In last Wednesday’s Hump Day Zentangle challenge, I was feeling all light-hearted about our upcoming flight to Athens to begin our five week around the world trip. Our plan was to fly from Athens to Chania on the Greek island of Crete. We did end up on Crete, but two days later than planned because this happened.
In retrospect, it was worth the travel travail to get to Crete. We spent 5 days in Chania prefecture on the northwest side of Crete where my husband, Mr. Excitement, attended a medical research conference. We had hoped to have a few days to recover from the long trip from Philadelphia before the conference started, but that didn’t work out, so we were both not operating on all cylinders. Admittedly, he had to pretend to stay awake during five hours of dense scientific lectures every morning (including his own), while I could have a late-ish breakfast, and then go find a shaded table near the pool with my laptop.
I figured I could whip off a blog post describing our travel mis-adventure, but that took an excruciating amount of time. Then hotel wifi bandwith hasn’t been uniformly robust, so it’s hit or miss whether photos will load. Hence, the Hump Day (i.e. Wednesday) Zentangle Challenge has been very, very seriously delayed. Sorry.
Yesterday, we drove along a good bit of the north coast of Crete. Parts of it reminded us of the Route 1 drive known as Big Sur in California where mountains drop to or almost to the coast—except for the many olive trees and the Greek Orthodox churches.
That’s the Cretan Sea peaking out in the distance (part of the Mediterranean Sea), olive groves and a Greek Orthodox church.
Crete has a Mediterranean climate. However, it also has mountains high enough to be snow covered during winter. I was accustomed to beautiful and fragrant plumeria blossoms from our time in Hawaii, but I found them on Crete also:
Fragrant plumeria (a/k/a frangipani) blossoms. In Hawaii, they use them in leis.
As usual, during our time in Kolymvari in the Chania prefecture of Crete, I saw lots of patterns. At the entrance to the hotel dining room, there was this painting with raised textures built up with layers of oil paint and embedded sea shells.
As a Zentangle enthusiast, this abstract painting at the Avra Imperial Beach Resort in Kolymvari, Crete caught my eye. (The hotel had some nice swimming pools, but after the wide, sandy beaches I’m accustomed to “down the shore” in Brigantine, New Jersey, the little pebbly beach at the hotel wasn’t calling my name. There are other sandy beaches on Crete, but from Kolymvari, they are relatively out of the way and difficult to access, especially with a restricted rental car.)
Did you know you can tangle with fruit? At the conference’s last night’s celebratory dinner, there was food art, including this eye catching carved watermelon with vegetable tree flowers.
In two days (hopefully!), for the first Wednesday of the month, I’ll share some art from the Archaeological Museums of Crete (in Heraklion), and in Athens, showing that humans have been intrigued and attracted by patterns since time immemorial. But, for now, here’s last week’s overdue Hump Day Zentangle Challenge:
Hump Day Zentangle® Challenge #15: Ribbons and Chains
(If you’re new to the Zentangle Method start with this: What is Zentangle and Is It Habit Forming?)
Today’s Hump Day Zentangle Challenge is to use a “ribbon or chain” tangle to create spaces to fill in with other tangles.
In the days leading up to our departure from Philadelphia, I found myself drawn to drawing (get it?) “chainy” type compositions. I started with this:
I forgot to take a photo before I started adding color. Tangle: Betweed, Official Mother Ship Tangle. For newbies, other chain tangles that could work are 3-Loops-6 by CZT Mina Hsiao; Shattuck, a Zentangle Mother Ship original; my cable news is making me crazy Seespan; Coil by CZT Sue Jacobs; and Noom, a really fun one by Maria Thomas, one of the captains of the Zentangle Mother Ship. You can find others on my Pinterest Tangles board.
Then, maybe because I’d carried colored pencils all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, the continent of Europe and the Mediterranean Sea, I decided I should add color, but not too much:
But after a bit, I was sorry I had started down that road. I consoled myself by deciding if I got on that road, I could get off, so I stopped with the color, but the composition looked incomplete. I eventually ended up with this:
I filled in some of the spaces created by the Betweed chain, using: a reverse ‘Nzeppel where the spaces between the outlined “orbs” is filled in; a simple version of Membranart by CZT Tomàs Padrós from Barcelona in the autonomous region of Spain, Catalonia; and the one with the 3 dimiensional looking triangles I can never remember the name of.
Please Share Your Hump Day Zentangle® Challenge Creations!
Please share your responses to this week’s challenge with us in the Hump Day Challenge Facebook Group and/or on your Instagram, Twitter or Flickr feeds. Use the hashtag #hdchallenge15. If you’re not a member of the FB group, ask to join and I’ll add you.
There are other ways to share your work: We also have a Pinterest group board to share our Hump Day Challenge responses. Email me at suzanne@boomeresque.com if you’d like me to add you as a contributor to the Pinterest board or you can mention that in a comment with your Pinterest name below.
If you have your own blog and are posting your challenge responses there, leave the URL to your blog in a comment below so people can paste it into their browser and find your post. (PS: The first 2 times you comment, I will have to moderate the comment. After your first two comments on Boomeresque, your comments will appear without moderation.)
Feel free to share your work for this or any challenge at any time—even next week, next month, next year, ad infinitum. Participation in the challenges need not be linear! Last week’s post is so late it’s this week already!
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I only like to tangle at home,on my comfortable chair close by window where I have good daylight.
Of course, during the seminar I tangled in Providence too but that was the only exception.
I like the artfood on the pictures and your tiles, they are beautiful, just as Greece and maybe you can find a new pattern?
Wish you a wonderful stay and thank you for a pleasant challenge.
Your Rope is perfect. Have never tried this. Only the 2 braid like tangles. About ready to post the Joni Mitchell “Both Sides Now” tile. Working backward, up next is The Tree. Safe travels lucky lady.