ZenAgain's DaVinci inspired
This week I participated in the online ZenAgain conference held by Zentangle founders. Four of their sessions were inspired by famous artists. This one was inspired by none other than Renaissance man Leonardo Da Vinci, who kept copious notebooks with designs of his thoughts and inventions.
Zentangle founders guided us in an interesting session where we channeled Da Vinci to see how he would tangle, producing four different designs.
We used Renaissance techniques with brown and black ink, pencil, charcoal pencils over a tan Opus tile. I have to confess I’m not a huge fan of the larger size Opus tiles - one of the things that attracts me the most to the Zentangle method is the use of small tiles, short duration projects. But I tackled it valiantly and even treated the background with colored pencils and some delicate inking to add that Renaissance distressed look.
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This arch is adapted from a Renaissance arch from the book “Suggestions of Design” by John Leighton and James Colling (1880) found on archive dot org. I also added some Found Flowers on a frame around the arch. Shaded and colored with Inktense and Pitt Artist Brush pens. If you goto my blog you'll see I wasn’t able to stay faithful to the original - I love the way my hand just takes over and adds whatever details it feels like.