"Green Bloomers" (Green Circle Tangle)

"Green Bloomers" (Green Circle Tangle) by Megan O'Madadhain

My Green Circle Tangle (nicknamed "Green Bloomers") is part of my "Rainbow Circle Tangle" series. For this series I started by tracing a circle and then used circles to define the regions.

The good:

I like the tree extending to the edge of the page. It reminds me of stained glass. I also like the texture behind that tree. I did a wash of pale green (using "indirect blending") with swabs of more intense color on top. This was inspired by some artwork I saw on Pinterest.

The trees remind me of stained glass.

I like the way that the scales in the lower left are colored. Usually my instinct is to do a slow color blend for each scale pattern, but I like the way the coloring jumps from light green to a dark green outline, to a medium green.

While not very novel, I like the vines and the way they extend past the edges of the original circle. The lines in the background remind me of wood block carvings.

The bad:

Most tangles I have done surprise me -- they don't look like any art I would have done previously. This is one of the few exceptions -- it borrows many of the few elements that I tend to doodle, namely vines and trees. The center of the image looks like a bodice with bloomers underneath -- less abstract than I prefer. For this reason and because the elements of trees, sun/moon, woman's silhouette seem like trite fantasy images, this tangle looks somewhat juvenile to me. 

I tried for a pattern of bark in the center, but I don't like the harsh divisions of color there or in the clover pattern in the "bloomers." The variety of green in the tangle has good contrast, but I am annoyed by the lightest shade of green. Perhaps I should have restricted myself to using small accents of that color.

Art in context:

The "Rainbow Circle Tangle" series is one of my earliest attempts to do colored tangles.

The nitty gritty:

I used Tombow Dual Brush Markers and a Micron black pen, typically size "05" (0.5mm). Original is 4" x 4" ink on paper.