six-sided celebrations

Today is a special day.  It's the anniversary of my very first Zentangle tile.

Back in the summer of 2013 I bought Beckah Krahula's One Zentangle a Day book, cut up a handful of thin white postcards, grabbed a 0.4 non permanent black pen and a pencil and tangled my first tile.  Two days later I tangled my second - and I haven't stopped since.

I blogged about my early exploration here - although I confess that I didn't start my blog straight away.  Initially I made notes on my tangling progress on pen and paper and only started the blog a couple of months in and then typed up my notes!

From little acorns - Static, Crescent Moon and Tipple

Everything I hoped Zentangle would bring me has happened.  My tangling has grown in confidence, ability and imagination.  I've explored different shaped tiles, different pens, a multitude of colours whilst never losing the love of basic black and white.  I've connected with people from all over this weird and wonderful world.  I've felt full to the brim with Zentangle excitement and also basked in utter calm as a tile takes shape at the end of my pen.

Mighty oaks - Drupe, Drawings and Aquafleur

Apt that six years on my current obsession is the six-sided delights that Marguerite Samama calls Relaxagons - which I blogged about a couple of weeks ago.  Moving on from getting to know the tile, Marguerite invites us to explore the hexagon shape using tangles which can benefit from greater space.  She offers example and suggestions and I tried this with three different tangles.

Firstly I worked in black and white on one of the delicious hand made Relaxagon tiles, cut from the same Fabriano paper as the Zentangle original white tiles.

Drupe with added Beadlines and Fescu

Then I coloured a tile using the watercolour pencils included in the kit.  Not only are the colours perfect compliments to each other but their quality is wonderful - they mixed and mingled so well.  

Drawings - usually reminiscent of birds, this looks like something
more at home beneath the waves. 

I prepared my final tile by masking using thin washi tape and then smooth blending some blue Distress Ink.  When I removed the tape the hexagon was divided into all sorts of interesting shapes - which I began to fill with Aquafleur.  Disaster struck in one section of the tile - I lost track of which ribbons I was filling and it all started to unravel!  A few moments of despair where I considered ditching the tile - then the 'No Mistakes in Zentangle' motto came to mind and I grabbed a black Posca pen and covered over the mistakes.  When it was dry I went back with my white and gold pens and if I hadn't told you, perhaps you might have thought it was my intention all along!

I've been tangling Aquafleur fairly regularly over the years -
but I noticed one day that it didn't feel quite right, and when I checked
I'd drifted a little in how I tangled it and so the inward twisting spiral
had disappeared.  (Here's an example on a similarly masked tile)
It's worthwhile going back to the step-outs from
time to time in case you've drifted and need to find your way home!
Or else just enjoy your drift and call it a tangleation!

Thank you for sharing my tangle-anniversary with me.  Thank you to those who have been with me since almost the very start, and thank you to those who've joined me through the years.  Thanks for your encouragement, inspiration, and company on this tangled journey.  Here's hoping there are many more tangled adventures in the years ahead!

back to black

We reach a new chapter in One Zentangle a Day and for Day 29 Krahula suggests that now we've learned some of the rules it's time to start bending and breaking them.

For the first exercise she gets us drawing feathers, building on the technique for drawing the Verdigogh tangle.  At the moment I can't see a great deal of different between my feathers and my Verdigogh - but both are pure pleasure to draw and add a pleasing softness to any tile.  In my tile I had them puffing out from behind some Showgirl.  I added a border of Quatiny - which is a quirky little tangle that I discovered recently which can be a great way to introduce a bit of solidity and three dimensionality to a tile.  I'd already coloured the tile with Inktense pencils and water.  I've found it's handy to do a block of colouring at one point, then let the tiles dry and tuck them away for the day I want to grab one for a bit of colour work.  I like this tile a lot - the tangles sit well together and it looks lively and inviting.  The graphite pencil shading muted it a bit - next time I'll try to shade with the Inktense themselves.  I think it looks like a grown-up version of the second tile on this post. 

For the second tile of the Day Krahula asked us to draw a black tile, but this time introduce colour.  I've never particularly enjoyed the black tile tangling.  The pen feels so thick after the Micron 01 and I've struggled to find a decent way to shade in white.  Today's attempt went better - thanks to the Inktense pencils, which show up in white and colour on the tile.  And I know now that I have to do a different sort of tangling on the black - far less detail and taking care not to smudge.  I used the new to Tangle Patterns Meringue (by Kelley Kelly) - which flowed well across the tile.  I then popped in string of Beadline in gold and coloured some areas with a green Inktense and then put Tipple over the top with the Micron - which doesn't show that well.  The black tile looks better to the eye than to the scanner but I like it.  I think of lights strung in trees, or underwater, and little pockets of treasure.

Eke and ye shall find

One of the things I love about Zentangle is its unpredictability.  A tangle can morph into something quite unexpected at the end of my pen.  Two tangles can meet and make beautiful music together.  Two's company, but sometimes three's a crowd - tangles sitting on a tile barely making eye contact.  Even so, I'm learning to love the days when it doesn't go that well. 

For One Zentangle a Day 27 we learnt Meer (which I had used before and like a lot), Enyshou (which is surely related to Squid) and Reef.  Somewhat inevitably an underwater vibe took over my tile.  But something didn't quite come together, and it looks a bit unfinished.  With hindsight I could go back and darken the background to make the tangles stand out, but sometimes it's good to have an example of something not quite right to learn from?

Who knew Eke could even work in a grid?

Day 28's tile felt like a vast improvement.  Krahula taught us Eke, and a tangleation of it and Sez (which I just couldn't get on with - sometimes the simplest ones are like that).  When I first encountered Eke a while back I thought it was particularly lame.  Just a loopy line, which didn't suggest much potential - and that surprised me because the official tangles are usually so well chosen and engaging.  But, revisiting it, something clicked, and I could see so many different ways it could be drawn and darkened and changed.  And now I thoroughly love it - enough to do a monotangle featuring nothing but Eke.

A simple string, a muted palette of my new Inktense pencils and a lot of gentle looping back and forth.  Mesmerising to draw, and pleasing to look at.  I can see a tree rising up from from the depths of a valley.  Draped fabric.  And the strange spine of a long extinct beast.

waiting for the fall

What goes up must come down

The wonderful world of Zentangle has good and bad days - I'm learning to live with that.  Not every tangle, or every tile pleases me - but often after a dud, one I really like comes along next.  And the process is (usually) always a pleasure.  The Day 26 activities that Beckah Krahula suggested left me feeling like I was playing with a yo-yo.

Pokeleaf was introduced as a variant to Pokeroot and I found it far more satisfying to draw.  Anything orbish often leaves me thinking it's too flattened or wobbly, whereas leaf shapes seem to make sense to my pen - maybe because I spend a lot of time writing about trees?  But Growth felt a bit lame, and despite much practice I couldn't draw it in a way that looked or felt good.  To add insult to injury I decided to try again with Bucky - that most stubborn tangle.  I did it but the result is a bit awkward - each tangle looks like it's standing uncomfortably next to it's neighbour.  My Growth pyramids remind me of Croquembouche - which look impressive, but I'd rather have a decent serving in my own bowl!

Break on through to the other side

The second activity was another one using colour - and I used the coloured pencils I had to hand.  I don't think they are particularly good quality as you have to be quite firm to get much depth of colour out of them, but it was fun to play with shading using colour rather than just graphite pencil. I used Dex - which I'd spotted on Tanglepatterns, which creates a lovely blocky base for my Flux to grow out of.  I love Flux - but mine often come out as single slender vines and I want to try to make them work differently.  I popped a few Cruffle in to fill the space around.  And I like the result.  It looks like the kind of floral decoration an interior designer might install in a loft conversion.  Some soft red leaves to counteract all the glass and brickwork.

the curse of the black pearl

My peripheral vision has a lot to answer for. Last week I made a couple of tiles that had little black pearls scattered throughout them. I had no idea where these had come from, but there they were. Perhaps I'd seen them in one of the many tiles I view online...

