Challenge 329 - Fragment D1

It's De One

This challenge was very hard for me. I could barely follow the instructions for D1 without losing track of the pattern, and my sketch book now has several pages of D1 fragment combos that drift off into confusion. For some reason I just got lost in the lines and suddenly I could no longer see the pattern or continue to draw it. This had never happened before in my almost a whole year of tangling. I do know that I prefer curvilinear and organic patterns to this type of grid and linear pattern. But I usually can keep it straight what I am doing.

I went with the 4 D1's that mostly cover the tile and make a star like shape because it seemed the easiest to follow.  I added a D1 border. I chose my second tangle pattern by drawing a card from the Tiny Tangle Deck. This cute little box of tangle cards had just come in the mail and I am quite enamored of it! I thought it would be a great way to generate random tangles easily without going online. Just pick a card.

But I drew Jetties of all things! My first thought was, "What an awful combination!" I love Jetties, and have enjoyed them many times, making cheery piles of playful balls. But how could Jetties possibly co-exist with D1, the mathematical, geometrical, shape-maze gone mad?? Poor little Jetties, I thought. They don't stand a chance on the same tile with that kind of crazed genius! But then again it is an article of faith that if you go random, you have to stay random and use whatever the random gods have given you. So I did. But I was not happy. (I've noticed this with other of the god's previous decisions for me in various aspects of life. But back to the Zentangle...)

I did not get any happier until I added some black areas to work with the Jetties' black stripes. The dark areas added  structure. Finally I could see my way through to actually posting this one.

Doing art work can sometimes be a dream where heavenly things just fall from the pen without human intervention. But at other times there is lots of dissatisfaction. I try with varied success to be Zen about it and not get in the way, letting the artwork be what it wants to be because it seems to have a life of its own.