December 31, 2016

Gleanings of the Week Ending December 31, 2016

December 31, 2016/ Gwen Morrison

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Best of Mulitmedia 2016 – From The Scientist so most from the Life Sciences perspective. There is a display of infographics then links to the full stories. After that there are some videos. Quite a lot happened in 2016!

How to draw PACH – I am so pleased with this pattern. Remember the paper chains that children enjoy making with strips of construction paper? I remember making them…my daughter made them too. This is a Zentangle® pattern to draw them! It’s a lot easier than I thought it would be.

Happy Anniversary to Photo Ark! 10 Years, 6,300 Animals Photographed – The post is about Joel Sartore’s project to photograph the animals of Earth. Take a lot at the Photo Ark site as well!

Pregnancy leads to changes in the mother’s brain – I think most women acknowledge that there is a change…initially thinking it is just the effect of sleep-deprivation….and later realizing that part of the change is still there after the baby is sleeping through the night. For me – it not only helped me into motherhood, it also enhanced my ability to empathize with others. That made me a better manager and leader at work.

10,000-Year-Old Turf War – Even hunter-gatherers fought other groups of hunter-gatherers. I’m still following up on articles the students in the Osteoarcheology course on Coursera are finding.

Treasure Trove of Newly Discovered Species Includes a Newt that Looks Like a Klingon – My favorite is the first image (the Phuket horned tree agamid). Which one is yours?

“Celldance” Selections – 3 short cell biology videos: cell division, dendritic cell motion, and microscopy of living cells (within the body)

The strange effects of thinking healthy food is costlier – Evidently the health=expensive equation has a bigger impact on our perception (and purchasing) than objective evidence!

Phenology of Bee Genera: MidAtlantic States: USA – A slide show of graphs showing weekly counts for bees (by genus) in the area where I live from Sam Droege at the USGS Bee Lab….and links to other slideshows by the same author

Buying Experiences vs Buying Things – An infographic comparing spending choices (there is a link to expand the infographic…makes it readable). There are a lot of reasons that spending on experience adds to our happiness more than spending on things.

December 01, 2016

Zentangle® – November 2016

December 01, 2016/ Gwen Morrison

We were traveling for more than a week in November – but that did not slow we down creating Zentangle® tiles at all. I’ve chosen 10 tradition tiles from the collection. I like colored tiles and inks…although I tend to return again and again to black as my favorite it. This month I have tended to not use as much shading…that is something to improve in December.

I did some not traditional Zentangle items in November. My favorite was owls. I got the idea from a Sue Jacobs blog post and promptly dug through the recycle basket in the upstairs of my housed and found a lot of empty toilet paper rolls to work with. The Ultra Thin Point Sharpie worked well for me. I positioned the owls on top of balsa wood sticks my daughter had bought in bulk when she was in high school and I had stuck in a large vase just waiting (years) for the owls to come along! I start with the eyes then just go from there.

And here are close-ups of the rest of the owls!

I took my car in for service in November and came back with the ‘number’ tag they use to track the car during the service…big red and green numbers…. Hard to resist overlaying a tangle pattern on them!

The Zentangle® Method is an easy-to-learn, relaxing, and fun way to create beautiful images by drawing structured patterns. It was created by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas. "Zentangle" is a registered trademark of Zentangle, Inc. Learn more at zentangle.com.

November 13, 2016

Leaf Rubbings

November 13, 2016/ Gwen Morrison

I decided to make some leaf rubbings during one of my leaf raking flurries. I took out a clip board, scratch paper, a red crayon, a graphite pencil and a blue colored pencil.

2016 11 img796.jpg — When my daughter was young we had always used crayons. But we still had some left-over fat crayons from her first grade. The crayon I used was found in a junk drawer – probably from a restaurant. I peeled off the paper to enlarge the area of crayon available to make the rubbing. It was hard to hold the leave still pressing down on the paper from above while I was trying to also hold the clipboard and move the crayon! The small leaf in this first one is a tulip poplar…the larger one is a sycamore (a rather small leaf from that tree).