... yesterday I turned to Day 25 of One Zentangle a Day and was introduced to Perfs. And they they were. Those little black pearls. I'd obviously seen them coming in the book but not realised. 

 

I had great fun playing with them, and their paler variants. Like the other Tangle Enhancers they really add extra life to the area they inhabit. Extra movement, extra darkness or light, balance, shape. I know they will come in very handy when I have that 'something's missing' moment.

Featuring - Flux, Fescue, Rain and Snag

In the first tile I used a sanguine pen to draw the meandering Flux.  I'd been drawn to this pen, and it's sepia counterpart but not been 100% happy with the results - but I think perhaps using it alongside the black pen creates a more pleasing look for me. 

The band of plain Perfs around the base really anchor the tangles for me.  I might have used Tipple there, but this way works better, creating a sense of the whole image being seated, but without it darkening.  It's almost like the Perfs are a pale shading.

Featuring - Onamato, Aquafleur, Verdigogh, Echoism and Flux

For the second activity Krahula asks us to use colour in place of a string.  This was fun and challenging to do.  I didn't have traditional watercolours to hand, so worked with my Zig Clean Color brush pens.  They do blend out like watercolours but not as willingly - but I think their idiosyncrasies are to the benefit of the image.  

The fact that the colour went where it wanted to, more than where I wanted it to, made me surrender control over the string.  When I went back later to draw over the top I had to work with the shapes I had, and I think it encouraged me to put all thought aside and laid down whatever tangled worked with the colour.  Presumably to avoid the always risky act of shading over watercolour Krahula asked us to shade using stippling.  Time consuming but always satisfying.

The result is clearly different than my usual tiles - as I don't think my more conscious drawing would have put that selection of tangles together.  But I love it.  It reminds me of dancing girls - corsets and feathers, high heels and pearls.  I spent the rest of the day thinking about the Moulin Rouge and singing 'I am what I am'!

 

spoilt for choice

One thing I struggle with is trying to hold all the tangles and their names in my mind. When I started learning, and only knew about 10 tangles I was fine - I could sit at a blank tile and bring up which ever one I wanted, knowing how to draw it and what it was called. Soon after my memory banks became overloaded, and apart from a handful of favourites, or recently learned tangles I now tend to struggle. I look at a tile and know I want a curvy one or a filler or a wispy one but struggle to bring the tangle or its name to mind. I then resort to looking at books or websites to find one - which somehow feels like cheating, or at least bringing myself out of the Zentangle mindful place.

But on reaching Day 24 of One Zentangle a Day it seems I'm not the only one to struggle. Krahula gets herself in a bit of a mess on this day - calling Mooka Mocha and introducing a tangleation of Pepper which to me is surely a tangleation instead of Zinger?

I liked the Zinger variant - it allowed it to be a bigger, heavier tangle and also offered more shading potential. She also taught us Striping, which looks better in practice that in theory. I kept my tile simple - with a bit of bulging on the dark stripes. 

 The result wouldn't be out of place on a 70's mantelpiece.

For the second activity Krahula asked us to make a tile using colour, watercolour. I used my Zig Clean Color brush pens which blend and disperse like watercolour. Using colour is new to me, and I'm making it up as I go along, which feels fun and also right. I challenged myself to use colours I wouldn't normally tend toward - the warm bright ones!

And I'm pleased with the result. It's a little messier and looser than my pen and pencil work but it's inviting and colourful and I liked using the spaces in Echoism for other tangles. It also looks like it would be right at home hanging on the wall above that 70's mantelpiece!

multi-tasking part 1

For the second activity on Day 23 of One Zentangle a Day Krahula asks us to use the Sakura Glaze pen. It lays down a milky line of ink which when dry resists colour - so setting boundaries between areas and rising white and slightly shiny from the paper when finished.

It was more challenging to work with than the trusty Micron 01 - a thicker line, a pen keen to roll away with me, and ink that needs a few minutes to dry. I made good use of the drying time (see my fellow post) and even the little places where the ink flicked as I lifted the pen have their own charm - see those little flecks inside some of the Tipples!

