“One Zentangle A Day” by Beckah Krahula - Day 19 - Geometric Rectilinear Patterns
The new tangles introduced in this lesson are Beeline, Cubine and Rain.
With strong, geometric black areas, all three of the tangles introduced in this chapter are very bold. To provide a contrast to them, I used Crescent Moon and Printemps. I chose both of them because they consist of rounded shapes. In addition, Crescent Moon has bold black shapes around the edge which helps that area hold it’s own against the new tangles.
“One Zentangle A Day” by Beckah Krahula - Day 16 - Organic Patterns
Today’s new tangles are Pepper, Ynix and Squid. These are organic patterns that can fill almost any shape. They are versatile and can be done alone, or have multiple iterations in one area.
For example, the Ynix on my tile above. I have used a grouping of multiple fronds to fill a side and corner area. On the other hand, Each of the Pepper shapes stand alone, but still act as a group to frame the area filled with Nekton. Finally, the Squid at the center, bottom is a singlet, filling an area, but with empty space around it so it stands out.
“One Zentangle A Day” by Beckah Krahula - Day 14 - Decorative Value
The tangles introduced in this chapter are Changing, Dyon and Keeko.
Decorative value involves contrasting shapes and planes of color rather than having an established light source to produce interest and move the eye through the piece.
Tangling on a black tile is usually a good example of decorative value because you’re already starting with the basic shadow of a dark background.
“One Zentangle A Day” by Beckah Krahula - Day 12 - Tangle Values
If you squint at your tile, you will notice that some tangles appear lighter and some darker. The levels from light to dark are referred to as the “value” of the tangle.
In the tile above, the lightest value section is the one with Chillon. The darkest value would be the one with Printemps. The other sections fall in between at various levels.
“One Zentangle A Day” by Beckah Krahula - Day 11 - Auras and Rounding
Rounding is done by adding ink in nooks, crannies and angles to smooth them out. You can see this on the tile above by looking where the Hollibaugh lines cross each other. The corners inside the resulting shapes have been rounded with the same dark blue ink used to draw the lines, creating bubble-like shapes inbetween the straight lines.
“One Zentangle A Day” by Beckah Krahula - Day 7 - Tangleations
Today’s lesson was all about tangleations. When you start with a basic tangle as a beginning and vary it beyond the standard design, it is called a Tangleation. The assignment was to use tangles that were already introduced and draw them in new and different ways.
It was suggested to draw on an ATC. I chose to cut one out of paper I already had which I find works well for tangling.
“One Zentangle A Day” by Beckah Krahula - Day 5
The two new tangles for this day are Isochor and Printemps. Beckah chose them because they are perfect candidates for adding “sparkle”, a tangle enhancer. If you look at my tile above, you will see little white spots on two of the tangles where the lines are incomplete. They create the impression of a small highlight.
Another small change in the practice for this day is the use of an Artist’s Trading Card for the tile. At one time, Zentangle sold these, precut from the same paper as the standard white tiles. I’m sad that they are no longer available. I used one from my dwindling last pack for this exercise.
Continuing along the Crazy ‘Nzepple trail…
This time I used a grey tile. I loved the Project Pack that I did with the grey tiles previously and wanted to do something with this “winter” theme… since today, it was over 113 degrees here!
Instead of doing the same thing in each bubble, I chose several tangles and did each one in four or more sections, aiming for them not to touch each other if possible.
Experimental.
I had this idea of using a Souffle pen on top of watercolor to create a design within another tangle.
To test my concept, I chose Crazy ‘Nzepple as the initial tangle because it would give me a variety of blob shapes that I could play with.
After coloring all the sections and using pencil to darken the places where all the lines crossed, I drew a single Printemps spiral inside of each blob. I tried to make it the largest size that would fit. This turned out to be an issue in the very small shapes, so they just turned into a puddle of ink.
I recently saw an article about Neurographic art. After a little research, I decided to create a string on today’s tile that takes inspiration from this psychological art form.
