What do you do with all your leftover small pieces of paper with art of some kind on them? Look at this new lesson from Eni Oken’s art club! Doesn’t this look like fun?
Stay tuned for more updates!
Distress ink, acrylic ink, watercolor on Strathmore Bristol Vellum.
Tangles: Ennies Magma Meer Nekton
Wevuz fever.
She was tired of being grounded because of the illness. She never should have gone to the liquid planet. But watching the merfolk swim, with their beautiful coloring fascinated her. It was the height of tourist season while she was there. So many beings from so many strange places, all sharing the pathogens from their home worlds. Something was bound to happen.
Zentangle drawn on Strathmore Vellum Bristol using a black, Micron pen. Shading done with graphite pencil.
Textural.
She was selecting the contents based on the feeling of the objects. This trip was for a world where the beings did not “see” things the way most did. They had no eyes. Instead, everything was based on texture and sound. So touching each item, with her eyes closed became very important.
Zentangle drawn on Strathmore Vellum Bristol using a black, Micron pen. Shading done with graphite pencil.
This wonderful tile was created by my daughter. She is my student and protégé! She is such an amazing artist and she loves to be my class tester. It never ceases to amaze me what she will do and whether she will change something because she likes her way better. I’m so proud of her and so happy we will both become CZTs at the same seminar!
She saw my similar tile and asked me to teach her how to do it. It’s always a great opportunity for me to have a “practice student!” And it’s so much fun to work together.
This is the final, official tile for the Tints on Tan, beach series.
These tiles, combining colored pencil and tangling have been so much fun to do. Technically, these would be considered ZIAs (Zentangle Inspired Art) rather than standard Zentangles. However, if you like this type of thing, they can be just as “zen” and relaxing to do. I particularly like the subject matter because the ocean reminds of of summer and vacations, happy times and warm weather.
Tints on Tan is a set of classes created by CZTs Marty Deckle and Jenny Peruzzi. It was first presented at CanTangle in July of 2015. Recently, the kit has become available on Etsy, and there is now a Facebook group for this style of tangling.
I decided to do each shape from the beach set on it’s own tile, along with the full grouping. This is my first tile, the sea shell.
Giving thanks.
I have so many things to be thankful for this year, it would make a very long post to list them all. So I am going to tell you that I am grateful for my wonderful husband, beautiful daughters, and fabulous grandchildren. I am thankful for my good health and good life.
I also am very thankful that I discovered Eni Oken. She is a fabulous artist that shares herself, her talent and her knowledge with others. Over this year, learning from her has taken my art to a whole ’nother level, as they say. This tile is another one based on her Tan Treasure video lesson . I think this is my favorite of all the techniques I’ve learned so far!
Yo ho ho…
Not all treasure is jewels and gold! Sometimes, the treasure lies within each of us, waiting to be discovered. If you are tangling, and looking for your own, internal treasures, follow the link over to Eni Oken's Tan Treasure Video lesson! Her video will take you through all the steps to create your personal treasure map.
Zentangle drawn on an Official Tan Renaissance tile using a black, brown and sepia Micron pens. Shading done with Copic markers, colored pencils and graphite pencil. Highlights were done with pastel pencil and gel ink. Distress ink was used for the background and edges.
Wrapped up.
This Zentangle is the result of two different Facebook posts.
In one group, someone asked about shading a Zentangle that was drawn in blue ink. That got me to thinking about how I would handle the situation. So, for this tile, I’ve used blue ink. For the shading I used both colored pencil and graphite. I think the combination of the two allows for more dramatic depth than using the blue pencil alone.
Day 2.
For this day, we are adding three new tangles to our repertoire: Fescu, Nekton and Knight’s Bridge. We were also instructed to practice making various strings.
For Amanda’s tile above, as you can see, her string is much more complex than on Day 1. She also used areas of repeated tangles to tie everything together.
Matthew did a wonderfully curvy string that gave him an interesting open space to fill with graceful Fescu! He decided to forgo any shading on his tile this time, because he felt it made his tile from the first day too muddy. I will be seeing him on Saturday, so I will give him a couple of shading tricks that should help him out.
