Fractalized stars.
Recently, Eni Oken added a lesson about fractalizing tangles to her Art Club members. It was a fantastic lesson and everyone had a lot of fun creating beautiful tiles.
I decided to try Betweed for my tangle because it looks like a star to me, and I love anything having to do with stars! The “rule” I used was to draw a new, smaller Betweed in each space created by the original rendition. I managed to go three iterations before some of the spaces became too small for another iteration.
After looking at my tile, though, I realized it was difficult to distinguish the tangles from the background. To create more contrast, I decided to add color.
I did the yellow portions first, using Crayola marker applied with a water brush. First a lighter, yellow color was applied, then a slightly darker, yellow color. Finally, I used ink from a yellow-brown Distress Ink marker.
The blue background was created with two different blue Crayola markers, again, applied with a brush.
Shading was done with colored pencils.
When all that was done, I felt it was still too plain. So I added the gold, gel-pen dots. I also added gold and clear glitter along the lines of the star arms and blue and clear glitter to the background. Unfortunately, glitter doesn’t show up well here, but the tile is very “sparkly”!
Zentangle drawn on Strathmore Vellum Bristol using a black, Micron pen. Coloring created with Crayola and Distress ink markers. Accents done with metallic and glitter gel pens. Shading done with colored pencil.