Shaving tangles

Shaving: removing a small amount or a (thin) slice from the original form.

Almost any tangle you'd care to draw can be changed considerably by shaving it, but I find this idea works best with tangles that are composed of lines, like Emingle at the top here, rather than tangles that already come with black areas. 

I introduced shaved square grids here. Here's an example of a simple square grid (albeit curvy), shaved on two sides of the squares, with added Pearlz:

I introduced shaved Paradox here. Below are tiles done at a workshop I gave.

This technique can be used with lots of other tangles. Sometimes I shave inside the tangle, sometimes outside. Here are more possibilities:

The Zentangle-original tangle Stoic (a.k.a. Twile) shaved.
On the left, shaved at the permimeter of the squares.
On the right, shaved inside the squares.

All Boxed Up, shaved.
You'll need a wonky grid for this to work well.

Jalousie, shaved. Once I had that tilt happening
I decided to angle the "bubble on a stick" too.

Shaved 'Dillo

Shaved Bales, Cubine, and Knase

Shaved Tripoli, Dewd, Copada, and Paisley Boa.
Sometimes I like to make the shaved part look shiny,
or to add Pearlz in the shaved area.

It's also a great way to even things up if something you drew feels too wide, or to darken a tangle if you feel there's too much white (thanks to commenter Ragged Ray for that insight!).

Choose two or three tangles to shave, and see what happens!

Leaky pen borders

Stop! Don't throw out that leaky pen!

You can use it to make interesting borders...

Below is the first tile I ever did with a leaky pen border.

And here's one with twisted Striping and Knightsbridge.

It's a simple matter of rolling the leaky end around over the edge of the tile. You need to be a little cautious so you don't get ink all over your fingers! Here is my first video (!!!) to show you how I go about it. (I couldn't see the camera, and the sound was on, so you can hear my husband giving me instructions!)

Below are a couple of photos showing the border in process, and what it looked like when finished. This is on eco-dyed paper.

Here is the result of the tile in the video.

Tangles: Crescent Moon, Doodah, Knase,
Knightsbridge, Snail 

"Window on the Woods"
(c)2015 Margaret Bremner
Tangles: Pearlz, Seljuk, Wud

I really like using Seljuk as a border with the leaky pen.
It nicely accommodates some of the blotches and irregularity. 

"The Door's Always Open"
(c)2017 Margaret Bremner
Tangles: Crezn't, Floo, Paradox, Pearlz,
Sanibelle, Seljuk, Tagh

Forgotten Places

Last November I participated in an online workshop given by Deb Prewitt that she calls Forgotten Places. I find random markings to be wonderful inspiration and have been looking to try other methods to create artwork 'starts'.

We began by consciously creating ugly things using watercolor, fluid acrylic, drips, spatters, and more. The uglier the better said Deb! Here's what I ended up with.

The first piece I finished - immediately following the class - is the one below. I was recalling the New York city subways when we were there for our youngest daughter's graduation from NYU.

Oddly, the photo I recalled that inspired this is completely different!

I was rather taken with Cherryl Moote's new tangle Morrisseau, so I did that on the next ugly start. 

The ugly start below called to mind mountains in the upper left, and windblown pink flowers in the foreground, so I developed that idea.

How "Windy Valley" began

"Windy Valley" completed

Crusade is a square grid tangle that I quite like, so I developed it on the next ugly start that already had a few gridlines on it.

The ugly beginning.
(In this photo the paper is really crooked!)

Art finished!

More to come, for sure!

Meer, and then some

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Meer, Tripoli, and a spiral

Meer is a lovely, simple, border tangle from the creators of Zentangle. The original step-out can be found in the Zentangle newsletter here.

Meer works beautifully in a (relatively) straight line, and not only as a border, but if it's curvy you need to compensate for the curve. Two ways to do this are to space the lines slightly wider at one end, or to curve the lines a little. Or both.

Tangles: Gneiss, Meer, Pearlz

You can split the center. You can also fill alternate lines to give wider stripes. I think this tile looks like a pineapple; I might call it 'hospitality'. :D

Tangles: Apacore, Black Pearlz, Meer, Nipa variation

Try something other than a thin ribbon at the sides. Below, I've used Pearlz.

Tangles: Meer, Roxi, Pearlz

Besides filling alternate stripes to create wider stripes, try using another tangle that is a series of stripes. Below I've used Suzanne McNeill's Firecracker. It doesn't look much like Meer anymore, but it's quite interesting! I tried Doodah in one section, and splitting the middle with a ribbon in another.