2016 11 img797.jpg — The second page was a small tulip polar leaf and two maple leaves.

I switched to the blue colored pencil. There is a partial tulip poplar leaf in the lower right corner. The others are maple leaves.

The last one I did was a larger tulip poplar leaf with the graphite pencil. I couldn’t resist using it as a string for a Zentangle!

And now I have another round of raking to do….

November 01, 2016

Zentangle® - October 2016

November 01, 2016/ Gwen Morrison

At the end of each month, I scan all the Zentangle® tiles I created during the month and pick tiles for the monthly post – with a maximum set by the number of days in the month. October is a 31-day month so that’s how many tiles made it to the slide show below. I had 48 when I started and found it hard to pick 17 that would not make the cut.

I’m using the colored pens this month…and filling in solid areas. Some of the tiles are on paper that does not soak up the ink (leaving ink blots); it is lightweight packaging material that came with something we ordered…I should put the rest of the blank tiles I cut from it into the recycle.

I managed to create tiles even while we were camping last week!

October 02, 2016

Zentangle® – September 2016

October 02, 2016/ Gwen Morrison

I averaged almost two Zentangle® tiles per day during September – so I had a lot to choose from for the slide show this month. It surprised me that there were so many because I usually make fewer tiles when I travel and I was away from home for more than a week during the month.

I am still enjoying different colored tiles and ink…trying to remember to add shading before I declare it ‘done.’

I noted some event of the day on the back of a few of the tiles – particularly if I savored what happened while I was creating the tile: a birthday, a hike, a particularly good meal. It was not so much that the event inspired the pattern or design; it was the emotional aftermath that the tile commemorated.

Enjoy the slide show of 30 Zentangle tiles for September 2016!

September 18, 2016

Morse Museum of American Art

September 18, 2016/ Gwen Morrison

On the morning before the launch, we opted for an activity in an air conditioned building: a visit to the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art. The museum houses a large collection of works by Louis Comfort Tiffany. It is located close to Orlando so convenient enough to where we would need to be later in the day to get on the buses to head to the OSIRIS-REx launch.

This was my third visit to the museum. The first time I was on a business trip and my meetings finished early enough to make a quick walk through of the exhibits before I headed to the airport.

The next time I visited was during the trip we made to Florida for the MAVEN launch. That time my husband and daughter were with me.

This time there were even more people in our group and it I became more aware that museums are enjoyed at different tempos. Of course – the first time through always takes more time.

One of the things I like about the Morse Museum is their brochures with information rather than a lot of labeling of the pieces themselves. Much of the time I enjoy just looking rather than reading…the blocks of texts can be distracting and detracting! But I like having the information available too.

I turned tourist in the gift shop of the museum and bought some earrings (my most common purchase when I travel) and some glass frames that are the perfect size for 3.5 x 3.5 Zentangle tiles. I like the dragonfly that is part of the museum’s logo too; it’s on the boxes for jewelry and shopping bags…gold on brown paper.

September 01, 2016

Zentangle® – August 2016

September 01, 2016/ Gwen Morrison

The time spent creating Zentangle® tiles seems like islands of calm focus that fit within the context of the rest of life so easily. Perhaps they fit because they are not overly time consuming….or because the rhythm of creating at least one a day has become a habit…a habit that I enjoy.

I’m still cutting tiles from folders with battered edges from my daughter’s years in public school. The boxes of old school paper are finally being cleaned out and we are only keeping a few mementoes rather than every paper. I enjoy the colored tiles.

Different colors of ink are a change too. I may go through a stage when I am back to off white tiles and black in sometime too --- but not in the near term.

Enjoy the slide show of 31 Zentangle tiles for August!

August 02, 2016

Zentangle® - July 2016

August 02, 2016/ Gwen Morrison

I continued to enjoy the colored tiles cut from old folders my daughter used in elementary school – and that I am just now cleaning out a decade and more later. I tend to use more solid black rather than shading on these tiles although I do some shading too. I finally wore out the tortillon I go in the Zentangle® class that I took over a year ago and got a new one.

