Tangling letters and words

It's fun to use tangles to fill letters. I often do this as a gift for someone but I also have had monograms for sale at art shows (shown below). During my recent Huge Art Sale I gave some away - along with bookmarks - to people who came.

You can use letter templates or do something freehand.
Here are two varieties of templates. One is die-cut cardboard letters. The other is plastic sheets with the letters cut through. In either case I trace the letter in pencil.

I've used them in advanced Zentangle classes when we tangle a short word or initials. You can see the work of three students here. One is not quite finished.

I did intricate letters for my daughters' weddings.
You can see C and R here.
See V and S here.
L and G are still waiting!

I've done a few new-baby names for friends and relatives. You can see Clara and Sophie on my blog, and here are Asha (lettered freehand) and Hayden (using the letter templates above).

Casa South was commissioned as a gift to a Montessori school upon a student's graduation. They had done some tangling in her classes.

Judy West, on her blog Creative Doodling, shows an interesting way to fancy-up and fill in plain outlines. Read about it here. Many of the patterns she uses are Zentangle tangles.

Joanne Fink does some delightful freehand lettering with zentangle-like patterns. You can watch a video of her demonstrating patterned monograms here.

Give it a try and have some...

'Sophie'

A very good friend of my eldest daughter recently had her first child. My daughter commissioned me to do a piece of art of her name Sophie. Sophie's mum likes blues and browns.

"Sophie" - a baby gift; (c)2016 Margaret Bremner
Tangles: Blooming Butter, Crescent Moon, Ginili, Pearlz, Phuds, Pixioze, Sanibelle, Tipple and elements of Drupe,
plus some leaves and drawn gems.

It's done on 'kraft brown' Stonehenge paper. The matted size (shown here) is 6"x8". Framed it's 11"x14".

I did the name on scrap paper with a calligraphy brush, tidied it up, and transferred the outline to the art paper. The little hook on the 'p' is a happy accident due to the blue wash I did in the beginning.

I used blue acrylic wash for some initial random shapes and lines. Besides Sakura micron pens in blue, brown, and dark brown, I used Pitt brush pens in similar colors, another pen with lighter blue ink, and colored pencils.

Here's a photo of Sophie and her parents.

MB duotangles

Another duotangle challenge! I quite like these, and this time we are to choose which tangles to use based on our initials. I thought I should use some of my own tangles too, so I used:

M - Morse

B - Boss

That was fun! I was taken with the idea and did another one, this one using:

M - Meer

B - Blake (scroll down)

Unfortunately it looked like a jumble of non-descript shapes, even when I make the background really gray. So I added a bit of color to define the Meer strips. It's a lot better. Both are on white tiles.

Tile fail!

Linda Farmer, who maintains the Tangle Patterns site, recently issued her own zentangle challenge: to tangle your name. No, not what you might think. The idea is to find tangle patterns beginning with the letters of your name and do a tile with those patterns. I planned to use:
Meer
Avreal
Raddox
Gneiss
Amaze
Rain
Ennies
Tortuca

I began with a border and string. The string was in the shape of an "M". I needed 8 sections for all the letters so I divided it in half horizontally. It soon became evident that I can't count. I had 10 sections. How did that happen? Maybe I could include my middle and last initials? I considered leaving two sections empty. I was obviously off to a good start.

Half of the tangles I'd never done before. I flubbed Avreal by putting the lines going the wrong way. In Gneiss I somehow got an odd number of sections, which is unworkable. I wasn't too pleased with Tortuca either. Fortunately, Amaze is hard to botch.

"B" for Bremner. Also for Bronx Cheer. A very appropriate tangle to include! This tile was going off the rails so I thought I might as well blow up the track. The raspberries would to be red, glued on, and they would hide some of the flubbed parts. This was starting to be fun instead of disappointing.

I retrieved some grocery flyers from the recycle bin and looked for raspberries. Of course, it's not raspberry season. No raspberries to be found. I'd have to make do with trimmed, imported strawberries. I added stems. I did my initials large. And now, presenting... my name tangle tile fail!

I had to take another shot at it. I planned better and had eight sections to fill. I used the same tangles. In the end, I like Amaze and Avreal is okay. Gneiss is indeed nice, and bold, and I will use it more. I've really liked Raddox for a while, and I teach it but rarely use it. Maybe it will show up more frequently now. Still not big on Tortuca. Here's the MARGARET tile that passed: