It's starting to look a lot like Zentangle!

I had all sorts of wonderful tangling plans for this week and those ahead.  I started strong on Monday throwing some seasonal style at a couple of Persian Mosaic triangles (please take a look at my previous post if you want to know more about the Persian Mosaic scene).

Cobalt and Deep Scarlet Pitt pens, gold pen, graphite and white chalk - and lots of Baton

But life had other ideas when I hurt my arm on Tuesday morning.  I've rested it since, and today was the first time I picked up a pen, holding it far more tentatively that usual.  I had grand plans for a Poke Leaf Wreath (trying saying that in a hurry!) for the Diva's Holidaze challenge, but needed to scale back my plans.  Instead I managed to tangle a Zenbutton on some suitably deep green pastel paper.

Tangled with Sistar fragment, Mooka, Tipple and perfs

The wreath will still be there, for another week, another year - the good thing about tangled Pokes is they never wither however little you look after them!

***

When I tangle I mostly tangle for tangling sake. I rarely 'use' my tiles for anything, and I hardly ever tangle objects. When I see other people making things with their tangle art I'm suitably impressed, but that's not what I want to do on a regular basis. For me the pleasure and the benefit is tangling with no destination in mind.

But there are occasional exceptions - and I thought I'd share a few festive pieces from past years as the build-up to the Christmas season gathers pace.

I've dabbled in Zentangle inspired greetings cards for my nearest and dearest. I've cut out Baton tangled holly leaves, with vaguely Bunzo berries. I've stacked various tangles on a large parcel label and mounted it to a card. But my favourite Christmas card is this one - where I used Distress Inks to colour a tile graduating from green into red. I then tangled using the unintentionally festive LitBee alongside my own tangle Tira.

There's always a tile in a simple frame that sits on a shelf in the room where I tangle and write these posts. It's usually a recent tile, one that I'm particularly happy with - it inspires me and guides me on those inevitable days when the line wobbles and my shading smudges. Sometimes I'll frame an additional tile suitable to the season and put it on a shelf in our lounge.

Any tangle takes on the Christmas spirit if you want it to!

But last year I took the plunge and tangled a set of four coasters for use on our Christmas dinner table. I coloured tiles with Distress Ink, and then tangled in black and complimentary colour with shading and highlights. As well as varying the tangles I made sure to repeat some over all four coasters to bring the set together. These tiles were then sealed inside a set of glass coasters that I found on Amazon. A pleasingly personalised addition to our tableware, and one that we will be pulling out again this year.

celestial happenings

The year is running away with me.  The list of things I need to do, let alone want to do, is longer than will fit into the days that are left.  I'm sure I'm not the only one feeling this way.

I don't want to totally sacrifice the things that calm and refresh me, things like Zentangle.  This is just the time when I need them most, to charge me up to keep going.  But what I can sacrifice is any unnecessary pressure that attaches itself to my tangling.  I can particularly dispense with worries about deadlines.  I've made a habit of being fashionably late for Zentangle challenges all year, so why worry now!

There were a couple of challenges that caught my eye last month - but which I only finished today.  One was Adele Bruno's It's a String Thing #269.  She introduced an idea she learned at ZenAgain from Maria Thomas.  That of starting at one corner of your tile with a tangle drawn large and then the same tangle smaller from the other corner and letting them meet in the middle.  Adele suggested we try this with Soluna.   It was a great choice and the time I spent on this tile was so relaxing, steadily drawing one orb after another, embellishing some more than others, not worrying about any orbs that had an odd shape, as the later crescent auras and shading would smooth out any inconsistencies.  I love the depth in the finished tile and I know it's an idea I'll visit again.

IAST #269 - Soluna over a very old tile coloured with watercolour pen

I also couldn't resist joining in with the most recent of Hanny Nura's wonderful Full Moon Mosaics.  These are based on Instagram and there will be a new one starting quite soon.  She dreams up the most delightful ideass and runs each one to time in with the phases of the moon.  The last one involved a circle of Marguerite Samama's Madama in the middle, and A-dalfa around the edges and a tangle of your choice in between.  I chose Nik and used lots of dark auras and repeating lines to pull it all together.

Tangled on tan paper, with touches of Wine coloured ink

Like many others in our community I'm currently joining in with the Zentangle Twelve Days project.  I'm enjoying watching the videos, sucking up the enthusiasm of the team, and being reminded of some great older tangles that had been gathering dust.  I'm not working on a Project Pack spinner though -  I don't get on with large ares of paper.  Instead I've decided to do the Twelve Days as one of my Zigzangles.  It doesn't divide neatly into 12 sections, or more, so I'm cramming the tangles in how and where I can!  I've left some spaces in the centre of each panel, I don't know really why, but I'm hoping that something will crop up on later days for me to go back and add to the spaces.  Or not! 

