads coming down the bottom just looks weird and out of place.

Tangled Tiles I

One of my first Tangled pieces. Of everything here, my hands down favorite part is the upper left corner. That section reminds me of dragon scales, but also of an ear of corn. Don't ask. It's a weird place in my brain.

Vertigogh Tangle

I never really considered this one done, but I can't really think of what I want to add to it. So it's simple, but I like it as it is. Maybe someday I'll add more, but for now it's fine. It was mostly created so I could learn how to do the tangle in the middle, the fern-like pine needle thing, called Vertigogh. Actually, if you're not familiar with ZenTangle, each pattern has a name. The rock to the right is called "Yin Cut", the mossy thing around the stone is called "Fescu" and the berries at the bottom are "Pokeroot" but I keep calling it Pokeberries.

Tombstone

My dad is a civil war historian. That seems like an odd way to start talking about a doodle I did, until you understand that he spends a decent amount of time in cemeteries looking for headstones of certain soldiers. Sometimes I come with. There is a lot of beautiful art to be found on monuments in a cemetery. This one is a combinations of a few I saw this past year. To be honest tho, my favorite thing about this picture is the circle of the moon and the tree behind the stone. I've been working on ways to artfully break out of the lines that border my doodles, and this one worked rather well.

Jack-o-Lantern

Another Halloween Tangle I did. Shading really made this one pop! I was afraid of doing the same tangle over the whole pumpkin, that it might loose definition, but the shading really helped emphasize the shape. I do think you loose the vines at the top tho. A learning experience, to be sure. After seeing this one, a friend asked me why I wasn't doing coloring pages. Now there is an idea! Coloring is hot right now. Maybe I can do something for the girls for Christmas this year. Hmm....

Black Cat

Going thru my sketch book the other day, I realized that I have a lot of work that I haven't posted. So here is a black cat I made for Halloween this year. I think I'm going to have to come up with a better way to photograph my work, this seems kind of dark. I'll figure something out. I hope.

Because Bobcats

A blogger I follow and adore, The Bloggess, just recently revealed that she does art that closely resembles ZenTangle. I love her work! Inspired by a recent post she made about a bobcat visiting her house, I made this picture and Tweeted it to her. Not sure she'll see it, she's on book tour right now.

NaNo, the end.

So you're all probably wondering how NaNoWriMo went for me. Well for my first year I'm proud to say I wrote nearly every day up until the last week. Just not on the story I wanted to write for NaNo. I started a story just for the month of November, but it just didn't want to be written. I got about 5,000 words in and stalled out. Instead I spent some time writing my fan fictions. Over all, for the month I wrote about 10-12k words. Just not on what I was supposed to write. *sigh* Then, about 3 days before Thanksgiving, I got my hand slammed in a car door. I didn't break my finger, but I was sidelined for a long time. I'm just now getting back to blogging.

Despite not finishing, I still think it was a cool thing to do. Maybe I'll be more involved next year. Or maybe I'll have decided this isn't the thing for me. Either way, for now I'll still be writing, just maybe not a massive novel. I'll happily stick to my short stories for now.


Warning, gross finger picture after the break. Don't click on "Read More" if you're easily grossed out.

Star Ornament

I love my library. Its big and so beautiful. And they have some pretty cool classes. They recently had what they called a "ZenDoodle" class. The name ZenTangle is a registered and trademarked name, so they can't officially call it that, but who cares. The teacher does some wicked cool art and I love to learn from her. The classes are more of an intro to ZenDoodling tho. I hope she teaches some more advanced techniques someday. So far the lib had one class in October for "Halloween ZenDoodle" and one just last week for "Holiday ZenDoodle." In each class we go over basics, work on some greeting cards, and make a project. For Halloween it was a bookmark. For the Holiday class we did a simple ornament. Here is the star I made. Simple because we only have a limited amount of time to work on it, but I'm happy with it.

Bloom Tangle

I got bored at work. No surprise, everyone does at some point. The night before, my co-worker made me a cute fox drawing. Thinking I'd do the same thing and make some simple thing for the girl I was working with that night I asked what her fav animal was. She said she didn't have one. So I decided on a flower. I'm not sure how the word "Bloom" came about. I think I was thinking of my Maple Leaf drawing I'd done before. Using the negative space. I got a bit carried away with the tangling in the background and didn't finish that night. I took it home to finish. When I brought it back, the co-worker I made it for said I should post it in our backroom so everyone can see it. That's where it is to this day.

