Today, I took Eni Oken's Art Raffle app for a spin. This tile is the result! For my first tile in eons, it’s not bad! If you tangle, you should get this FREE app, it’s lots of fun!
Zentangle drawn on an white, official, Zentangle tile, using a black, Micron pen. Shading done with graphite pencil.
Tangles: Antidot Bales Beedz Crescent Moon Emingle Hollibaugh Knase Knightsbridge Perfs Printemps Shard Shattuck Stiritup Tagh
I had such a fun class on Saturday at the cARTel Studio, introducing these ladies to the wonderful world of Zentangle!
They all did such a great job on their first tiles, which you can see below.
This is the first of a series of three Zentangle classes on consecutive Saturdays.
Next week: working on black tiles!
Another Beginner’s class tile #2! A fascinating thing about the Zentangle method is that no matter how many times you draw a particular tile, it will always be slightly different!
Zentangle drawn on an Official Zentangle tile using a black, Micron pen. Shading done with graphite pencil.
Tangles: Bales Ennies Fescu Printemps
This is my Tuesday morning Zentangle meditation class. These people are so wonderful to be with! They love learning, tangling and each other which makes being with them a total joy.
This week, they used an “A” shaped string and learned Bales, Ennies, Fescu and Printemps. The two tiles (one unfinished) in the lower right are mine.
I love how each of them is not afraid to try whatever variation they think of. They are adventurous spirits who are fearless students!
This is my finished tile from the Tuesday Beginner’s Class. I rarely finish my tile during the sessions because I’m busy helping the students. However, I do always finish them eventually. I don’t mind having many tiles with the same design.
I can always create my own, personal mosaic!
Zentangle drawn on a white, Official Zentangle tile using a black, Micron pen. Shading done with graphite pencil.
Tangles: Bales Florz Hollibaugh Tipple
Perhaps, the Universe is pointing the way?
The next step of Beginner’s tangles evolving.
Zentangle drawn on an Official Zentangle tile using a black, Micron pen. Shading done with graphite pencil.
Tangles: Bales Ennies Fescu Printemps
We had a small, fun class yesterday!
Zentangle drawn on Strathmore Vellum Bristol using a black, Micron pen. Shading done with graphite pencil.
Tangles: Bales Crescent Moon Florz Hollibaugh Printemps
Another Introduction to Zentangle class at Good Gifts Healing Arts!
I am so blessed to be able to share with others!
On the back of this tile, created by Amanda, is written:
“If you can’t run, then walk
If you can’t walk, then crawl,
But whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward.”
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
As we are working on tiles, we hear or think of things that we want to remember going forward. So the back of our tiles become a kind of journal, over time, as we write notes on them.
Yesterday I taught a classes at Good Gifts Healing Arts Studio . Above is the mosaic from the Introduction to Zentangle class , including my tile (the one with Florz).
I love sharing Zentangle with others!
Zentangle drawn on Strathmore Vellum Bristol using a black, Micron pen. Shading done with graphite pencil.
Tangles: Bales Crescent Moon Florz Hollibaugh Printemps
Tangleation.
Sometimes you just need a small change to create an interesting difference.
A Tangleation is a noticeable variation of an existing pattern. Here, the original tangle was Bales. In this version, it appears as if one rice shape is piercing the other where they cross.
Sometimes you just need to tangle a small thing and then move on with your day.
This is a Bijou tile, and there is just one tangle on it. Perhaps you are busy, and don’t think you have time to tangle. You don’t have to make a large tile with a complicated piece of art! You can make a small, simple wonder on a Bijou! They’re only 2-inches square, and still add a little Zen to you day!
When you use a grid-type tangle, you don’t have to do it in a perfect grid shape! Here, I wanted to see what it would look like to use Bales, but make a fairly wonky grid, possibly with some perspective to it. So I made part of the lines curved, and varied the distance between the lines, just to see what it would look like.
This type of exercise is good to do every so often. It gives you a lot of good meditation because you don’t have to think that much about the tangle itself… it’s the same throughout the tile. It also illustrates what happens with variations of size and angle of a basic grid tangle. And the end result is an interesting tile!
Do a little.
I’m still have a little trouble getting back into the swing of my daily routine. So I did this first thing yesterday morning, just so that I would accomplish something. I find that I can always fall back on the basic tile, that we all make in our first Zentangle class for a comfortable, meditative experience. In this case, I changed it up a little by using a black, 3Z tile. Not everything we create has to be a master work of art!
Jumble.
Others always wondered at how so much cargo could come out of such a tiny ship. They just didn’t understand. She’d captured so many universes in her travels. And now she could store infinite amounts in each one. All she had to do is make sure they traveled together!
It has always fascinated me how shading opens up, raises, or pushes back sections of tangles on a tile. Here, this crazy combination took on all kinds of dimension just from shading various edges. Don’t skip shading your tiles. It’s as interesting and meditative as the drawing!
Tradition.
We all enjoy learning new things, pushing boundaries and growing in our art. But we shouldn’t forget where we came from in the process.
To keep with the original tradition of Zentangle, I have used the die and legend that came with my new Zentangle Kit to select the tangles that I used for this tile. I chose them one at a time, filling in a section before rolling for the next. I went around clockwise, starting with Bales. I think it’s fascinating how everything fits together and looks good without having to think much or labor over what to use where. That is what makes this type of tangling a very meditative experience.
Palette.
Her basket was full of magical designs just waiting to be added to a frock or a cushion. Some plain, some fancy, some simple, some complex, woven together they created a magical mixture for the customers to choose from.
The basic string for this Zentangle came from the Tangler's Palette" stencils from Acadia Laser Creations on Etsy. I wanted this set of stencils as soon as I saw them. They offer so many different possibilites for creative play!
I decided to try the Delft Delights techniques on a 3Z-sized tile, thinking it would look a bit like a pottery shard. I also did a bit of research into patterns used on Delftware, so that I could find tangles that corresponded. The ones shown here I actually found on examples on the internet!
Zentangle drawn on 3Z-sized Strathmore Vellum Bristol using blue Zig and Staedtler markers. Shading done with colored pencils.
If you saw my New Year's post , then you know that I have challenged myself to work on black tiles more frequently this year. I want to develop techniques and find the materials that work for me. For that reason, for every challenge or lesson from Eni or any other artist, I am making a black tile for the theme as well as a normal one.
To that end, this is my black tile from Eni’s Zentangle Basics lesson. for this one, instead of charcoal, I tried using a white, colored pencil to do the highlighting. I found that it would actually move and blend, somewhat, with a clean stump. I do wish it was a brighter white where it was applied the heaviest, though. I will need to keep experimenting!
The newest Art Club video from Eni Oken's Art Club is a lesson on Zentangle Basics . Almost everyone, when they take their first Zentangle lesson from a CZT, creates a basic tile, using certain tangles that illustrate what Zentangle is all about. Eni’s video is no different, (after all, she IS a Certified Zentangle Teacher!) This is the tile I created while watching the video.
I’ve been tangling now for many years. My first actual tiles are dated 2010, but I was tangling before that in my sketchbook. If you go to the Zentangle Gallery page, by clicking on the link here or at the top, right of this page, I bet you will recognize more tiles that are based on the beginner’s instructions. This is the sixth tile to be added to the collection. Can you find them all?
This is the fourth exercise from Project Pack 1. It is a second version of Bales. This tile is very, very simple. It’s all about the added lines transforming the regular seed shape found in the tangle into something beyond itself by repeating the strokes to fill in the centers.
It was fun and very calming to draw this Zentangle. But I feel it is just so plain, compared to what I normally draw!