I don't usually share unfinished pieces, and I won't shade until the end because I'll only get covered in graphite on future days, so I'm feeling a bit exposed with only my naked line work for you to see! 

something frosted this way comes

Strolling back through my blog archives shows significant differences in my tangling practice through the years.  In my second year of tangling, 2014, I blogged 66 times in a year - that's more than once a week!  In my two quietest years I posted only 19 times in each.  This year looks set to be somewhere in the middle.  But when I look more closely at the posts I realise they have changed a lot.  Back then I often posted a single tile, with just a paragraph of text to accompany it.  Now I tend to write longer posts, I give greater thought to what I'm trying to say through this blog, and I include multiple images.  And that's just the blogging.

Old news - three tiles from the archives - Diva Challenge responses from 2014

My tiles have changed too.  They are far more complex these days, even the minimal ones, and they take much longer to tangle.  Which is not to say they are necessarily better, nor is blogging less inherently worse.  It's just different.  This is where I am right now, in my tangling and my blogging.  But comparisons are interesting and useful as we can see where we were, how far we've come, and know that even when we feel like we are stuck in one place, we're actually always moving.

Finding our own way on and through sometimes involves finding new ways to work with old tangles.  Sometimes to be inventive, sometimes just to get on better with a tangle we struggle with.  Laura notes this in her Diva Challenge posting for this week - she says she feels better about Pokeroot when she draws it larger.  I used to feel the same way, and then I preferred it with lots of rounding, but lately I've liked drawing a stripped back version, with lots of tiny Pokeroots along simple black-line branches.  Which is what I did this week, weaving in and around a slender shiny Fengle, with more Pokeroot in the border.

Winter approaches - first frost on Pokeroot

One more tile to share today - I started this last Friday afternoon, and finishes shading it today.  I tangled as the light steadily left the room, the day and the working week.  Minute after minute it became harder and harder to see what I was tangling.  My tangles pulled closer and closer to each other, leaving just that space of brightness in the middle.  I need to accept that it gets dark early.  I need to move my tangle time to earlier in the day.  I need to embrace the way the year changes everything, the trees, the light, my tangling and me. 

My kind of twilight - a tight cluster of lots of different tangles

four quarters of an overcast Thursday

I've always found wisdom in unexpected places.  Fiction guides me more than faith, poetry soothes more than prayer.  And when I'm tangling and truly absorbed in the process so many little lessons slip out from between those seemingly meaningless lines of black ink.  I don't need to hang on every word of the gospel according to Rick and Maria, as eloquent and entertaining as they often are.  I just need to embrace this thing they created and within it I might find whatever I need at that moment.

Tangles used - Flux, Ynix, Opus and Mooka

I haven't tangled much of late.  I'm stuck in one of the gristly bits of life, and it's taking most of my time and energy and focus to chew my way through.  I'll get there, but not just yet.  My tangle-hand feels rusty, my lines are a little more wobbly than usual.  I'm a bit jittery, distracted.  But a window of time opened today and I wanted to make the most of it.  Rather than getting lost in the choice of which project to resume I reached for this week's Diva Challenge - where she invites us to make a mosaic from 4 tiles.  I knew I wouldn't have time to make 4 full sized tiles, so I reach for Bijous.  I then (somewhat stupidly) decided it would be easier to cut my tiles and switch parts, rather than drawing strings.  The resulting pieces didn't fit together that well, the sections didn't line up smoothly and I didn't feel that hopeful.   I almost abandoned it altogether.

I added a black border at the scanning / adjustment stage
to hide the ragged edges, I may be the Ragged Ray but there are limits!

But then I started tangling... adding just 4 original tangles, some perfs, ink, graphite and white pencil.  The imperfections slowly started to fade (they're still there, but only if you choose to notice them).  Each tile has its own personality, its tangle, its quirks.  Each little tile looks good on its own, but stands stronger as part of the whole.  With patience, effort and compromise something apparently hopeless stands a chance.  All of which is true for life, as it is for my tiles.  Wisdom enough for one week I think!

fitting it all together

I'll start with a confession.  I rarely buy books, lessons, or kits relating to Zentangle.  In part this is because I have a relatively limited budget, and also a desire not to accumulate more stuff than I need, and also to avoid shipping too much of said stuff half way round our planet and back.  But it's also because I sometimes feel like I don't really want or need the kit, because I can pretty much see what I need to do (roughly speaking) to get the desired result or look.  I don't mean that to sound as smug as it probably does.

I consider buying some lessons and kits and when weighing up my choices I try to pick ones that I know will give me the most value.  Not just in their immediate content, but in how I might use what I learn from them in my ongoing Zentangle practice.  I want the teaching to be adaptable and open to my own interpretation.  I want to be able to expand beyond the basics.  I want to be able to put my own stamp on the results.

Having had a taster of the scope of the kits designed by Marguerite Samama thanks to working with her Zen Buttons early this year, I knew I would find all of the the things I was looking for in her latest Persian Mosaic™ kit.  The kit is available to buy from Etsy via this link.  If you are in Europe you might prefer to buy directly from Marguerite - who you can contact through Facebook.