The top photo is the finished piece. The picture below is what it looked like before I added shading. I snapped a photo because I was afraid that I would mess it up by shading it. I didn't. I love the shading, but now the two photos can show just how much difference shading can do to a piece.

NaNoWriMo ~ Day 4

Day 4 of NaNoWriMo and I've managed to procrastinate just enough to make me think, meh, I'm not that far behind. One good solid day and I'll catch up no problem. *goes back to playing Minecraft and watching reruns of Supernatural*. Yeah. that's me. I need to do 2 thousand words a day to make my goal of 50,000 words by the end of the moth. I'm at...umm... 2,787 total. Yeeeeaaah.... And to procrastinate even father, I'm writing a blog post. That is me in a nutshell. Maybe if I had a good solid idea of what I was writing, but honestly it's just a vague notion. I'm not sure how I'm gonna turn it into a book. I guess, even if I don't hit the 50k mark, just writing everyday will be an accomplishment.

An odd thing I have noticed writing this story, I've created a very weird tone in the way I'm writing it. It's almost like a formal medieval fantasy style. I didn't really know I had that in me. Here's a snippit of what I've written:

“Mistress Baker, How are you this lovely day,” A tall watch officer strode through her open door. “And might I add you are a vision yourself.”

“Corporal Donal, you've a silver tongue in you're head that you waste on me. I'm no doe-eyed maiden to cling to your coat tails and write poetry of your eyebrows.” Kalisin put on a playfully annoyed manner. She did enjoy the banter, even if she knew Donal never meant it truly.

“It was of my eyes, and Rosana was very passionate about that poem. I think I might still have that parchment. It was an inspired bit of verse if I say so myself.”

See what I mean? It's an unusual tone that I've fallen into. I kinda like it but not sure how I can keep it up. If I slide back into a normal speaking voice this will sound out of place. Meh, I can change it later. I just have to get it on the page right now.

NaNoWriMo: Dipping My Toe Into The Pool

I hated writing as a kid. I'd read constantly, but I hated to write. Somehow over the last few years that has changed. It started with just a few sentences outlining story ideas that grew into a few paragraphs. Then last year I discovered Fan Fiction. It was silly and fun. It wasn't until a few months ago that I realized I was putting more and more effort into my stories, researching history and actually trying to craft a decent plot instead of just slapping words together. It was then that a friend pointed NaNoWriMo.org out to me. A neat concept, you challenge yourself to write a 50,000 word novel in one month. Neat, but not really for me. I didn't like writing, didn't I? Well, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is next month, November, and I think I might give it a shot. Dunno, I have about 3 weeks to come up with an original idea. I'm playing around with one, but I have no idea if I can stretch it out to a whole novel. This is intimidating. Wish me luck!

Spheres

This one was a study in shading and making objects look round. Most came out round looking, but some still need some work. I couldn't decide on just what I wanted to do with the large middle sphere so I eventually just left it blank. I'm glad I did. It really turned out well. Another Zentangle in my sketchbook.

Blank Leaf

Despite not having an incredible amount of patience, I do love the look of a page filled to the brim with doodles. Not too long ago I discovered something called Zentangle. It's kind of like an organized approach to doodling. Calming and relaxing, you end up with something that looks super complex, but was ridiculously easy. Just take it a line at a time and you'll get there. For this one I just picked a leaf off the tree in my front yard and traced around it. Then I added a few random lines behind it and filled in the spaces with different doodles, or Tangles as they are referred to in Zentangling. This drawing was done directly into my sketch book. My sketchbook has a spiral binding on the top of it which I really like for Zentangle. You need to keep rotating the image to get your lines right and having the spiral at the top is easier to work around.

Introductions

Hi all! I'm not sure why I made this blog. It was late at night and I saw a cool video about how they make those super fancy colored pages inside hard cover books, and the name Marbled Pages just came to me. I half thought I'd use this blog for featuring cool books I've read, but now I think I'll use it for just anything artsy and literary.

First up, I'm not an artist. I like art, but I am under no illusions that I can make a living at it. Drawing just makes me happy so this blog can be where some of my work lives.

Second up, I'm not an author. I like telling stories, but I'm not all that good at the whole structure of a story thing. You know, beginning, build to climax, then resolution and epilogue thing? Meh. But I like to tell stories. So maybe I'll have some small works here. I am kind of addicted to writing limericks. I do also write on FanFiction.net Nothing major, just light and fun.

And last, I love to read. Like a lot. This blog was made with stories and books in mind so I'll try and pass on some beloved books and authors from time to time.