Frost.
It has already snowed in Montana. It won’t be that long before it snows in other states. This made me think about it being the time of year when various parts of the country wake up to frost on the leaves and flower petals. These two tangles, Arukas and Nekton, when combined like this remind me of the patterns of frost that are seen on an early morning fall walk.
Classic.
When I was drawing this Zentangle, I realized that it was becoming just way too complicated and busy. Even while I was shading it with the brown pencil, I knew I would have to do something to bring back some high contrast, or it would just be a really muddy tile. At first I was thinking I could add gold, metallic ink. But that really wouldn’t pop enough here. The center of the Arukas reminded me of a gem, and then the light bulb lit up: turquoise.
Easy.
Some times, when you are tangling, you just want to do something simple, easy and relaxing. While I really love yesterday’s Zentangle, it was fairly time-consuming. As a result, I wanted the next one to just be something I could do to completely relax. I also didn’t feel like spending as much time on a single tile. And that’s perfectly OK!
So, even though it is simple, there is still a lot of depth and dimension. I like the way the Paradox section almost looks like the head of a strange bird. And Ennies looks like a ball-pit or a pool filled with pearls! Nekton is one of my favorite, go-to tangles, it looks like tossed bits of reed or straw.
Elemental.
This is the first Zendala I have ever drawn. A Zendala is a mandala created using tangles. I have never done one before because I was so worried about it being perfect. However, after watching Eni’s Radial Zendala video , I understand that it was OK to create something that was “perfectly imperfect”.
I was still very nervous about tackling this, but I had a concept in mind of creating a Zendala that would represent the basic elements: Air, Earth, Fire and Water. I knew some of the tangles that I wanted to use, but I also allowed the design to evolve and grow on it’s own, too.
Cornered.
She opened the door.
“It looks like there is some kind of strange plant growing out of the corner of a psychedelic room here. Perhaps that is a portal on the far wall? See how everything seems to be leaning toward it? We will have to explore. Everyone stay in comm range.”
She stepped out onto the floor and instantly disappeared.
Zentangle drawn on Strathmore Vellum Bristol using a black, Micron pen. Shading done with graphite pencil.
There be dragons!
This tile is directly inspired by Eni Oken’s Tangled Dragons blogpost . I’ve been wanting to give it a go for quite a while, but just haven’t had time until yesterday. It was a little tricky figuring out how to do the overlapping loops, but I think it worked out well, over all! I think I want to try one with some color next time. Maybe I will try some distress inks with it!
Contrasts.
This tile has a very simple string. I decided that I would use the simplest, geometric tangle in the upper left area and then mirror two of the other tangles in the lower right. I put the most complex tangle in the middle section. I really like the end result!
Zentangle drawn on Strathmore Vellum Bristol using a black, Micron pen. Shading done with graphite pencil.
Tangles: Ennies Finery Nekton Opus Patena
Show time.
This tile was drawn from Eni Oken‘s tutorial for the Showgirl tangle. I have to confess, I had a lot of problems with this one. Showgirl isn‘t my favorite tangle to begin with, and I‘m not really happy with the way these came out. But after several false starts, I decided to persevere. I was kind of surprised that the end result is better than I thought it would be.
Larimar.
Larimar is often goes by several names… the Stone of Atlantis, Stefilia‘s Stone, and Dolphin Stone. This rare, blue variety of pectolite is found only in the Dominican Republic, in the Caribbean.
The color varies from white, light-blue, green-blue all the way through deep blue, reflecting all the different colors of the ocean.
Like other blue stones, this one is associated with the throat chakra. It facilitates the healing of the mental, and emotional healing of the individual and gives peace and comfort. This healing allows the person to speek calmly and completely about serious matters.
Humpf!
Ok, this is the Zentangle version of a “bad hair day”. It was fun to do because I didn‘t think about how any of it was going together. But when I was all done and looked at it at arm‘s length, I could see that it was a mish-mash of tangles that didn‘t go together all that well.
Zentangle drawn on Strathmore Vellum Bristol using a black, Micron pen.