I kept the tangles fairly simple and avoided ones where the lines touched too much. The usual nudging of 'nzeppel wasn't possible but the wavery lines work well in the overall underwater atmosphere of my finished piece.

I coloured my piece using four different Zig brush pens - in brown and green, blue and grey. With a bit of encouragement from a water brush these blended well, and I'm still delighted by the way the ink made its own variegation along the branches of my Sampson. I feel like I'm looking down into a tank - it's a welcoming world and at any moment I expect something to swim into view!

sowing the seeds of love

Day 23 of One Zentangle a Day and I very nearly get into an argument with Kathy's Dilemma.

But just as I am about to accuse it of being a mere imitation of Tripoli I hold my tongue and draw it instead. And I'm pleasantly surprised by how it behaves.

The way it takes a circular space and dissects it, but then somehow holds it together at the same time. I like the way it can be filled, or not. I like the way it can lay over other tangles. In only two loops on a single tile we become friends. I'm already planning our next date!

A black and white Flux, a dark-holed Keeko border and a bit of Raindotty to tie the background together and I'm done.  

And it looks like an overhead view of a garden - or one of those drawings professional gardeners make when they plan what will grow where. There's a border and a lawn, and a curving line of vegetation and then these two circular beds, divided and seeded with wonderful plants. I can't wait to see how they might grow!

the first sign of madness

My tiles are often influenced by my mood. A bad day often leads to me declaring I've made a bad tile. And much like today, my tile for Day 22 of One Zentangle a Day didn't come out how I hoped.

The tangles jarred with one another and looked uncomfortable, and the whole lacked elegance, fun or interest. But that doesn't particularly matter - it's not the end result that matters, so much as the process - which was methodical, calm and pleasing.

And it led me to having a sort-of conversation with two tangles - which went something like this -

ME Tagh - aren't you ultimately the same as Printemps only filled differently?

TAGH (slightly offended) Not really...

ME But you are. Okay, your shape is a bit more upright and squared, and you have a darkened dot, not a spiral, but other than that...?

TAGH I'm sure I'm different to Printemps.

PRINTEMPS (interjecting) It's true. We are different... It's just that you draw us the same.

ME Me? are you blaming me for your failings.

TAGH & (at the same time) Umm... yes!

PRINTEMPS

ME (dashes off to find original learning of Printemps... only to find I draw them in rows, all of the same size. I got it slightly 'wrong' from the off and never noticed. Each time I used it I compounded the original error.)

ME Why did you tell me?

PRINTEMPS (sheepishly) I didn't like to!

seeping

As a second part of Day 21 of One Zentangle a Day Krahula challenges us to create a sepia tile.

I decided to carry on my practice of Rick's Paradox and B'tweed and tried them in a simple grid and border form.

I had a sepia Faber-Castell Pitt pen to draw with. I was surprised at how even a slight increase in nib size (the Pitt is 0.3mm compared to the Pigma Micron 01 which is 0.25mm) feels different to work with. In addition I didn't have anything that matched that well to create sepia toned shading. I improvised (Zentangle seems to encourage that!) using a ZIG brush pen in Dark Oatmeal which I blended out with a water brush pen.

And I like the result. It has a more loose feeling to it than many of my tiles. The pen strokes are less precisely laid and the brushed shading builds on that. As a whole it looks quite rustic – and from a distance resembles a vintage ceramic tile or perhaps and old coaster, stained by all the cups of tea that have been placed on it.

the straight and narrow

I end the week much as I began – struggling to cope with low light as I place multiple small straight lines onto a waiting piece of paper – and each time being amazed at the patterns they make.

On Monday I reached Day 21 of One Zentangle a Day, and was introduced to Rick's Paradox and B'tweed (which I'd played with on the Halloween It's a String Thing challenge).

Rick's Paradox put up quite a fight. I could see what I was meant to be aiming for - turning corners, turning my tile and walking always in a straight line. But somehow I kept getting lost in a maze of my own making. (As always, the reassurance of a quick Google and finding many others struggling with this particular tangle). Then suddenly two triangles filled with this pleated pattern came good and I could see a wave cresting towards me. A concertinaed map of old, folded into a fan by a queasy captain's wife. I could see the downward curve of a penguin's beak – eye closed, fast sleep in it's monochrome wilderness.

