Strircles, and then some

Today let's take a trip down another tangle rabbit hole. This time it's Zentangle's tangle Strircles, a combination of stripes and circles.

I tend to think of the circles as relatively evenly spaced, but why not cluster them in one area and draw them sparsely in another? The tile below was stained with a hibiscus teabag first. I wanted white stripes at the outer edges to enhance the fade-out look, and I added Beadlines to the outer lines for a little interest.

Or, how about double circles? A Cheerios version. 😁

Of course, scale always makes a difference. Try drawing Strircles much larger, then add interest to the dark half-circles or stripes, or both.

But what about Oopses?!? I find it remarkably easy to accidentally fill the 'wrong' space. Opportunity knocks! I often opt for a gray tone of thin pen lines. As with any Oops, do it again a few times and it looks intentional. 😉

Tangles: Ayame, Beadlines, Black Pearlz, Pearlz, Strircles

I had done a blind contour drawing of my glasses sitting on my desk, and that's what I used for this next tile. Lots of oops possibilities here because the lines and circles did not meet in a regular fashion.

We had bought some brie cheese and I noticed that the bottom of the container was made of very thin wood. Respecting some stripes in the wood, I drew several lines with a clear Glaze pen, stained parts of it with diluted ink, then tangled on it. I used Sakura's Moonlight pens as they are nicely opaque, although I had to do two or three layers because the wood is quite porous.

Have fun exploring Strircles!

Project Pack #6: Part 2

Zentangle recently released its sixth project pack and I've been having a lot of fun with it. (For Part One, go here.)

DAY 4:
Molly shows Munchin and Paradox, and transitioning between them. I included two other tangles based on triangles and some of them flowed onto the next page.

Tangles on this page: Fassett, Munchin, Paradox, Sqaro

DAY 5:
Julie draws weighted Printemps and her variation 'melting Mooka' with other tangles as fills. I didn't try the melting Mooka until later but it's quite fun, and - as someone else said - has an Art Deco look. A couple of mine got a bit rebellious at the end!

Tangles: Camelia, 'Nzeppel, weighted Printemps

Tangles: Black Pearlz, melting Mooka, Shattuck, Tipple

DAY 6:
Maria draws ING with some wonderful additions. I love the spiral fills! On the page beside it I did my variation curvING

Tangles: Ing, Pearlz

Tangles: curvING, Crescent Moon (layered), Printemps,

DAY 7:
Molly draws Indyrella. It's not a tangle I've done often but I enjoyed this.

Tangles: Indyrella, hints of Msst

There's more to come!

Project Pack #6: Part 1

Zentangle recently released its sixth project pack and I thoroughly enjoyed it! (In fact, I haven't finished yet.) The pack includes the various pens and other tools you'll use as well as a charming little 'journal' to work in. Each journal page, while mainly white paper, has a black ink "spill" to work with. The video lessons are available on YouTube. To order your own project pack, go here.

This project honors the 'no mistakes' philosophy of Zentangle. From the Zentangle website:

The "No Mistakes" philosophy has been an integral part of the Zentangle Method since it’s beginning. "No Mistakes" is a mantra we use in our Zentangle practice that allows us to see every line as an opportunity... Whether intentional or not, with this perspective, one can learn to see beauty and potential in whatever mark we make and whatever path our artistic journey takes. 

This seems like an appropriate time to share the first page of my little journal, although it was done after several other pages were completed.

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Pearlz, Striping with a twist, Sprouts, Zonked, and Auras

DAY 1
Maria draws Mooka and Crescent Moon; I used Icantoo and Paizel - organic forms flowing over the border between white and black.

Tangles: Icantoo, Paizel, Printemps

DAY 2
Rick draws Arukas, again flowing back and forth between black and white. I chose to use the curvy lines of the black ink 'stain' rather than straight lines. And I had a perfect opportunity to include a yin-yang symbol!

Tangles: Arukas, Black Pearlz, Msst

DAY 3
Martha draws Pearlz with Rounding between each pearl, such a lovely variation. She also does Ennies in a spiral over the black and the white sections. For some reason, I did these on different pages.