Tangles: Doodah, Firecracker, Meer

Sending Meer around a corner is another challenge. See my earlier blog post here. A possibility not mentioned in that post is to 'rip' or 'cut' the corner as shown below. Here are various corner treatments for Meer.

Tangles, Crescent Moon, Meer, Within

Have fun experimenting!

Sock hanger > comb > elephant

My 21-month-old granddaughter has a box of treasures, fun little things that interest a child that age: pretty ribbons, a chestnut, a gold mylar star, a ping pong ball, and so on.

One item is this plastic thing that originally held socks in a store. To her, it looks like a comb. I thought it looked like an elephant and traced it onto a zentangle tile to develop later.

I immediately saw almost-Marasu in the trunk and Romanancy through the body; both are stripey and should work well together. I did a gray wash in the background.

Here's the finished elephant. It was fun!

Tangles: Icantoo, Marasu, Paizel, Pearlz, Romanancy,
Tidings, Zonked, and a Black Pearl(z)

"Winter Garden" process

This time I have a beginning, a middle, and an end photo to show you. Again I'm using the broken scarf hanger as a template for the floral mandala shape on a 10.5" Opus tile.

The beginning: a bit of Inktense for some washes of color.

The middle:

The end: there are "liquid pearls" scattered throughout, which gives the sparkly impression of falling snow. I also used a bit of metallic, glossy, and stardust inks, none of which shows in this photo!

What to do with a broken bracelet?

I had a thin copper bangle that had an accident and broke, curving in on itself a little. It struck me that it could be bent into a spiral so I got out the pliers and went at it. I quite like the irregularity of it. What a nice, arty shape to work with!

I centered it on an eco-dyed tile (3.5") and traced it. Then I traced four more behind, and added Pearlz, Doodah, and colored pencil shading.

Tangles: Doodah, Pearlz

I'd been playing with Well, Well, Who, but without the 'who' and liked the impression of old, carved, floral ceiling medallions. On another eco-dyed paper (this one 4") I used the spiral as the center of a medallion.

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Crescent Moon, Hollyhock, Printemps
and a hint of MySwing

Experimenting in earnest now. I wanted to try it on a zendala tile. Originally I thought to place eight spirals around but something kept telling me to do six. It's good to listen to your intuition! I discovered that with six, I could nicely join the outside end of one spiral with the inside end of the next. This gave me a single line that spirals in and out and into the next one.

If six combined nicely, what about two?

Tangle in the background: Dreamdex

Maybe on black paper?

Tangles: just Printemps

And here's my last one, the spiral hanging from an Auraknot, eco-dyed paper and copper colored ink.

At some point I may include the actual metal spiral. I'd done something like that before, but with a found metal spiral rather than one I made. You can see it in this post.

Four more vessel tangles

Vessel tangles: tangles that offer empty spaces that you can fill to your heart's desire.
My original post presenting four favorite vessel tangles is here. I followed with another four tangles that can be delightfully filled with other tangles and that post is here. Today, here are four more, making a dozen.

CHARLOTTE
From me, step-outs are here. Here it is in it's simplest form:

And here it is on two tiles with various fills:

ING
From Molly Hollibaugh. Step-outs are here. Here it is in it's simplest form:

Here's a tile with Ing in stripes, with five different fills.

And here is my journal page from the Zentangle Project Pack #6 - Ing with a spiral fill (Maria's idea), fairly standard Ing, and Ing done along a zigzag line, black on one side, white on the other..

STOIC
From Zentangle. Adele Bruno offers good step-outs here, although it's called Twile.
A little back story: Many seem to be using the name Twile lately. Zentangle came out with the pattern years ago but didn't publicize it. Recently, CZT Leslie Scott-Gillilan deconstructed it and called it Twile.
Here it is in its simplest form. The central squares can be left empty, or filled black (which looks more "empty"!)

And here's a tile with basic Stoic and three different fills.

Tangles: Beadlines, Stoic

RAGZ
From CZT Christina Vandervlist. Step-outs are here. Here it is in its simplest form:

And here's a tile with a few variations. You can shade one edge as I did on the right, or shade each strand as on the left.
If you want to use different patterns as on the right, remember that braids generally have three strands, so you want to put your pattern in every third section.