And then I fill in the middle with B'tweed and suddenly four penguins are fighting over the same patch of ice, each tugging a corner, fracturing the surface, desperate to get to the fish hidden beneath.

And Friday is filled with Fassett. One tile completed and submitted to the It's a StringThing #25 challenge – but time and ideas enough for a second. I add a splash of colour (Zig Clean Color brush pens) on the string line, a little bit of blue and grey to compliment the icy nature of the tangle. I fill and highlight the tangle into one of it's possibly endless variations, and I let the edges jag out a bit rather than squaring them off. 

abstract paleontology

Two firsts for me this week. 

My first every tangling done on an Official Zentangle tile.  It was an entirely different experience than working on any of the papers I’ve used so far.  It was softer, warmer, more welcoming in many ways but also demanding of a gentler approach.  I loved the way it slowed my pen down, making me feel like I had far more control of where my lines where going.  But the surface fluffed up a bit with my desire to get my black areas really black and I need to be a bit softer with my blending stump too as the tile surface again started to protest a little. 

I used the tile to pick up where I left off with my One Zentangle a Day course.  Day 20 introduced Jetties, Sampson and Nzeppel.  I can see that Jetties will be great fillers of awkward spaces and provide a useful alternative to Tipple.  Sampson is lovely, and looks like that yellow lichen that appears to be soft and delicate until you need to chisel it off.  And Nzeppel to me look like fancy fishnet stockings!  I used it at Christmas to tangle a tree on a card for my partner and with a touch of glitter at the junctions it looked very festive. 

My second adventure was into the world of colour.  Apart from the odd dash of red or blue to accent the occasional It’s a String Thing tile I’ve avoided colour.  But I wanted to have a play – this is supposed to be fun right? – and see what I could do.  I’m not a natural artist and often what I see in my head fails to materialise on paper – but this was a rare instance where it did.  

I wetted the paper first and then dropped small spots of colour from my new Zig Clean Color brushes.  The colour spread out a bit.  And I left it to dry.  It did cause the paper to wrinkle a bit – but hopefully fine -tuning my paper choice will get round that in future.  I then monotangled Snaylz Trayl (from Tanglepatterns) over the top and blacked in all the space between and around.  The Pigma Micron 01 had no trouble drawing over the dried colour.  I wanted the tiles to look like a slice through rock – fossils buried deep within layers of colour built up through the ages.  And I believe it does.  It’s not my tidiest piece – probably because I was so excited that it seemed to be working - but I’m very happy with it!

making and breaking

I was feeling a bit reluctant to return to the page after the last disastrous ATC – but I found it was much like most disciplines, sticking with it and practice do pay off. 

Today I find myself wanting to break the rules again – just like when I started overlapping my tangles before we were taught to.  I was like this at school, joining my letters together before we were taught how – making a mess of it, but knowing it was coming and eager to evolve. 

And I feel like the string contains me, or not the string perhaps but the border.  I look at some of the designs on the official Zentangle blog and they look borderless, perhaps even stringless.  A little image in the middle of the tile or spilling off the edge.  And so today I break the rules and tangle right to the edges – 

Today’s tangles : Vega - this is a great looking tangle – a strong and supple looking snake that can wind its way wherever it wants.  But I found it so hard to do.  I spent ages practicing and it’s fine as long as the curve is relatively straight, but the minute the bend becomes too bendy the pattern falls apart.  Thankfully a quick Google tells me that quite a lot of other people find the same problem!   Purk – fun to do and adds a nice sense of dimension to a tile – it really seems to jump out of the page and appear as if you would feel its weight and texture if you could touch it.  When I draw it I feel like I’m making Fabergé eggs.

