What are these creatures we found hiding under the leaves? Each one is different, bearing fragmented patterns creating their own interpretation? It is our third day along this path. We’ve grown bolder, looking here and there and finding new things or changing the old.
Zentangle drawn on an Official Zentangle tile using a black, Micron pen. Shading done with graphite pencil.
Tangles: Articulated Molygon
This amazing Zenbutton was created by Amanda! I love the tangle she used around the outside edge!
Zentangle drawn on an Official Zentangle tile, using blue and black, Micron pens. Shading done with colored pencil.
Tangles: Fragment C15 Fragment L16 Fragment B11
This beautiful Zenbutton was created by Amanda. I really love all the different fragments that she chose. I think there’s a great balance of light and dark! She’s tried some that I haven’t been brave enough to tackle yet!
Zentangle drawn on an Official Zentangle tile, using a black, Pigma Micron pen. Shading done with graphite pencil.
Tangles: Fragment D1 Fragment K5 Fragment G7 Fragment U3
I’m building a library of tiles done with a single fragment from the Zentangle Primer. Today, I decided to tackle J15, using blue and brown ink. I love the effect this tangle produced when used en masse. The large, interlocking circles receded to stand behind the blue, web-like shapes, so I simply accented the illusion by shading with the appropriate colored pencil.
Creating tiles like this, with fragments, is kind of like discovering buried treasure. You try to visualize what they will look like, but even if you understand the pattern, actually seeing it is still surprising!
Button, button.
Amanda has jumped on the Zenbutton band wagon! She’s done a few others, but this one is one of my favorites so far. I really wanted to share it with everyone so you could see more things that can be done with fragments.
In just a couple more weeks, Amanda and I will be heading to Rhode Island for CZT 30. We’re so excited, and we hope to learn lots to share with all of you here, when we come back. While we are gone, make sure you follow us on Facebook (there’s a link over there on the top, right side of this page!) We will be posting pics of our adventures for you!
Fragments, as introduced in the Zentangle Primer, are a really interesting and powerful way of creating patterns. Essentially, they are designs that fit into a grid. I’ve already done a few of these, which you can see here . I really love playing with the very geometric patterns. Drawing them gives me practice with being precise. But the real magic comes when it’s time to shade! It’s amazing how a simple design can suddenly have so much depth and structure just from the addition of some pencil.
This is my second tile from Eni's Fragmented Windows lesson . I really wanted to try this in blue because it reminded me so much of floor plans. I also made the grid a bit smaller than the first one. I’m not sure if I like it better, or not. I did have to use a finer tipped pen to draw the fragments because the squares were so tiny!
Zentangle drawn on Strathmore Vellum Bristol using blue and dark blue, Pigma Micron pen. Shading done with Copic marker, colored pencil and graphite pencil.
This is my first tile from Eni's Fragmented Windows video lesson ! I’m really excited about this method because it is a very unique way of exploring the various Fragments from the Zentangle Primer . It was a lot of fun to do. Eni refers to the sections with designs in them as “windows”, but to me, they look like rooms in a floor plan.
This one follows the lesson rather closely, but I’m looking forward to creating more tiles incorporating my own spin on the concept.
Bones.
Their culture was built on the bones of their ancestors. The believed these relics spoke to them, leading them towards the future without forgetting their past.
This is another tile celebrating and exploring fragments. This is B2 from the Zentangle Primer. I ended up not putting the second set of lines inside each shape and just let the color define the areas. I chose to stop because it looked so much like a grid of bones. I just wanted to let it be.
I’m still working my way through the various fragments in the Zentangle Primer. For this exercise, I chose K14. This is another very geometric fragment, and it is like Emingle, except triangular. I actually drew it twice in each triangle, once in blue-black and then again in blue. By shading it with blue pencil it was possible to create another star-like pattern. I find these very relaxing to do.
This is another fragment experimentation. This time, I used Fragment A13 from the Zentangle Primer. This fragment is similar to the tangle Intersection by Suzanne McNeill. However, when you put them together, next to each other, they create an interesting, interlocking, triangular pattern. I chose to alter that with the shading by trisecting each one, creating a diamond pattern. Again, it’s amazing what optical illusions you can create with simple patterns and shading!
This tile is based on another ValenTangle 2018 challenge, specifically for Day 11.
We were to use any fragment, but include or incorporate hearts in it. I chose T7, but I modified the shape to make it half of a heart. Then, I rotated the orientation for half of the grid. This created full hearts across two different grid squares. Then I colored in the sections where the sides of the hearts overlapped, creating the pinwheel effect.
The idea for this tile comes from ValenTangle 2018 by Marguerite Samama CZT. I chose to work on Day 6. We are to do a variation of the F11 fragment, with a heart in the center instead of a circle, on a black tile. I chose to make mine on a 3Z shaped tile.
There is also a Facebook group for Valentangle which you can find here . This is the second year for this two-week project, which runs from the beginning of February through Valentine’s Day.
Ships.
As she looked back at the gate, she saw the others had followed her into this new dimension. She wasn’t sure if they were friends or enemies, but it didn’t matter at this point. They were all here, now, and there was no going back.
I decided to try a couple more radial blossoms and continue the story from the first one, here . I also used reticula patterns in-between the arms of the lower, Ix blossom. I started with E15 from the Zentangle Primer and just expanded on it.
Reticulum.
Recently, Zentangle released a Kitchen Table video that featured using Tripoli as a Reticulum (as the underlying structure) and filling each section with a fragment. I chose Fragment G13 from the Primer. I have never liked Tripoli until now! But I will not discount it in the future. This gave me a really good understanding of Reticula and Fragments.
Zentangle drawn on Strathmore Vellum Bristol using a black, Micron pen. Shading done with graphite pencil.