During the past several months, both during lockdown and while opening the island to its residents, some of my neighbors have been holding tangling sessions. We meet by the community pool and tangle for a couple of hours each Wednesday morning, following the recommended social distancing and wearing masks. Usually I lug my easel down and use the old fashioned teaching tool of drawing on large sheets of newsprint.
Today, two tangles we played with are Cadent and Huggins, loosely related in that the basics of both patterns start with “grids” of orbs. Here is how to start the basic grid and the most basic forms of the Cadent and Huggins patterns.
Orb grid and very basic stepouts for Cadent and Huggins
Today, everything we did was on scrap paper. So much about the plans to open our little island to international visitors was discussed that there was no time to produce any beautiful tiles. And this group produces gorgeous tiles!
Hope you enjoyed a short and direct post today. If these tangles are new to you, or if you have forgotten them, I hope the stepouts helped and inspired fresh ideas.
Tonight, I did something different and fun. I attended a sip’n’paint event to help sponsor talented SXM (Sint Maarten) kids to travel to NYC for a week to learn not only more about their particular talent ( singing, dance, painting, etc.) but to also take a workshop about the business end of the professional artist. The painting event was led by world renowned St. Martin artist Sir @RowlandRichardson, who showed us how to paint a still life of three colors of bougainvillea in a simple jar vase.
We used exactly three colors–blue, red, yellow–and white to produce a lovely pallet of colors. Here is a photo of my work tonight. How many distinct colors can you see? Certainly more than the three we started with!
This is not to highlight my lack of talent with oil paint, but to show the influence of my Zentangle work and patterns on Zentangle-inspired art ( ZIA). In essence, I tangled a painting of real-life bougainvillea in a simple jar-style vase. Not only that, but it’s my first genuine still life work. That is, working from the real thing instead of a photo.
Note the number of poke leaf and flux in this painting, adding dimension to the simple patterns through how the paint was applied.
I will never be a famous artist, but I am really proud of this silly little piece encouraged by a famous artist, but completed because of the Zentangle Method®️. Tangling is so simple and versatile that it adds richness and texture to a piece that would have been completely flat and dull without my grasp of Zentangle patterns and techniques.
You may not be into Zentangle for the stress reduction, but if you are an artist, the method is definitely worth exploring for its patterns and unique shading techniques. I am proud to be a CZT (Certified Zentangle Teacher). Thank you, @MariaThomas and @RickRoberts! Without your influence, even a master artist like Sir @RolandRichardson could not have helped me do any better than apply dabs of color and hope for the best!
For the past ten days or so, I have been re-visiting patterns I learned early in my Zentangle “career,” but have stopped using. Some fell into disuse because I simply didn’t like them; others because I couldn’t make them work for me; still others for reasons I have forgotten. Using the Zentangle Primer to guide me, I simply started at the beginning.
Yesterday, a Primer exercise (#zp1x16) directed me to draw a tangle I either don’t like or have trouble drawing to my satisfaction. I selected a pattern that looks simple but that gives me trouble, ‘nzeppel. ‘Nzeppel
‘Nzeppel is a simple enough looking pattern that is drawn in a grid of exes. But it has given me a lot of trouble because I can’t get the corners to curve instead of come to a point. This tile shows my best effort in the 10 or 11 months I have “known” it. I posted it on the Zentangle Mosaic app with an explanation, figuring that was the end to it for a while. I was incredibly surprised to learn how many experienced tanglers–individuals whose work is incredibly artistic and beautiful–had difficulty with this pattern as well! Their admission left me feeling so much less klutzy! I am so grateful to them all.
Some CTZs offered suggestions (privately) on how to draw ‘nzeppel better–tips that they used themselves. These made me think about the pattern differently. So I redrew it. Better ‘Nzeppel.
This is much closer to the effect I was trying to create all these months. It reinforces my feeling that tangling with a group has many significant advantages over tangling alone. Other tanglers can offer advice based on personal experience or contact with other tanglers. It also made me realize that I am not simply having a unique and personal difficulty with a simple pattern. So often, the most complex patterns turn into an easy exercise (my experiences with Way Bop before seeing the step-out, for example), while the simple, easy-looking patterns are challenges for even artistically gifted tanglers. It is such a relief to know that I am not simply an untalented klutz with a pen and pencil.
Several of the tips and suggestions I received after uploading the first tile yesterday included references to personal difficulties with the pattern and the tip or instruction that yielded that “Aha!” moment. But it came from group participation and sharing.
And sharing is just another important aspect of Zentangle. We all get by (and get better!) with a little help from our friends!
If you live on the island of St. Martin, in Sint Maarten, or are planning a visit to the island, let’s get together and tangle under a palm tree or beach umbrella by the sea!
Inspired by Yoga for Your Brain (see earlier post, InTheMail), I created a new tangle. I don’t have a picture of the photo that inspired me, but I found it while looking through a magazine in the doctor’s waiting room. The article and photos dealt with an architectural dig in Central America. I was surprised to find a tangle pattern among the ancient artifacts!
It was two days before I recorded what I saw as a potential Zentangle pattern. To my eye, it functions best as a grid or border tangle.
My new pattern, Stonework.
This picture shows a hurriedly drawn grid with a few minor differences in the basic pattern–shading, rounding, rotation. I think it might also work well as a background pattern, but we’ll see what I come up with.
If you want to try it, here is the step-out.
For me, I start diagonal ovals and rounded strokes with rounding off the corners. Part of the reason is that my astigmatism causes distortion of lines for me. It is easier to connect two points than to try to figure out where to start curving–I am almost always wrong when I try to guesstimate. In drawing the smaller oblongs, I start with the longest, basically doing the same thing as for the diagonal with the rounded ends. The rest of the row is just elongated C’s, followed by a circle. Finally, I either round (fill in) around the ends or shade.
When the pattern is used in a grid with rotated diagonals, the effect can be flower-like. As a border, the patterns can all go in the same direction, or the direction can be rotated. In corners, the pattern can be “mitered,” especially if the horizontals and verticals are drawn in different rotations.
Before creating the step-out and naming the pattern, I checked through all the patterns in TanglePatterns.com’s latest e-book catalog (2017) called Presenting … The Tangles. To the best of my ability to discriminate, this tangle is unique. Two or three patterns might be roughly similar, but none share more than one characteristic with Stonework. One pattern has stacked oblongs, but they are all the same size. Another pattern has a diagonal oblong, but no vertical or horizontal ones. That’s as close as other patterns came to this one.
Please let me know if Stonework is the same as another pattern. Zentangle is an international community, and not all countries share tangles. I have seen tangles on various web sites online that are identical but share several different names. At the very least, I would like to share the names of the patterns for cross-reference.
If you use this pattern, please leave a comment and a picture or link to where it is posted. Thanks!
TangleSXM 