Working on scale…

Christmas Lights

“If God had really intended men to fly, he’d make it easier to get to the airport.”  ~George Winters

I am starting to sense a theme in my life over the past few months and it has to do with my wallet.  I have to travel to Dallas today for meetings starting at noon.  I am every bit as careful with my company’s money as my own and opted to fly in very early this morning to save hotel costs.  Even though it meant a 6 am flight.  A supreme sacrifice for me as I am not a “morning” person.  This necessitates getting up at 4 am to dress and allow travel time to the airport.  Ugh!  As I arrived at the airport this morning, I discovered my wallet missing from my purse.  Not only can I not board the plane, I can’t reschedule another flight since I don’t have my credit card.  Allllll the way back home and pounding my brain the whole time to figure out WHAT happened to my wallet.  As I pulled into the garage, there it was.  It had evidently fallen out of my purse when I loaded the car and I never noticed.  I am really not awake at 0-dark-thirty.  Sooo, at least it wasn’t lost or stolen.  New flights are booked, but I will be several hours late for my meeting.  Lessons learned: check for your wallet before you pull out of the garage, don’t be pennywise and pound foolish – go up early and deal with the hotel cost.

Since I am up at an ungodly hour, with a little gift of time, here I am.  I’ve been playing around with color on my Zentangles and have actually completed a couple of Diva Challenges, though I didn’t get a chance to upload them to her slide show.  Challenge 49 was to use a red string.  I decided to do two of these.  One that really celebrated the string and the other keeping it simple.  I was surprised that the simple string – even though it was red – really disappeared into the tile once it was all tangled.  I had to go back and add more red ink to really see it.  Challenge 50 was to “Biggify.”  This involved taking a few favorite tangles and making them much bigger than we would ordinarily draw them.  I decided to do three – normal, big and BIGGIFY.  They are shown with the same string and all together so it’s easier to see the changes in each tangle as the scale increases.  This is a very good exercise for those just getting started with Zentangle.  Because the tile is only 4.5″ square, the tendency is draw smaller scale.  Pushing the envelope with scale give some freedom in shading but puts more importance on making each stroke carefully.  Most people come to the realization that some tangles are much better when they are drawn larger.  If you are struggling to find the right scale for your work, try this challenge and keep it to one tangle on a tile – or mark out a few tiles on your sketchbook page.  Enjoy the process and remember there are no mistakes in Zentangle!