Need string ideas?

Are you ever at a loss for a string to begin your tangled tile? And you've exhausted tanglepatterns strings ideas? Then check out these previous blog posts for some inspiration!

First is a simple idea I call a flying birds string, and an example using variations of Tipple. It has a lot of possibilities.

Flying birds string

Try using a tangle as a string. Choose a tangle, draw it large and in pencil. Here is Crescent Moon as a string, filled with a variety of other tangles.

A tangle as a string

I often like to close my eyes and draw a blind string. It always offers something different to work with! This post shows using blind drawing based on a tangle, like the tile below using the tangle Apacore.

A blind string

This post is about using (blind) contour drawing to create strings. In the tile below I had done a very simple contour drawing of our coffee machine, then tangled it, and turned it sideways.

A rope string is another idea I had some time ago.

A rope string

Choose a fragment, draw it quite large, and use the fragment as a string. Here's an example using Flukes.

Fragment as string

Something I did a lot of at one point (hmm, I'll have to revisit this) is two-pencil strings. Wow, that post's from almost ten years ago! I followed with a few more posts about two-pencil strings. Go to these posts for more fun and wide apart.

Two-pencil string

And last, but not least, something a little different, hotel strings! You'll have to go to the blog post to understand how this final tile relates to that idea!

A hotel string

Blind strings & tangles as strings

BLIND STRING: I often like to do what I call a 'blind string' - a string drawn with my eyes closed. It gives me some interesting and unexpected sections to work with. A challenge! Usually, once I open my eyes I'll add a few more pencil lines to complete sections.

TANGLE AS STRING: We tend to think of a tangle or fragment in only that context, but that design can also be used larger, as a string. You can see my post about using fragments as strings here.

All of the tiles in this post begin with a blind string based on a tangle.

I started with a string of Apacore, then added other tangles. And more apple seeds.

Tangles: Double Double, Fife, and Pearlz with an Apacore string.

Cirqital is easy to identify, even with the addition of all the other tangles.

Tangles: Pearlz, Seljuk, and Zonked in a Cirqital string

This time it's Icantoo (which may be hard to identify in this finished tile!), to which I added smaller Icantoos.

Tangles: Icantoo, Pearlz, Tipple

Here are two where I remembered to take a picture of the string before I tangled it. (Yay me!) First, MySwing as the string, and second using Mooka.

Tangles: Bunzo, CrescentMoon, Gewgle, and Pearlz on a MySwing string

Choose a tangle, close your eyes, and be bold!

Running 'round in circles

I often feel that way.

"I need to do this!"
"I forgot to call so-and-so!"
"I need to do that, too!"
"I'm late with... something!"
"I'm supposed to plan this thing!"
"I also need to plan that thing!"

Thus felt the DivaCZT on her recent wonderful, but whirlwind, family vacation. Thus her challenge this week: use circles. Any way. Any how.

I've always loved circles. For more than a decade I focused on mandala artwork, drawn, painted, and mixed media. So this challenge was right up my alley, and as often happens in that situation, I move from one idea to the next fairly quickly. I had the notion that we were to do concentric circles, so that's what I began with, often using a blind string.

My first tile was three circles in classic black on white.

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Paisley Boa, Pearlz, Prestwood, and
Tortuca, plus stripes, lines and Auras

Next I tried four circles in color.

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Diva Dance, Knase, Niuroda, Perfs,
Paisley Boa, Pearlz, and Wud plus lines and spirals

Third tile, a tan tile. I love working in browns on these tiles even though brown in definitely not my favorite color.

Tangles: Ennies, Paisley Boa, Pearlz, Snaylz, Tipple and more

I had really wanted to try Tina-Akua Hunziker's recent tangle Niuroda so I got out a zendala tile and went to town.

Back to black and white. I was quite taken with a pattern I'd seen earlier today of interlocking circles with Rounding at the intersections. It turns out it's Bublz from Lori Byerly.

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Bublz, Drupe, Ogen, Tipple
and circles with Rounding.

The broken apart Drupe in that previous tile gave me an idea: use tangles that are circular in format (or could be) and use only parts of them. Here's the result.

Tangles: Arukas, Cirqital, Daggerly, Drupe, Tipple, and Zonked

A little shut eye

I really appreciate blind strings and use them a lot. I tend to be very controlled so I like something that will give me a surprise to work with. Thanks to the Diva, that's the challenge this week. I often don't do the dots and border - generally these days, but especially with a blind string - so this time I did. It's fun to have things run outside the official picture area.

Tangles: Beadlines, Bunzo, Tipple, Windfarm, Zewm

Windfarm is one of my tangles, a wild variation of Hollibaugh. You can see the drawing instructions here.

