No mistakes.
That’s right… There are no mistakes in Zentangle. Unexpected things DO happen, but they aren’t mistakes. They are opportunities to explore another direction. You don’t give up. You don’t throw away the work you’ve already done. Following a different fork in the road can take you to new vistas and allows you to discover new techniques. Some of the best tiles I’ve made come from unexpected twists and turns during the process. Here are some links to tiles that went off in directions that were unplanned.
Go with the flow . On this tile you can faintly see some things that I tangled in the background. The colored pen didn’t show up well, and I had no idea what to do about it. Then I realized that I could just add more color, and make those tangles pop right up! It was trial and error, but it worked! Don’t be afraid to continue on and add to a new direction. It will work out in the end.
Acceptance . The initial idea here was to create the look of Delft Blue on a tile. But it turned out that one of my colored pencils was not like the others! And one of my pens looked almost green-grey, rather than neutral! Oh well, I didn’t stop tangling, I finished the tile and I actually don’t mind the odd colors. They became accents and contrast that add to the whole.
See the forest . To us, something we think is “wrong” can become all consuming. We don’t see the big picture, just that tiny thing we don’t like, don’t agree with, and can’t see past. Here, I drew part of one of the Showgirls differently. I’m betting you can’t find it… or it will take you a while.
Resilience . The dictionary definition of resilience is “the power or ability to return to the original form, position, etc., after being bent, compressed or stretched; elasticity.” This tile went through the ringer. What the text does not tell you is that, when I added the tan distress ink on top of the tile, the whole tile turned kind of dark brown because I grabbed the wrong ink. (You can see some dark splotches still on the tile!) I stuck the entire tile under running water and washed off as much as I could. I let it dry over night. That produced the coloring you see here. Then I continued and added the shading and the highlighting. It’s amazing how this tile stood up to everything that was done to it and ended up looking amazing in the end!
So, there are no “mistakes.” Keep that in mind.
Zentangle drawn on an Official Zentangle Bijou tile using a black, Pigma Micron pen.