Ratoon, Lovely Ratoon!!!

For the last several months I have enjoyed the lovely work of Anica Gabrovec a.k.a. Zen Linea, as she used Ratoon. I was soooo glad when the tangle tutorial was put on youtube. I watched both that were available and began playing with it. It is fun for me to play with. I mentioned this last week and even shared a simple white on black tile I did.

I’d also done a quick Ratoon on a tan artist tile (4″ square) and as I also stated last week, had drawn some stripes behind it and then put it to the side, not knowing how to proceed. Well with this week’s Diva Challenge to use Ratoon, I pulled it back out. I’ve liked how Anica has used tan tiles and perused her Instagram to get some ideas on how to proceed on this tile.

Here it is before any backfill or shading.

Ratoon before shading ~ Lifeofjoy.meI took my white gelly roll pen and decided to just put some angled lines down on the background stripes. At first I didn’t think the my gelly roll pen was working because I couldn’t see the ink but then lifted the tile and saw that the white was there. I adjusted my angle and filled the background with lines. Then back to Anica’s instagram to see what else I should do. After studying her lovely work, I decided to use the white General pencil and a standard #2 pencil for some various shading.

I opted to try to fill the center and make it an orb. I don’t think I quite got the shading right but it is a good start.

Here’s the tile when I finished.

#DC383 Ratoon ~ Lifeofjoy.meDo I need to but a dot or two of white along the bottom? I just don’t have much experience with this kind of thing yet and am not sure what to do. I did get out my 6B pencil on the bottom of the center to get it really dark but all the rest of the black shading was done with the standard #2 pencil. I’d love your caring critique/suggestions on how to improve. Now as I’m looking at it here, I’m thinking that I should have added a bit of rubbing around the border too.

Next I pulled out another discarded tile I’d done in the last week of Ratoon. I had just grabbed a tile that was laying around (even had a bit of an impression on it from a cup or something) and just wanted to draw Ratoon. I grabbed a pinkish glitter pen (which is sadly lacking in the glitter department) and tangled and laid it aside.

I decided I wanted to try my hand at a gem in the middle. I’ve been intimidated by them for a very long time. I even bought an ebook from Eni Oken on it. (Unfortunately I never did anything with it after my initial read through . . . I prefer books in my hand rather than ebooks but I digress.) I’d seen some videos on youtube by Vitruvian Art on how to draw gems and stones. (BTW, if you haven’t drawn either, concentrate on one or the other, don’t confuse yourself with both like I did.) Anyway, I’d seen these videos back in November when around the time my dad had open heart surgery. It had seemed so easy and I was taking the plunge and all I got done was this . . .

Drawing my first gem ~ Lifeofoy.meYep, that’s it. It was at that point that my dad was rousing from anesthesia and I was able to go in and see him. I never did get back to this.

Well, two months is a long time, so I went into my youtube history and found the videos I’d watched that had made it look so simple here, here, and here. The first is a short five minute tutorial and the last is some hints with Prismacolors, since that is what I have.

I forgot to take a picture of the tile before I added the gem but here it is all finished. I think it looks a bit better a bit smaller.

Green Gem Ratoon #DC383 ~ Lifeofjoy.meI’m not sure what else to do to it. I did a very light shading with a very light pink on the outside, which you might be able to see on the left side but am considering just blackening that all in. I found a prismacolor pencil that worked for shading the “glitter” pen I used. This is actually my very first gem, and as such, am pretty proud of it but would love any caring critique you might have. I did go over the gem with my blender pencil but it is so scratchy and doesn’t really seem to do a lot.

I’d also played around with my metallic gelly roll pens on a black tile using Ratoon. (I told you I love this tangle!)

Multi-colored metalic Ratoon ~ Lifeofjoy.meI was just using the pens quickly, so my lines are not all wonderful but I do love how pretty it is. :)

Oh, I did take some photos of these tiles to share.

natural light ratoon with gem ~ Lifeofjoy.meTan tile Ratoon ~ Lifeofjoy.me#DC383 ~ LIfeofjoy.meAs always, I really appreciate you stopping by and taking the time to comment. I really like the feedback on how I’m doing. :)

I hope you have a wonderful week.

Until next time, God bless,

Michele ºÜº

7 thoughts on “Ratoon, Lovely Ratoon!!!

  1. You done great with the gem. I tried it but not a good result yet. I bookmarked the links. Your Ratoon came out wonderful!

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