I really liked the Valentangle2019 prompts so even though I didn’t end up finishing them up to this point, does not mean that I shall not. For day 9 the prompt was Star-ING, where you tangle ING the form of a star. Then the prompt was to add hearts to the inner parts.

This week’s Diva Challenge is to use Holly’s tangle HaWy. I read the linked post and thought I’d use the Star-ING in the foreground of the tile. So, naturally, I tangled Star-ING first and then proceeded to attempt to put HaWy all over the rest of the tile. I even put Star-ING to the side to leave plenty of space for HaWy.

Unfortunately I made my offset dot grid too large; yep, not enough dots to do the tangle any justice whatsoever. I then decided to flip the tile over and try to copy the stepout. But that too proved to be too much for me. Laura had warned us that it was a high-focus tangle but she’d said that about Ratoon but I didn’t have any trouble with that one, so I thought I’d be fine. I guess it may have been the two video tutorials I’d seen of Ratoon that made the tangle easier for me.

Here is the back of the tile where I tried to follow the stepout for HaWy.

I think my problem with it is that I had a hard time seeing the red lines for the next step and I couldn’t find the logical steps. I guess this is one that I need to see and hear explained. Both Ellen and Melinda did a great job explaining Ratoon, so I had no confusion with that one and can still tangle that one from memory.

So here is my tile for this week’s diva challenge before shading.

I decided to add a bit of red to the hearts to make them stand out, especially since I was trying to draw the attention away from the abstract background.

Of course, now that I see it this big, I see where I needed to blend the darkened shadow lines a bit more AND my pencil should have been sharper. I do like how easy it was to make the triangular sections into hearts. I also liked using my water color pencils. I ended up having to add more to the center to darken it but I think it turned out nice.

Here’s a picture of it in natural lighting.

See how much better it looks from further away where you can’t see where the shadow lines are so crisp?

I’ve started Festina Lente 2019. I love that there are so many organized challenges. I went ahead and bought the pdf to go with it because she had it so modestly priced. However you could totally participate without it. Although I am not Catholic, nor in a religion that collectively observes Lent, like Advent, I find that it can be used to help get/keep ones focus on the Savior as Easter, the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, approaches.

Lent did not officially start until today but Arja started the prompts on March 3rd. The first week’s focus/theme is Labyrinth. I’ll be incorporating all the week’s tangles into this one labyrinth that I drew yesterday using the Helix that I got very inexpensively at Mardel last year. I drew it in a sketchbook that is nearly 7″ square. Here is the labyrinth that I will be tangling.

Well, I’ll probably lengthen the radius to the edge. The radial line did not go all the way to the edge of the helix and I just saw that I needed to finish it to the outer edge.

That’s it for me today. Thanks for stopping by and for your kind comments; they’re appreciated.

Until next time, God bless,

Michele ºÜº