Back To Spirals

I ran across a gif showing a string of spirals like the one above. I thought of my Zentangling and decided to add this to my little reference notebook of Zentangles. It has other uses of spirals but not this one.

I've been longing to work on another page in my little button book and decided this morning to get it out. I still have a few stamped pages I haven't added tangles to. This one, which I struggled to get a good imprint of, has puzzled me but now I see little spirals in the leaves. Let's add my new spiral string.

I perused various Zentangles that work as background filler and noticed one that was also based on a spiral. When I was all through, it was pretty busy, and I didn't think just some shading in pencil would solve that issue. Time to add some color! And this is where the fun began. Rather than just use Prismacolor pencils, I got out the water soluble Derwent Inktense ones. I colored in the leaf with Apple Green and added Leaf Green along the veins and the shadow areas.

Now I'm working it with a wet brush, smoothing out the pencil lines and trying to blend/smudge the darker green. The leaf on the right has had water added, the one on the left is untouched.

I liked this so well that I added the leaf green along the stems and curled leaves and worked some lighter washes along the echoed space over the string  of spirals. The spiral background filler needed shading next, was thinking I could do that in pencil when I remembered my water soluble graphite ones. So I lightly added some of that and smoothed it around with the wet brush. I can't tell you how much fun this was and another step in learning how to use these two product.

Don't know that there is any particular significance to it but this is my 1515th post.