My favorite tile for the month of July was all purple and black. It started out with some Y shapes that were enclosed in 3 Hershey Kiss shape melted together then reconfigured as flowers in a vase…with auras and the fill. Even if I sometimes start out with a pattern I often don’t stick with it entirely and sometimes I don’t have a pattern at all – just inspiration from a botanical print!

Enjoy the 30 more tiles for my one-a-day Zentangle in July 2016!

July 03, 2016

Zentangle® - June 2016

July 03, 2016/ Gwen Morrison

June has 30 days so I chose 30 Zentangle tiles from the ones I created in June! My goal is to create one-a-day but I’ve discovered that it is not a hard goal to meet – sometimes I just keep going and create several.

I had several tiles that were odd sizes – because I am reusing any card stock I find – old business cards, left over pieces from when I cut a 3.5 x 3.5 tile.

The colored tiles are cut from old folders I’m finding as I clean out keepsake boxes. So far I am only cutting up the ones that are too raggedy at the edges to be used as folders…but that may change since I don’t have much use for folders anymore and most of them are not new enough looking to donate for school supplies. I like the rust brown tiles the best of the non-whitish tiles. Enjoy the June ‘show’!

June 03, 2016

Zentangle® - May 2016

June 03, 2016/ Gwen Morrison

2016 05 s img626.jpg — I’ve selected 31 Zentangles to include in this post since there are 31 days of May. Five that I chose were made on the back of old business cards – so did not display well with the square slide show of tiles. I liked them too much to pick others so I’m displaying them first. Some are plant like…

2016 05 s img979.jpg — Others start out as webs….

Or loops.

I was inspired by art nouveau books I found on Internet Archive and Hathi Trust as well.

Those same themes show up in the tiles as well. The tiles also are some new colors this month. I was cleaning out boxes of brochures and old folders; instead of putting everything into recycling, I used some of the heavier paper to cut tiles: red, yellow, and rust. I also found some dusty poster board that had probably been on the shelf for 10 years that I cut up into 3.5 x 3.5 inch tiles!

Enjoy the May slideshow!

May 22, 2016

3 Free eBooks – May 2016

May 22, 2016/ Gwen Morrison

The three eBooks I’ve picked to highlight this month have a common theme: Art Nouveau – a style popular from 1890-1910. Looking at these books from the period gave me lots of ideas for Zentangle® patterns ---- and some home decorating ideas as well.

Fuchs, Georg; Newbery, Francis H.; Koch, Alex. L'Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs modernes à Turin 1902. Darmstadt : Alexander Koch, Librairie des arts décoratifs. 1903. Available from Hathi Trust Digital Library here. The style appeared in fabrics and tile and architecture (extending into every aspect of artistic expression as well as daily life) and included a lot of motifs from nature.

Feure, Georges de; Puaux, Rene. Oeuvres de Georges de Feure. Paris. 1903. Available from Hathi Trust Digital Library here. The style included fashion too.

Rehme, Wilhelm. Ausgeführte moderne Bautischler-Arbeiten. Leipzig: Baumgartner’s Buchhandlung. 1902. Available from Hathi Trust Digital Library here. The integration of art in everyday places – like windows and doors – still has a lot of appeal. In much of the 100 years since the style reached its zenith, we have standardized elements of our environment to reduce costs but will that continue to be the case? It’s not that the standard doors and windows are ugly – just that they are boring because of the lack of variety.

May 02, 2016

Zentangle® - April 2016

May 02, 2016/ Gwen Morrison

Several changes this month:

I am doing a selection at the end of the month – forcing the number of Zentangles® in this post to be no more than the number of days in the month.
I bought some colored pens used them for the tiles I made while I was in Texas then left them as a gift. I’ll buy myself another set sometime in May.
Toward the end of April, my husband and I bought a scanner to digitize all our older pictures and slides….and it works for Zentangle tiles as well. This is the first month for scanned versions of the tiles and they do look better than the photographic method I had used previously.

