a little lime

I came across the  Zentangle pattern Way Bop  back in February when it was mentioned on my Facebook page as a pattern that people were finding challenging. I couldn't resist having a play with it and finding way of drawing it that worked for me, I also wanted to create a continuous pattern from the shape and after some experimentation and tweaking of the shape, "Way Knot" was the end result (named for the little "knots" that connect the shapes). These step-outs and video were completed in February, but I forgot about them until I looked back through my journal this morning. Bonus! So here goes, the step-outs for Way Knot. Part One: Individual pattern element up close. Part Two: Build up individual elements and connect. Part 3: Various fills change up the look. This video demonstrates part one and two and also includes an alternative "bracket" method for drawing the base structure of the pattern which you may find easier, o...

I know I've been promising the step-outs for Spiral Rose for a while, but I've been......ah..........distracted. The pitfalls of a short attention span. hahaha Today  finally, I have it ready to share with you, and in case you are scratching your head and are all like....."huh, spiral what?"......... Here's the step-out: I think these rose patterns have been a bit of a flash back to 90's folk art painting. Pretty sure I'm done now. Here's the video: As a rare treat (in which you may read "treat" to actually mean "cruel and unusual punishment"), I am subjecting you to some narration in this video. It's been a few years since I've talked in a video as I really hate my voice - I pretty much "broke" it 10 years ago when I had whooping cough and after months of intense nightly coughing I damaged my voice permanently, practically losing it for a year. It's never been the same since. Thou...

My patterns have definitely been heavy on the rose theme over the past year, with Crumpled Roses , String Rose  and now Wrapped Rose.  Wrapped Rose reminds me a bit of the folk art roses I used to paint back in the early 90's. Good times. I'm not sure if I consider Wrapped Rose more of a drawing technique than a pattern as I believe patterns should be able to continue in all directions infinitely which, in theory I suppose this could, though I don't know how it'd look. Regardless, it's fun and I became a bit obsessed with playing with the possibilities over the past week...until I wasn't hahaha. Here's a step out:   The last step shows the petals numbered in the order in which I drew them. You can make these as large or small as you wanted. I could easily have stopped here at 5 or 8 or 14......you get the picture :) Here's a completed drawing: This was sketched out first in my journal then finished off in procreate so I could ...

It's the month of love. Yep, the big L. Hearts and Roses. So, I've already shared some String Roses, now it's time for a heart2heart (see what I did there?) I was pretty surprised to find I had another heart pattern left in me, but here's one that I've been playing with and am really loving: heart2heart starts with an alternating s-grid - add some v's to create the outer heart then a second heart shape is added inside. Variation - try alternating the direction of the hearts (panel 6). You know what else I'm really loving of late? The way I can quickly record and edit insta-videos from my phone. Here's a little heart2heart demo. A video posted by A Little Lime (@alittlelime) on Feb 11, 2017 at 2:01am PST Here's a sample on a wonky grid. I hope you have a fantastic, love-filled valentines day. Me? I'll be at school feeling the love for my computer :) hahaha. hx

Well, d-day has almost arrived. Tomorrow I head back to school. Where did the summer go? At least the class schedule is looking pretty light and I'll only be at school for 2- 2 1/2 days a week. Today I want to share a really simple technique/pattern I've called "String Rose". This idea first made an appearance on the blog during the  old into new challenge back in 2014. I named one of the experimentation tiles as Trentwith  and though this pattern was the initial source of inspiration, my version takes a different approach. I had always meant to share the technique as it's so simple, and fun, but I just didn't get around to it. Until now! 2 1/2 years later.....haha. O.k., here goes........ The String Rose Pattern - this shows the base technique. As it's all done in one continuous line, I thought a little insta-video might help out: A video posted by A Little Lime (@alittlelime) on Feb 4, 2017 at 11:09pm PST I've never lin...