Tangles: Palrevo, Sqaro, and stripes with highlights

Squaro is a new tangle from one of my students. You can find the drawing instructions in this blog post.

I'm not as pleased with the next one. It seems too busy. But I wanted to try Meer going around a corner, and I haven't used Spinners or Marasu for quite some time.

Tangles: Beadlines, Black Pearlz, Crescent Moon,
Marasu, Meer, Spinners, Tipple

Prestwood variation

Some time ago I deconstructed the pattern on the back of one of my mother's antique chairs. You can see the story and the tangle Prestwood here.

Recently, out of necessity, I happened upon a lovely variation of this tangle. I had made the rolling zigzag too wide and the filler loop didn't fill, so I added another. You can see it in both the tiles I did for Zentangle's Zenth (10th!) anniversary here. I really liked the effect and wanted to explore it more. Black Pearlz seemed to work nicely in some of the larger areas.

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Knase, Paradox, Prestwood variation

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Prestwood variation

It's quite simple. Here's how to do this variation:

Generally I find I have space to add two inner 'rolls', but if your rolling zigzag is very wide you might need three.

The string on both these tiles is something called a "blind string" or "shut-eye string" - simply do the string with your eyes closed! It often yields some nice wobbly lines and really interesting shapes. Try it sometime!

Blind sighted

Weekly challenge number 116. I'm having trouble keeping up! I always label the back of my work with the challenge number and most times, when I double check, I find I've numbered it too low.

This week we're revisiting blind strings. I really like blind strings; they give me something wonky and unexpected to work with. I realized that I've never used a blind string on a round tile, so that's what I did this week. I did one with a string that is quite random and one that's sort of star-like.

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Crescent Moon, Daggerly, Diva Dance, Knase,
Knightsbridge, Mi2, Paisley Boa, Paradox, Pearlz, Printemps, Yew Dee, Zedbra

Tangles: Beelight, Black Pearlz, Flukes, Jemz, Knightsbridge,
Paradox, Tripoli, Warble variation, Yew Dee, Zedbra

Monday tiles - Beginning blind

We've been challenged with the idea of blind strings, which are quite fun, and shake things up if you're getting in a bit of a rut. I decided to try doing a blind border first, followed by a blind string. I didn't bother with the initial dots because I wasn't going to be able to see them anyway!

I placed my pencil at a reasonable point in the corner of a tile, closed my eyes, and started drawing. I often find, when I do things blind, that it's very tight, even when I know that and try to make bigger movements. One thing I like about starting out blind is that it usually ends up off-center which gives me an interesting challenge. I get something like this...

Tangles: Coaster, Knightsbridge, Parabola, Paradox, Providence (almost),
Shattuck and no shading yet.

...which is rather interesting, but I wanted it more centered. The solution: add something in the blank areas.

Tangles: as above with added Seljuk, and shading too.

Here's another one that was almost falling off the (top) edge and needed some centering.

Tangles: Ambler, Assunta, Baton, Black Pearlz, Fohbraid, Paradox

Aaaaand... one more for good measure. Mambo is from Helen Breil who designs clay stamps. You can see her design here. I find the 'filling in' a little easier if the hollow 'S's touch each other.

Tangles: Crossview, Lacing, Mambo, Tipple. Plus
stripes with highlights and more.

Cirquital and Munchin

A challenging challenge from the Diva this week. That's the point of the exercise, right? Cirquital and Munchin are both tangles with a very triangly look so it was a challenge to get some contrast into the tiles. I've been trying Cirquital recently as it would be an interesting mandala center. I have not been particularly pleased with my efforts, so this was a good opportunity for me to try it some more!

In my first attempt, I inadvertently put in some Tipple/Caviar parts (left edge). When I realized that I filled them all in black! Lots of black turned out to be a good way to get some contrast.

I think this was a left-handed string. Note the giant Munchin
in the upper right, filled with little Munchins!

I rather like my second attempt; it's really different!

This began with a blind string.

Spiral crazy!

This is a long post. Get comfy!

This week's zentangle challenge is to use a spiral as a string. I found this particularly challenging because a spiral on the page only makes one section to draw in! (Some creativity required.)

I've always liked spirals. They're related to mandalas and labyrinths. In many cultures they are a symbol of rebirth, reawakening, insight, and so on. You start from where you are (the outside) travel inwards to the center (insight) and back out again, bringing your new awareness with you into the world.

I did a tile using Marasu. I've really liked the feathery kind of highlights I've seen some people use - much better than what I've been doing - so I tried that, adding tiny dots in some of the white stripes. Some of the dots spun out off the spiral.

Tangles: black Pearlz, Striping

One of the later ones I did began with four pencil spirals. I started outlining them and trying to overlap/underlap them and wondered what would happen because all the spirals were empty. Then it struck me: there's going to be a whole lotta Hollibaugh here!