Today’s tile makes me think of gypsy table cloths and vines taking over dilapidated painted caravans.  Of nature trying to fill every available space not yet claimed by man.

whether the weather

We are introduced to the concept of tangleations on Day 7 – the idea of making changes to a tangle to alter it subtly but significantly.  This turns a relatively limited palette of tangles into a far wider, perhaps even endless array to choose from.  It also helps to alter a tangle that doesn’t quite work into one that does.  In addition it allows room for a bit of individual imagination – this takes a step closer to real art, when you can feel like you are creating something new.

After filling a page of my sketchbook with various tweaks on my handful of learned tangles I embark on the second ATC –

and that’s where it all goes wrong.  Nothing comes out as I hope it to – everything feels awkward and looks wrong.  I finish, with a sense of dissatisfaction, and shove it away with little more time than it takes me to sign and date it.

When I come back to it a few days later, I realise I didn’t jot down my customary few lines having finished.  This was the one that got away – that held it’s hand up and flounced out with a ‘no comment’.  This is the one that I’ve taken against. 

Looking at it now I can’t tell up from down, and not in a good way.  It defies gravity.  It’s vaguely sea-based, pebbles and waves – but man-made too – structures attempting and failing to hold back the tide.  Strange thundercloud loops and little bits of lightning and a string of black beads that cast a deep shadow. 

And then I remember that the day I made this tile was hot and humid and we were waiting for storms that we didn’t know yet were coming – it seems I’m forecasting the weather within my tiles.  And realising this I come to like my tile a little more!

flux capacity

Day 6 of this strange journey brings us to one stroke tangles.  These feel relaxing to make and using them seems to sink me further into the calm place that the act of Zentangling suggests is possible.

For every day when I struggle to see any progress I’m making I have a day when I notice areas of gaining strength.  I am getting better at filling the space.  Loosely allowing one tangle to cover another, and tying the whole together into a pleasing form.

Today’s tangles : Amaze – which looks like the surface of a brain and fills background space well.  Mooka – which are those loops which could be ears or paperclips.  Tricky to get right, but very versatile.  Flux – leafy vines which work great as borders, or bands to break up patterns and cast lovely shadows beneath them as they pass.

The tile I made today is my favourite so far – 

I wonder if the books I’m currently reading (Beacons and Edgelands) inadvertently influence the tile I made, or perhaps just my interpretation of the tile?  It looks like a battle – like nature reclaiming from man.  Roots breaking the surface.  Vines tangling girders.  Beauty in decay.

hint of a glint

I’ve started using a #2 blending stump for smudging the pencil shading instead of my finger – and have found it very effective – much easier to control the shading, to move it where you want, and smudging the pencil it really makes it look smoother and more natural.

In Day 5 of One Zentangle a Day Krahula introduces the idea of sparkles.  These are a way of enhancing our images.  They are meant to be little spots of caught light and are achieved by lifting the pen as we draw. 

In today’s ATC (Artist Trading Card – a rectangle shaped piece of paper instead of the square) I’ve put sparkles in my Knight’s Bridge and also into my very wobbly Printemps waves.  I’ll admit that beyond this day I’ve struggled with sparkles a bit, and only remember to use them when I actively remind myself.

My image looks like a bird rising from the seas, or hanging down from a tree.  A bird stuffed full of bubbles of bright ideas or gassy responses.  A bird with a beak sealed by a curse - pledged tight to utter not a word.  A bird with concrete curls for hair - living beneath an insect's nest, each cell set to burst.

say hello to the waves

I continue to do things my own way.  Not just copying but adapting, looking and taking in but interpreting too.  Not just the pattern but the process.  Some people seem to view them as casual throwaway creations but I want to take time with mine.  I want them to look cared for. 

I decide I want to round the corners of my tiles.  Today I like my darker blacker lines – I think they look cartoony!

Today’s tangles : Ischor - which I really struggled to get the hang of, but once I do it has a satisfying sense of texture to it, almost like the soft peaks of a whipped dessert studded with tiny berries.  Printemps - this is a lovely one to do, but tricky to get looking perfect.  Easy to get carried away and end up with messy spirals, but done right it really looks like waves, albeit those in the background on a theatre stage – ready and waiting for the puppets to perform!    