Enjoy the slide show of the April Zentangles!

April 03, 2016

Zentangle® - March 2016

April 03, 2016/ Gwen Morrison

I tended to do more than one Zentangle each day in March. I continued to experiment with color and plant inspired patterns. I also name each tile – but sometimes when I look at the name later I realize that I have completely forgotten what I was thinking about when I selected the name!

Most of the time I am using card stock tiles cut to a standard 3.5 x 3.5 inch size. But I also used a pad from a hotel when I travelled in March…and old business cards.

I chose a project to make the alphabet using the same pattern for all the letters. I finally used up one of my Micron pens (some of the lines got very faint but I decided I liked the effect of the sputtering pen). It felt good to finish all 26 and move on to other patterns again.

As the month progressed, the trend seemed to be toward more color. I told myself that I was trying to us up the colored pencils that are over 40 years old…but it might just have been the moved I found myself in. After finishing the alphabet!

I did try another experiment in March - photographing tiles before I colored them with the idea of creating pages suitable for coloring. The white tiles were not bad but the off white ones were too gray looking. When I use up the card stock I have, I'll switch to white and it will be easier to create those coloring pages!

March 02, 2016

Zentangle® – February 2016

March 02, 2016/ Gwen Morrison

My Zentangle-a-day goal was very easy to meet in February since I didn’t travel way from home and didn’t have many other commitments. I learned the Molygon pattern (upper right tile below) and proceeded to use it throughout the rest of the month.

I often decide that I like to use just one color. I experimented using a label for a tile this month – too glossy, won’t do that again.

I occasional get in the mood to use black paper and gel pens…but not frequently. The biggest tile of the month was the back card stock weight from a pad of paper I used up. The 3.5 x 3.5 inch tiles are still my favorite size.

I found a package of file cards – lines on one side and white on the other. They make for an odd tile size; I don’t have another use for them so I’ll continue to use them but I won’t buy more.

I’m also using up some very old colored pencils – a set that my husband had in high school that are probably 40+ years old. Sometimes I get in a mood to not use any color at all!

But then I swing back to color – sometimes extreme. There is definitely a link between Zentangle and the popularity of adult coloring books! I don’t think I will ever buy a coloring book since I enjoy the Zen aspect of drawing patterns. Adding color is just an extra step

It is true that I don’t fill in the patterns with as much tangling if I am in the mood to add a lot of color.

Sometimes alternating layers of color become a theme.

Sometimes developing something mostly round (mandalas) is a theme.

Sometimes almost round shapes remind be of shields. Botanical themes pop into my tiles frequently.

Toward the end of the month – I made more tiles without color. Looking at them now they could use some additional shading but – for some reason – I didn’t take the time.

February 02, 2016

Zentangle® – January 2016

February 02, 2016/ Gwen Morrison

Last year at this time I was taking my first Zentangle® class. I’ve branched out in several directions from the ‘purity’ of those initial black ink, standard size efforts. Not I like to experiment with colors – inks and colored pencils. The images sometimes take on the look of something ‘real’ although in a very abstract way. I have favorite patterns that tend toward tentacles rather than squares. I take inspiration from just about everything – plants, pottery, tiles, art. Even the size and type of paper title has varied – sometimes because I am trying to use up materials that have been around the house for ages and sometimes because the paper is just handy. The last two in the collection for this month were done in a blank book with a regular ball point pen while I was in an airport! Everyone could us a little Zen in an airport….

January 04, 2016

Zentangle® – December 2015

January 04, 2016/ Gwen Morrison

It’s now been a full year of Zentangle®-a-day. It’s become an easy habit to maintain. Did I draw more spirals and fiddleheads in December with Hawaiian vegetation as my inspiration – maybe. I also continued to name my Zentangles. Can you find the one I titled ‘female cyclops’?