Tangles: Hollibaugh. Yep, that's about it.

Previous to the four spirals I had tried one with two.

Tangles: Parabola and variations, Sanibelle, Striping, Unyun and dots

I liked the effect of the arches (the beginning of Parabola) going around the spiral so I used it again. This one also began with a blind string. They're always interesting. I think I'm finally getting the hang of using white on black as part of the art rather than as a fixit method!

Tangles: Caviar, Parabola and variations.

I thought using a double pencil for the string would give me some predetermined sections. Here's a very simple spiral with a 2-pencil string.

Tangles: Caviar, Chartz (sort of), Coaster, Krliqs (my own) black Pearlz,
Purslane (or Flux 'tongues'!), Tipple

Here's one I did a while ago where two spirals coil together. I like that effect and hoped to do it again during this challenge, but it didn't happen.

Tangles: Coaster, Zander, dots

I like the tangle Xyp and used it here. This reminded me that it works best on a straight or slightly curved line. As the spiral tightens the pattern deteriorates and eventually disintegrates. Here it became a wobbly square, then circles and the spiral almost disappears. Still interesting.

Tangles: Caviar, Dutch Hourglass, Munchin, Xyp

Most of the tiles I did used random spirals, but I wanted to try one with a nautilus spiral, sacred geometry spiral, golden mean spiral, whatever you want to call it. The challenge (I almost typed 'problem'!) I always have with this spiral is that is expands so quickly outward that I'm soon left with just empty space. I used two of these spirals just to give me a little more to work with. Also, I had thought from the beginning that Printemps would be a perfect tangle to use, so it's here too.

Tangles: Caviar, Printemps, Rain and variations, Tipple

Finally, here's a piece of Zentangle inspired art that I did some time ago, using a nautilus spiral (it's called that because nautilus shells grow using this pattern). It sort of includes the divisions of the outer shell, and two large circles overlapping the center of the spiral (I wanted more sections to work with!).

Tangles: oh my gosh... !

Hearts Challenge

This week's challenge from the Diva (Laura Harms, CZT) is to create a tile with hearts using two previous challenges.

Laura has two little boys. The older is two years old. The younger was a preemie last fall and is now four months out in this world. He's had a lot of troubles and challenges in his short time here, the most recent being a bout of pneumonia. He's in hospital and Laura is staying with him. This week's challenge came with a request for healing energy and thoughts for her tiny trooper.

Here's my contribution.

I used a blind string and Ixorus with heart shapes. The string made an "O" in the middle.
O for Artoo :-)
It looked sort of empty so I added four more hearts for mum, dad, big brother, and baby. Get well soon little guy, and stay that way!

More fun with blind strings

I really enjoyed Laura Harms' challenge to do a zentangle tile having done the string with your eyes shut. For one thing, it sometimes creates wobbly lines to work with. I also find that it usually places the string off-center - and occasionally off the page! That was the part I liked best. It sent me right over the edge! :-)

It reminded me of when the technology of photography arrived on the scene and artists started playing with it. It produced some interesting compositions with off-center subjects. Sometimes the subjects were only partly in the picture. Sometimes the images were even blurry. It gave painters a whole cartload of new things to think about! Gustave Caillebotte, a French painter working in the late 1800's, is one artist who was quite taken by this new way of conceiving the picture plane. Here are two of his paintings.

"The Oarsmen", 1877

"On the Pont de l'Europe" 1876-77, Kimbell Art Foundation, Fort Worth, USA

It looks perfectly ordinary to us now, but 140 years ago it was quite bizarre.

Okay, so coming back off that tangent, here are some of the blind string tiles I've done recently, admittedly much less impressive than Caillebotte's paintings.

with Zedbra and droplets

This tile includes a tangle pattern concocted by myself and Laura Harms, CZT, also in Saskatoon. It's along the left edge and it's called Zedbra.

Laura said about Zedbra: "...it was created by Margaret, but named by me... it's a little inside joke.  Margaret and I are both Canadian and in Canada "Z"s are pronounced zed not zee..."

Click here to see one of Laura's tiles (from her weekly zentangle challenge number 2) using Zedbra including highlights along the middle.

I'll post a how-to page on Zedbra soon (although you can probably figure it out yourself).

 This tile
includes a pattern
I discovered recently on
stART's blog. There are two
bold  stripey edges in this tile,
and two delicate rolling edges.
The delicate tangle is called
Organza Pleated Ruffle
and was designed
by Ruth Howell,
a friend
of stART's.
Ruth's tangle has dots
around  the curved parts,
so perhaps this is a tangleation!?
It works nicely with Lilypads.