I start to break away from the idea of a square, leaving more white space on the tile.  Today’s creation looks like it should be held.  Like it could move of it’s own accord.  In one place a strange one winged butterfly has settled.  In another cartoon waves roll endlessly across a paper sea.

these boots are made for walking

In addition to my niggle of yesterday, saying that the pencil line still showed on my finished tile, I’m not that keen on the result that my thicker pen has on the design.  My images look a lot less delicate than many Zentangles done with the recommended 0.25mm nib.  But I’m still learning to love them for what they are!  I’m also not keen on how they look on a screen, as opposed to in hand.  The scanner gives them a slightly pinkish hue (but if I turn them black and white they are too harsh) and every little defect shows up if you zoom in – so don’t!

Never satisfied – this is the tile I made today –

Today’s tangles : Shattuck – looks like a woven basket, or a sea urchin.  Nipa – which looks like a mouse has chewed through wood instead of cheese.  Jonqual – a more slanted take on Knights Bridge with great shading possibility.

I like the tangles that have more possibility – that can be done tighter or looser.  I want to keep making them if only to get to know them better.  They encourage me to spread beyond the spaced allocated to them by my string.  I like all the terms – the specific names the tangles have.  It makes me think of Buddhists and yoga mats and bells.  If you start using a set of unfamiliar terms you start to feel part of something bigger.

I find I have drawn an enchanted boot.  Cursed so that whenever the wearer stops walking, whatever they are standing on (and every surface has a least a percentage of living matter) will grow up and into and over them.  Die walking or die still.

strange fruits

One of the key concepts of Zentangle is that there are no mistakes – no need to use an eraser.  This is quite daunting, but also quite thrilling too.  If you make a ‘mistake’ or at least a mark that you don’t like the challenge is to change it into something else. 

In addition to not erasing mistakes I suppose we are not meant to erase any ‘string’ lines (the vague borders you draw at the start to later fill in with the pen) either.  Sometimes these get tidily covered by the tangled patterns and any shading, but sometimes (perhaps because I’m a bit heavy handed with my pencil) they remain.  They look a bit awkward to me – but an important part of this activity for me is learning to love the imperfections.  Zentangling should be a pleasure not a chore.

 

Today’s tile looked like this – 

Today’s tangles : Poke Root – strange cherries that lay over one another and create a sense of depth as well as dimension when you shade them with the pencil.    Festune – which are like decorative lifebuoys and again appear rounded.  Hollibaugh – a lovely stacked planks design which is one of the best tangles for showing the massive impact that shading can have.

I had a buzzy mind while drawing and feared my tile was becoming intricate but cluttered.  I forced myself to leave a band of space running through it.  It could be a river running across the paper – the long Thames before they bridged it.  Or viewed this way up a winding path leading into the woods – with strange fruits and mushrooms – each promising to delight or harm but unlikely to declare which beforehand.  Trees with crossed branches casting strangely straight shadows from strangely straight limbs.

the one that didn't get away

On most days Beckah Krahula teaches us a few new tangles and urges us to create a tile using those and any we’ve previously learnt. 

At the moment I’m making mine on some cut down blank white postcards of quite thin card quality, and I’m drawing with an Initiative Fineliner, which has a 0.4mm nib.  I’m shading with an HB pencil and smudging with my finger!  The results aren’t quite as precious as the recommended tiles and pen might achieve but I’m working under the premise of this being an artform than anyone can do anywhere!

This was my Day Two tile –

Today's tangles : Knights Bridge - the checkerboard one, a good way to quickly bang some dark contrast into a tile.  Nekton - the little lines, which I'm sure we had on a wallpaper when I was a child!  Fescu - the topped stems which work well to add a bit of movement into a design or can straggle from one area into another. 

I like the part where we rotate our tile at the end, deciding which way up we’d like it to be before we sign it.  This part always sets my imagination afire, as I see my tile morphing through many incarnations.  Although I start to worry already that everything I draw looks like a handkerchief.  That even in my most thought-free moments I’m mopping tears.  But then I turn it and see a kite.  Then a ray trying to get away, strange organs shifting within.  Those places within us all where the concept of swimming is stored – where we are always in movement even when still.