Toward the end of September my kit arrived and I dived in.  The instructions guide you skillfully through a number of projects to help you understand and appreciate the concept.  An invaluable component of the kit is a special stencil that divides up a 3Z tile.  You then fill the 3 sections with tangles of your choice.  A Cobalt colour pen is also included and further feeds into the Persian design scheme. 

This was the first one I drew, on tan paper I cut myself.

Attractive enough in itself, but the magic starts to happen when you draw more and lay them alongside each other.  

Next up Marguerite invites us to work with the Cobalt pen alone, and also add coloured shading using an included matching watercolour pencil.  I love the fact that each tile looks good alone, but bought together a new level of wonder appears!

As if that wasn't enough fun Marguerite adds bonus projects using a Zentangle Fragment she calls Shiraz.  Here it is repeated 3 times on a 3Z tile.

And here it's used to form a hexagon.  Both example use the Cobalt pen, alongside my own Sanguine pen.

This gives a taste of the basic projects included in the kit.  I followed the instructions closely, allowing myself only the occasional irresistible deviation!  I've been thrilled with the results, which I've shared in a small but thoroughly supportive and inspiring private Facebook group.  But the real excitement for me is seeing where I go next.  Because this kit isn't done and dusted for me now that I've got the hang of it.  What unexplored Persian pathways await me?  What shining cobalt treasures can I find there?  I think it's fair to say that this post is to be continued...

knowing when to stop

I spent much of September weaving this way and that over whether I might join in with Inktober this year.  One day I thought I would, the next not.  October began and I still thought I might.  Then decided against it.  I had a fair few tangling balls in the air, and couldn't really manage another comfortably.  But then... it was so tempting to want to join in.  And so I started to... but then I stopped.

And then I realised something.  I realised that I really love Ginilli (the tangle chosen by Stephanie Jennifer for October 3rd).  And I'm also quite taken with the Easy Mooka that a few people were using.  And so that's as far as my Inktober got.  But I loved every minute of it, and poured every drop of my ink-sodden heart into these four tiles.

An autumnal window - done using fountain pens and Diamine ink

Black pen, grey pen - and a Mooka stem for Ginilli to bloom on

A tissue-dyed tile - Ginilli in a spiral with added Easy Mooka tufts

Getting experimental - angular Ginilli and straight Mooka - with silver borders

Maybe next year I'll join in properly, maybe I'll even get beyond the first three prompts.  And maybe I won't, and that's fine too!

then and now, now and then

I'm always a little saddened when I hear that a Zentangle tile has 'gone wrong' for someone.  That they've made a mistake, lost their way,  or simply changed their mind about what they wanted it to be.  Part of the pleasure for me is working through those stumbles and reconciling yourself with wherever you and your tile end up.  Sometimes those 'wrong' tiles even end up torn into bits and buried in the bin.  Which is even sadder! 

It's not to say I'm immune to those difficult tile days.  But one thing I never do is throw away a wayward tile.  I'm naturally frugal for a start!  What I do is tuck them in a little basket... for later.  And thus my Leftovers Project was born! 

This week, torn between too many choices and not enough time I decided to revisit old tiles instead of starting new ones. 

First up this green tile that's been lurking on my pile for a good few years.  I found it with the line work half done, on some rather hard to handle tinted watercolour paper that I rarely use now.  The tangles were also ones I haven't used in a long time.  One of the most interesting things in revisiting these old tiles is spotting the changes in my tangling, my skill, style and choices.

Tangled with - Beadlines / Fleuri / Tipz / Pia / Stonestory

 To finish it off I completed the outstanding tangles.  Then anchored the bands to the edges using more tangles.  I added a touch of green coloured pencil and shaded.  Who knows why I didn't like it then, but I do now.

Next up this autumnal looking arc.  I presume I tangled this while trying to get to grips with Peaknuckle.  Drawn over a band of watercolour, again it was abandoned at the line work stage.

Just Peanuckle, plus a few curls and aura

I added shading and highlighting with coloured pencil and graphite.  It looks a lot happier to be finished, but it's lacking in contrast a bit.  Sometimes a tile is set on a path by my past self and it's hard to change that direction. 

And lastly there wast this.  A strange looking tile, left at the line work stage, with only one corner blacked in.  I blacked in two more corners and then grew tired of the effort!  Which is perhaps why I abandoned the tile in the first place...

Tangled with mutant Purk and Lollywimple filled with Jetties and Cruffle

Rounding the remaining sections seemed a decent halfway measure to fully filling them in.  I shaded and added tiny pops of the two colours I still had out from my other two tiles.  Sometimes a little touch like that can really finish off a tile, and also pull three disparate pieces together into something close to cohesion.

There were also a couple of others I worked on, which still remain stubbornly unattractive and I can't see a way to redeem them at the moment.  They have been returned to the basket, perhaps their day will come, even if it's not today!  So, next time you go to throw away a tile, think again... who knows what it's one day destined to become!