Note: This is an example of artwork inspired by Neurogenic art. It is not meant to be an accurate representation. I enjoyed rounding all the corners on the complicated string. It was also a lot of fun filling in all the sections.
Random tangles. No string.
This is the first time that I’ve tried using the grey pens for tangling. I don’t like the little dark “dots” that are left behind when you end a stroke. This is done on Strathmore Bristol paper, so I will reserve judgement until I try these pens on a Zentangle tile. But if they do the same thing on those, I may not be using them very much!
The final lesson for Project Pack 8 involves drawing on six 3-Z tiles. Since this is also the week of registration and sports tryouts for school, it will take me a few days to complete the set.
In the interim, here is a standard completed tile, using my standard method of randomly choosing tangles and filling in a string. I did incorporate a few new variations of traditional tangles that I’ve recently learned. It meant a lot of line work, but these tiles generally finish quickly.
PP08 - Day 7 - Using a Flower-shaped Reticula
In this video Martha and Molly show us how to create a lovely garden beginning with blossoms and ending with Flux leaves.
This whole tile was a lot of fun to create. I actually wished the tile was larger so that I could add even more flowers!
Zentangle drawn on a black Apprentics tile. Drawing was done using several colors of Sakura’s Moonlight gel pens. Shading done with black colored pencil. Highlights created with a white chalk pencil.
PP08 - Day 4 - Bunzo, Printemps and Knightsbridge
According to the instructions, this was to be done on a prestrung tile. As it happened, I didn’t have a tile with this string on it. I could have used a differeent string, but it wouldn’t have looked the same! So I sat down and figured the string out and drew it on a blank tile.
I copied the colors and tangles used in the video, which you can see here .
Project Pack 7 - Day 1
I had a bunch of gray tiles in my stash, but I’ve never really done much with them. So I decided to order Project Pack 7 from Zentangle . This PP was introduced for the 2019 Christmas season and is one of the 12 Days of Zentangle series. The theme for this pack is “that like in life, Zentangle, too, is not just black and white … there are many shades of gray in between.”
Today I was rearranging a row of drawers in my office studio when I came across an unfinished ATC (Artist Trading Card), probably from 2018. It had the border completed and the large Well leaf-like shapes had been drawn.
I decided to add some large MOOKA shapes all around and then just filled in between the upper ones with perfs.
I added the inner lines to the flower petals to make them look a bit like they were cupped.
A few, very bold tangles can make a huge statement, taking over the whole design. In this case, I tried to balance them out by placing them in opposite corners.
The Beedz tangle was originally shown with the orbs colored in with the pen, leaving only a bright highlight. I thought they would look better just left white in this composition.
Zentangle drawn on Strathmore Vellum Bristol using a black, Micron pen. Shading done with graphite pencil. Highlights created with white chalk pencil.
On Wednesday, I decided to tangle a tile with whatever I felt like. Crazy Huggins is one of my favorite tangles. If you look through the Zentangle Gallery here, or click on Crazy Huggins in the tangle list at the bottom of the right side, you can see how many times I’ve done this tangle as a kind of “string”, and then filled in the centers with other tangles!
The random string that came up for day five of my “back to basics” journey is, well, complicated! I decided to treat this like a patchwork quilt. I figured it would give me the opportunity to practice many differeent tangles, all chosen at random. Perhaps too many!
This tile has 16 different tangles, two of which are new to me: Moon Pie and Floo-ish. I really love that last one! Choosing all the tangles before I started drawing allowed me to arrange the locations for each so that the composition had a balance that I liked.
Today, I took Eni Oken's Art Raffle app for a spin. This tile is the result! For my first tile in eons, it’s not bad! If you tangle, you should get this FREE app, it’s lots of fun!
Zentangle drawn on an white, official, Zentangle tile, using a black, Micron pen. Shading done with graphite pencil.
Tangles: Antidot Bales Beedz Crescent Moon Emingle Hollibaugh Knase Knightsbridge Perfs Printemps Shard Shattuck Stiritup Tagh