Auraknot Noir

Auraknot is such a friendly tangle...I just want to hang out with it and take it places! Introduce it to my other art materials...host parties so it can mingle with other tangles....

In the second Auraknot tile that I am submitting to the Diva's Challenge this week, I chose to pair the latest official tangle with the first one I learned: Crescent Moon. I completed this on a black Zentangle tile with a white Gelly Roll pen. I used a white charcoal pencil for just a little bit of blended lightness around the edges.

I've been wanting to work more on the black tiles for quite some time, and this was a perfect opportunity. I did most of the line work at my son's guitar lesson on Tuesday. I love tangling while sitting in on Joseph's lessons. I get to hear everything, but don't intimidate him by watching. C-Gal enjoys going to the lessons, too. On this day, she was recovering from the oral surgery she had that morning, and her medication was starting to wear off, so she a bit uncomfortable. She simply enjoyed watching as I drew a line, turned, the tile, drew another, turned, drew another, and so on.

So down below are a few pics of Joseph. I had mentioned in a previous post that he had transformed into a Greek god...given that this is the Tanglefish blog, you can only imagine how cool I thought it was that Joseph had to dress up as Poseidon for a Greek Fashion Show at the end of the school year. We had a ball pulling this costume together! Blue pillow cases (thanks, Tuesday Morning!), a homemade beard (created from the fluffiest furry fabric we could find) a Greek fisherman's cap, a beaded, sequined vest (weighs a ton!) that a colleague had picked up at a Brooklyn stoop sale and given to Caroline a few years ago...and a custom light saber Joseph had put together as his Spring Break souvenir from Disney this past March, to make a great light-up trident (thanks to some cardboard and tinfoil), complete with sound effects. Oh, and a crushed velvet cape in silver. And a fishing net that had been in Joseph's dresser drawer for years without him even knowing about it. But I knew. I had bought it when I thought his deep blue room would have a nautical theme.

And here's Poseidon on his birthday a few months ago, with the guitar that I got him with. He asked for nothing for his birthday except a few helium balloons for his group's Euro Fair table display on Finland since the Euro Fair just happened to fall on his birthday. So I had to think of a good gift to surprise him with. I think the guitar plus lessons was not a bad choice! He's progressing well, and I love to hear him practice.

Here it is before I added white charcoal
 outside the the Crescent Moon perimeter.

Back to Zentangle: here's a small image of my tile before adding the white with the charcoal pencil. I rather liked it like this, and it was difficult deciding whether or not to add any white highlights. But Zentangle offers opportunities to explore the wonderful concept of "what if," so I went ahead and forged forward with the white pencil (after scanning it first to have a record of the "before" look). What do you think? Do you prefer it with or without the blended white charcoal at the edges? You won't hurt my feelings--I like it either way!

 In my next post I'll be bragging on C-gal and sharing her first Auraknot ZIA. :-)