I recently visited Holland, Michigan for a little R-and-R with my husband and older daughter. We decided to walk the main, downtown shopping area, looking in various stores.
We came across The Bridge , a store that specializes in unique, fair trade, import items. There were some very interesting things in the store, but the most fascinating to me was paper made from elephant dung!
I purchased both a small, spiral-bound book and a box of small, loose sheets .
She had traveled down the hall of the long good bye for such a long time. She slept and awoke and walked towards the door in the House of Waiting. The vastness pulled at her spirit and she longed to be free. She would not miss anything here. She had completed her mission. She would leave it all behind.
It had been her life. But now, she was free to fly.
I love the overall composition of this tile from CZT Amanda Higbee!
Zentangle drawn on an Official Zentangle tile, using a black, Micron pen. Shading done with graphite pencil.
Tangles: Cobbles Floo Hypnotic Msst Purk Printemps Static
Now, it’s a stroll along the path. This tile is simply Purk. It’s like finding a familiar stone along the way. Comfortable. Fun!
Zentangle drawn on an Official Zentangle Bijou tile using a black, Micron pen. Shading done with graphite pencil.
Tangles: Purk
Incubation.
She found a group of eggs in various stages of growth in the Royal Nursery. She had no idea this was their method of reproduction until now. She wondered if each egg started with such elaborate patterns or if they were decorated after they were laid.
Zentangle drawn on Strathmore Vellum Bristol using a black, Micron pen. Shading done with graphite pencil.
Tangles: Caviar Meer Patena Printemps Purk Shattuck
For my final Crazy Huggins sampler, I cut a large, apprentice-sized tile from a new paper I got recently. I filled the tile with Crazy Huggins shapes, then filled each element with another tangle. Somewhere along the line, the design developed a mind of its own, and decided not to be symmetrical anymore. But, honestly, I think that just made it “interesting!”
This tile took quite a while to complete. I knew it might take a bit longer, but it turned out to be a lot longer! And, when I finished filling in all the shapes, I wasn’t sure I liked it. But, in true, Zentangle fashion, I continued on and shaded the design. However, it wasn’t until I added the highlights that I decided everything was fine.
From the Zentangle Primer: Lesson 3, page 55, Exercise #9. We are instructed to let our tangles extend beyond the border.
In my tile, above, I decided to extend Braze all the way to the very edge of the tile. It looks as if it was dropped onto the drawing. I made the border very definite by turning it into a tangled frame all around the center of the tile. Florz made a nice, simple background that didn’t distract from the tangles sitting on top of it!
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.
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.
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!
Spiral.
I tried to create a string that would give the feeling of spiraling around. It ended up looking like those Purks are on a wild ride.
Zentangle drawn on Official Zentangle Tile using a black, Micron pen. Shading done with graphite pencil.
Tangles: Arrowheads Dex Feathers Paradox Poke-Root Purk Queen's Crown
Purked up.
I had some problems with the Zentangle I posted last Friday. So, for the next week, I‘m dropping into tangling that is much more basic. I‘ll stick to white tiles, black in, and graphite pencil for the shading.
So here, Purk was one of the random tangles that came out of the jar. I decided that I woud draw two of them in the center of the tile, and then fill in the rest of the string with random tangles. This works!
Elegance.
This tile is unusual in that it doesn‘t have my regular border around it. I wanted to try a very rounded, loopy design because I thought it would appear more elegant with the black and gold tangles.
Zentangle drawn on Official Zentangle tile using a black, Micron pen.
Tangles: Cyme Ennies Ibex Purk Squill Tink Ynix
Red.
I recently saw a Zentangle tile that someone in a Facebook group had drawn in red. That was the first time that I‘ve seen a completely red tile. I thought it would be an interesting challenge to try my own. Shading with regular pencil looks a little strange, so I decided to try a red colored pencil. I chose a color that was a bit darker, and I think it worked very well.
Browns.
I wanted to experiment with different tonal values. Since Micron makes two different brown pens, I though combining those with black would be interesting. I shaded this tile with brown colored pencils.
Zentangle drawn on Official Zentangle tile using brown, sepia and black Micron pens.
Tangles: Centipede Flora Isochor Lacy Locar Purk Ripple Shattuck
Rotation.
It‘s interesting the way the design feels like everything is wrapped around the Bunzo as if it‘s surrounded by a mini cyclone of patterns.
Zentangle drawn on Strathmore Bristol Vellum using a black Micron pen.
Tangles: Ambler Bunzo Ennies Florz Indy-Rella Jetties Knase Purk