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Morse, Pearlz

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Ennies, Sprouts

Stay tuned over the next little while for more of my journal pages. 

Striping, with a twist

The Zentangle tangle Striping isn't simply any old stripes. It's a method of placing striped sections beside each other for interesting effects. Sandy Bartholomew, CZT, offers simple step-outs for Striping on her blog here. One key, of course, is the pencil string; it just doesn't have the same effect if the (guide)lines are in pen. Here is an example of striping, pure and simple, albeit in brown on a Renaissance tile.

In a home decor flyer a while ago, I noticed a vase with some twisted stripes. Here's the photo torn from the flyer, and the first tile I did trying this twisted effect.

You may want to start with the same 'S' shape you would use for Tidings.

Don't.
Instead, draw two lines, each with one droplet shape at the end, going in opposite directions. I'm using a five-sided string, but this can be done in a variety of shapes.

You want a white stripe immediately next to the 'line and droplet' so you need an ODD number of stripes going through the middle, between the lines. To ensure that, make a series of dots, an EVEN number of dots, between the lines.

Next, draw a series of Auras beside each line and around the droplet, passing through each dot. The width of the stripe around the end of the droplet can be wider than the stripes through the middle. Splay the lines out at the end away from the droplet. Extend the lines to the edge of your string.

Follow the curves of the lines you've drawn and add more lines. You can do this as I show below, by adding a line at each side, filling around the droplet with stripes, and adding stripes into the triangle point. OR, a simpler method is to fill the entire two sides with lines meeting in the corner near the droplet, as you would draw Munchin.

Making sure you leave the stripes beside the droplets white, fill alternate stripes black. Don't forget to shade it (I didn't, below.). And voilà!

In the tile below, I began with a 'leaky pen border' and did the twisted Striping in the center, adjusting it as it met the marks at the border.

It can be lovely in browns or in color, too. And no one said you're limited to one twist!
In the first tile below, I used - I think - five different brown pens plus white, and three or four brown colored pencils.
The second began with an orange paint spill. Then I used yellow, orange, red, brown, and sepia pens and three or four colored pencils.

Here is some twisted Striping along with other bold black-and white tangles:

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Bunzo, Striping with a twist, Moving Day, Pearlz, Zonked

Have fun!

Stripes challenge

A simple challenge this week from the DivaCZT: draw pencil stripes on the tile. This is your string. Tangle it. Of course, the simplest idea can lead in surprising directions!

I used my 'double pencil' on the first tile. It gave me some rather small square sections. A few of the lines were darker than the rest and it sort of looked like a mat. I used Hollibaugh to separate the squares and Msst for the fringe. The border began with Seljuk, which I really liked until I added other things, then the white was too white.

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Hollibaugh, Msst, Tortuca

Next time I gave myself larger squares, but drew the lines blind. I thought about how many square grid tangles there are and decided to do one square of a tangle per section. Knightsbridge and Seljuk are scattered throughout.

Square grid tangles, top left to bottom right:
Up and Across, Cubine, Sindoo, Yew-Dee, Tortuca, Ripples, Eye-Wa,
Fleurette, Dex, Gottago, Demi, Earth Rising, Flukes, Paradox, Well

I spotted some black tiles on my desk, and since I almost never do white on black I decided that would be a good change. I drew the pencil lines, which of course looked like a square grid to me, not stripes. I thought of W2 and decided to use the black paper as the black squares and tangle the rest of it.

So I drew all the lines in white and was intending to add highlighting in white and be done with it. Then color popped into my mind and I decided to do some ribbons in color. Then all hell broke loose. Multiple colors! Black Glaze pen in the black squares (it makes the black so-o-o much deeper)! Two-tone gray highlighting on the other ribbons! Metallic inks at the edges of the colored ribbons!

I really like it! Believe it or not, there is very little of the original black paper showing alone.

New 'Opus' tiles

An opus is a great work, a major effort, a work on a grand scale. To accomodate the growing interest in ZIA (Zentangle Inspired Artwork) and many people's desire to try doing Zentangle on a larger scale, the nice folks at Zentangle have produced a tile on a grand scale: 10.5 inches square!