Slowly, but steadily (okay, not steadily, just slowly......!) I am getting the videos for the patterns done. I recorded 5 of them last week and now it's just the tedious process of editing them. I hate that part. Oh, and the uploading......the horrible, horrible uploading. My well variation video last week ai ai ai....! O.k., so here's the one for drack. I ummmmed and ahhhhed about even doing a video for this pattern as it's pretty straightforward, but I like to be thorough :) Roosters crowing in the background (pretty much a recurring theme in my vids). We have quite a few roosters at the moment (John has a complicated breeding program for his beloved chickies) and they like to make themselves heard. I also really wish I could learn not to natter on about superfluous stuff. lol. I just can't help myself.......talking needlessly.......on and on and on.......and on about......stuff. Haha. See ya! hx

So, I've been videoing again in an attempt to get all (well, most......or just some) of the pattern step outs I've done into video format. Here's the latest which demos the process I used to turn Well into a freehand pattern a week or so ago...........only watch if you think you can bear listening to me for twelve and a half minutes (not many people can, I assure you!) and can ignore excessive gesturing (just me droning on about rubbish). I've sped up sections to hopefully make it a bit less painful! You can see some finished designs here and you can find the pattern step out here Enjoy! hx

Not much happening on the drawing front here this week. Around home the frosts continue (we've had about 8 over the past 2 weeks) . It's not a lot of fun going out and picking frosty veggies from the garden for the cows morning snack - she has to have her greens when I milk her! So glad we are past the shortest day - bring on the 7am daylight again! Here's the Ripples video: Enjoy! hx

Here's a video for Bracketed: I've done one for Ripples also but they take soooooo long to upload it'll have to wait for another day or so. hx

Don't fall off your chair!........I know it's been a long time since I've posted on consecutive days....but.....as of yesterday - I am on school holidays AND the heat has finally broken, it's been raining AND my lovely jersey girl who lost her calf has adopted a calf whose mother was sent to market, so, we only have to milk once a day now. Jersey is happy/calf is happy/we save a lot of time. A win for everyone. So, you knew I couldn't leave the challenge alone right? The mooka.......it speaks to me. And, yes, it IS  totally normal for me to have a picture of it under my pillow and in my wallet. Uh huh...yep....nothing weird or stalker-ish happening here. Just moving right along....... Onto the pics........ I love connecting up the strings of mooka with these kind of sticky edges.....they're great for hiding a multitude of sins.....like wobbly lines, awkward curves, etc, etc. I go over all my original lines to thicken them up and then curve and fill all the...

Feedburner is doing funny things with the stats, showing me that my subscribers have disappeared. I have my fingers crossed the feed is going out. If you subscribe via email, and you receive this, I would love it if you could post a comment, or email me to let me know that it is working. Thankyou, thankyou :) O.k, so I finally got this video uploaded after 5 tries! Aaargh! Last night, on my 4th try, it told me it was going to take 7 hours to upload.......huh?!?.......what?????!!! So I just cancelled it and tried again this morning at a slightly reduced resolution. It worked.. Quickly, too! You'll probably want to view it in a larger view to see the detail due to all the fine string lines. Some variations. Linda Farmer at www.tanglepatterns.com came up with the idea to flip alternate rows of hearts. Love this idea. Here's mine with some randomised lines. Love the squished hearts. Brief step-outs of the variations on the video. Use the basic...

A bit of a sad weekend for us here on the farm. Our Jersey cow that we have been grooming to become our new house milking cow started to have her first calf on Friday evening. Saturday morning John and I got up all excited to see the new calf but it had died. So disappointing. Anyway, we have started milking her - she is still a little scared of the milking machine, but is doing well and should have settled down within the week. Love having fabulous fresh, unpasteurised milk again. So, here's the video for Brax: I've had to switch comment verification back on - it annoys me so much, but the volume of spam was getting to me - I think I was deleting around 20 + a day. Also, if you've signed up to follow the blog via email and you're not getting an email when I post, you may not have completed the verification/confirmation process. You need to click in the link in the verification email to confirm your subscription before they will automatically be delivered. Ho...

Hey. So, I've been totally unmotivated. It's hot....yes.... still really hot. I've started back at school this week. I have no energy and, I'm completely bored with myself. Result = no drawing this week. Today I decided I needed to do something, so, I've put together a quick video for Y-Flip using my new camera - much better video quality filming with my SLR than my ipod (as you'd expect), but as it's so much heavier, and with the tripod I have, harder to mount over my work so I've had to film from the side which isn't great and means I have to draw at a bit of an odd angle to avoid getting my big, fat head in the way. Will have to play with this set up a bit, I think. Here's Y-flip, includes how to do basic and extended y versions from my initial post Enjoy! hx

So, it's not morning, but, finally! after a super-busy day, I have the video for the Bloom pattern posted. Includes the basic how-to, then onto some other stuff including steps on how to "randomise" the pattern. My hand is a bit in the way at the start, but that doesn't last :) I may also sound like I've been possessed by Darth-Vader for a few seconds at one point - not sure what happened there, unless I really was possessed by Darth-Vader..........hmmmmm. You can read more about the pattern and find the step-out and some variations here Have a great night! hx

This is my 55th post! I can't believe it! I must have waaaaay too much time on my hands and a whole lot more stuff to talk about than I thought! LOL! Now that the weather has improved, I have moved away from the heater and back upstairs to my craft room. It has taken a bit of adjustment, but the lighting is better and it's great for doing videos. I often get asked what mediums/tools I am using to colour my drawings. The pictures in my gallery use coloured pencil, greylead and promarkers. For colour work I now use promarkers, or tria markers, pretty much all the time. I may dust off the watercolours and acrylics in the future. Maybe. So, anyway, the promarkers. Love them. Lots of cool colours. I use these in a number of ways - straight colouring, shading, colour graduations, and playing with the blender (love, love, LOVE the blender! Love it!) to achieve a sort of watercolour look that I've used in quite a few of my drawings, including the morning...

When I was playing around making a video demo for  leaflet  yesterday, I experimented with a different approach to drawing it. Here's the result: I really love it. So flowy and organic. The video runs through how to do the basic pattern, some shading options, and shows the alternative way to draw as above. It does run for a bit over 8 minutes, though you won't have to listen to my voice the whole time (a fate worse than death if my husband is to be believed!!!), as I have sped up some sections. Love to know what you think! I had one more drawing in progress for the challenge   when I posted yesteday. I had sketched out a sun with straight lines for the sunbeams that I wanted to draw when I found  this gorgeous drawing by Melissa Johnson on my pinterest zentangle board - I knew then that I had to add some flowing sunbeams too! It was also a good excuse to colour using sunset tones - and give my orange promarkers a wor...

Whew! I think I now have a copy of this video that you can actually see!. I ended up filming on the iphone, then recording in vlc to convert so that I could open it in movie maker to flip and edit it. THEN blogger just wouldn't load it - so I have uploaded to my old youtube account. Fingers crossed it works o.k.!! The detail is clearer in full screen. Let me know what you think :) First video: basic twirl pattern This video: double twirl pattern - this one is a bit pixelated, but should be o.k. I have a new pattern that I plan to post this evening - just working on some variations :) hx

A while back when I did the pattern for Scrolled Feather - I got my daughter to video me demoing - all ready for me to upload to the blog so that you could see how I go about drawing it. Unfortunately my firewire cord, or the video, would not talk to the computer and I couldn't edit it. I still wanted to do it, and today, as it has been miserable and so incredibly cold that even my husband, John didn't want to work outside (an unheard of occurence!)  I got him to video me on my little Canon point and shoot camera. Yep. We're a high quality outfit here. Nothing but the best. LOL. Hopefully I don't live to regret it. Anyway, here it is. Take note of the disclaimers at the start - the sound quality is not good (I do not lisp, and I'm sure my voice does not sound like that!) Hopefully you can understand me and my very Aussie accent. I also had a bit of a play with the pattern and came up with a few variations of the theme. Also, along the...