PRINTEMPS, and then some

The name of this tangle is a fun bit of word play. Printemps is French for spring - the season. Printemps the tangle looks like lots of little springs - as in a mattress or ballpoint pen.

Let's start with how to pronounce it. French, along with British English, is a little notorious for not saying all the letters you see. Also, the French 'R' is not like the English 'R'. Ecoutez bien (listen well):

The best place to find a step-out for Printemps - it's done by Maria Thomas - is on the Zentangle Mosaic app. If you're not part of that, it's pretty easy to figure out that this tangle is basically a lot of clustered spirals.

There are at least two ways to shade Printemps. You can shade around some of the individual spirals or you can shade at the edge of the section in which you've drawn Printemps.

VARIATIONS
Printemps has been around since Zentangle was born and a number of variations can already be seen. Some I've noted:

• start with a small dot before spiraling out
• try to keep the spirals pretty much all the same size
• randomly vary the size of the spirals

Here are some more variations you may like to try:

Variation: Sparkle
When I attended CZT Seminar 3 way back when, Printemps was demonstrated along with the sparkle enhancement. For a long time I thought Printemps necessarily had these highlights! (Those little highlights are fun to add to other 'line' tangles, too.) With Printemps, try to line up the breaks on the same side of each spiral. See this 'sparkle' version demonstrated in a video here.

Tangles: Crescent Moon, Printemps, Tipple, Tri-dots

Variation: Large and small
Draw a few, scattered, rather large spirals and fill the rest of the space with small spirals.

Tangles: Black Pearlz, MySwing, Printemps, Zonked

Variation: I need some space
Separate the spirals and fill the background. Choose black, black with dots, caviar-style Tipple or anything that is different enough from the multiple lines of Printemps.
Suzanne McNeill's step-outs for this variation are here.

Tangles: Beadlines, Printemps, Tipple (Caviar version), Zonked

Variation: Retreating
Start with some very large spirals along one edge. Next to that row, do a row of slightly smaller spirals. And so on and so on until you end with some very tiny spirals. I suggest shading the edge with the tiny spirals as it seems to be retreating from you.

Tangles: Droplets, Printemps

Variation: Expanding
This variation reminds me of some lovely little shells I picked up somewhere.

Start with a very tight spiral and expand it as you go out.

This tile looks a bit questionable. ;)
Tangles: Florz, KrliQs, Printemps, and Rounding

Variation: Off-center
Start with a tiny circle. As you spiral around, come back to the same edge of the tiny circle every time. My result is more an oval than a circle and I think they look like clam shells. This variation somewhat resembles Beth Snodderly's tangle Roxi, which you can find here. You could do it a little differently, being careful to maintain circles instead of ovals.

Tangles: Arukas, Firecracker, Printemps, Seljuk 

Variation: Box Spirals
Several years ago I came up with this variation which I treated as a new tangle, but it really is a variation of Printemps. See that post here.

Variation: Weighted
Also shown in the tile above is a version of Printemps some have called "weighted". I start by drawing a very irregular spiral (easier if I hold the pen lightly), then add sections to make a neater spiral, and fill in the thicker parts. I like to leave highlights; it could also be solid black. Here's a quick how-to:

Have fun!

UPDATE, 25 September 2018:
Here are two lovely examples of tiles done using some of these variations.

Tile by Rhonda Elliot Roy.

Tile by Heidi Halpern Kay in Florida,
a new zentangle student of CZT Joanna Quincey's.