I have a few and have been enjoying using them. I began with something relatively simple, and comfortable for me, a mandala in black and white. This is one of my first uses of Zinger.

Tangles: Beadlines, Black Pearlz, Crescent Moon, Fasset, Fengle,
Florz, Krli-Qs, Tipple, Zewm, Zinger

Then, I just had to try color and at the time was quite enamoured with Aquafleur. One thing I love about the Tiepolo paper is that I can wet it, and add washes as much as I want, and it still dries almost completely FLAT! What a delight. This piece had acrylic washes before I tangled it.

Tangles: Aquafleur, Beadlines, Black Pearlz, Krli-Qs, Nipa, Tipple, Wud

I've just finished a taichi (yin yang) symbol. It's based on a single nautilus shell line drawing from Ben Kwok's Facebook group 'Ornation Creation'. I copied the template facing each other, and made some little adjustments to fit them into a circle.

Tangles: oh, so many!

Of course, I have lots of ideas for more!

Stripe strings

The Diva's challenge this week is simply to use stripes as our string. What a good chance to try out some of those tangles that make good borders. Also, I've been being reminded these days of the calming aspect of simply drawing structured patterns in black ink on white paper, and adding shading.

I've been wanting to revisit my two-pencil string idea and this challenge was an excellent opportunity. A two-pencil string gives you rather ribbony sections to tangle and interesting curves and corners to deal with. There are several posts on this blog dealing with two-pencil strings. Check under the Labels box on the left to find more examples. Here are two tiles beginning with a two-pencil string.

Tangles: Crescent Moon, Emingle, Lamar, Paisley Boa,
Paushlov, Pearlz, Tortuca, Zewm

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Coaster, Kandysnake, Unyun, Wired, Xyp

I was on a roll. I did a more classic tile with dots and a border, and in actual simple stripes.

Tangles: Prestwood variation, Vega, Wud (ribbon variation),
and rounding

Stripes

Our challenge from the Diva this week is to use stripes as our string and create a piece of zentangle art within those lines.

Many tangles have a stripe of some sort running through them. I did a tile using five of those tangles, and ran the stripes through the whole tile.

Tangles: Coaster, Combs, Posh, Shattuck, Unyun

In one of my classes (small mandalas) we use the tangle Tortuca as a ring around another tangle. I tell the students that Tortuca is usually done in a square grid, but that any tangle based on a square grid can be used in a single row, straight or curved. So I did that in the next tile, using several square grid tangles. You can see where I got into a zen flow of filling Cubine's little squares and filled one in Screen too!

Tangles, top to bottom: Cadent, Warble, Knightsbridge, Screen, Cubine,
Bateek, Ninja Stars, Knightsbridge again, Yincut, Earth Rising, Tortuca

Monotangles

(Last week I didn't participate in the challenge. My husband's oldest brother died - not at all unexpected, but still a surprise somehow - and we had the funeral, and family visiting from elsewhere. I had mostly prepared this post a little while ago and, given this week's zentangle challenge, now seems an appropriate time to post it!)


A fun way to give yourself a bit of a challenge with a Zentangle tile is to use only a single tangle pattern. I find this forces me to be more aware of scale which I tend not to think of enough. You can do some very small tangles and some much larger ones.





Here's a tile using only Coaster (thanks Carole Ohl!). Well, except for a tiny spiral at the top. You can see how the size of the tangle makes a difference.

This one uses only stripes in 

various directions and widths.

Here I used only the tangle Drupe (thanks Rick and Maria). Instead of varying the size, I tried a different fill in each section.

And finally, here's quite a simple one using only a drawing technique called stippling - all tiny dots done with the tip of the pen.

You can see one of Shelly Beauch's tiles using only Umble here.


I had been going to suggest that you choose a favorite tangle, or one you've never done before, and do a tile entirely with that pattern.  But Laura beat me to it! This is the zentangle weekly challenge number 11, and the technique now has a cool name: Monotangle. Have at it!