2016 – Page 2 – A Tangler's Mind

Groovy – Square One Focus

This week’s Square One: Purely Zentangle focus tangle is Groovy by Eden Hunt. Step Outs for this tangle can be found here.

I have a very busy summer ahead so I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep up with the weekly posts for the Square One focus. I’m already behind and I decided I wouldn’t try and catch up. But first off here are the two tiles I did for last week’s focus: Rundl by Ela Rieger.

In the first tile I added Diva Dance to Rundle and did the background using pencil.

In the second tile I used rounding on the Rundl.

Now to this weeks focus tangle. Groovy, uses a wavy grid, also known as an Ogee grid. It looks like this. (Note: I mentioned this grid in my last post too.)

To warm up for this week’s tile I decided to do a “sampler” tile with several tangles that use this grid. It turned into a kind of Family Portrait. Tangles used are top & bottom – Bask-it by Anna Houston, left to right – African Artist by Tina Hunziker, Scrumble by Jane Monk, and Groovy by Eden Hunt.

After this fun warm up exercise I moved on to a mono tangle of Groovy. I started with the wavy grid but as you can see it did not want to stay together and instead pulled apart a bit at the edges.

Next came the diagonal lines that alternate back and forth. They didn’t want to cooperate either and one space got left blank.

Then anarchy ruled and some of the ribbons got loose and some of the shapes turned see through.

In the end I let Groovy have it’s way and I like what it did. What do you think?

As usual if you see anything in this post that you would like to try in your own work please feel free to do so.

Blessings,

Lynn

C-Wing – Square One Focus

This past week the Square One focus tangle was C-wing by Staub Korn. It is one I had never tried before so I practiced it a bit in my sketchbook in order to get to know it a little better. I noticed a couple of interesting things about this pattern. First, there is an Ogee grid hidden in the pattern (I’ve gone over it in red in the photo below) and Second, it can be broken down into a Fragment which when mirrored and rotated forms the tangle ( I’ve also indicated the fragment in red).

If you are unfamiliar with Fragments, they are a concept that Rick and Maria have introduced in their recent book Zentangle Primer Vol. 1. Fragments are elements that when placed in a grid create a pattern. Note: R&M refer to the grids used with fragments as Reticula. Different patterns can be created by repeating, rotating or mirroring a fragment. But more about that in a later post.

For this week’s tile I started with a dot grid since I didn’t want the lines from a lined grid to show. I chose to use a variation of the tangle that offset the overlapping shapes in alternating rows.

I did the main outline with a .05 Apprentice pen. Then I drew an inner aura in each shape with a .01 micron. Some shapes I made see-thru so the shapes behind could be seen. Then I added tone and texture through line and fill.

The shading enhanced the effect of the solid and see-thru, the foreground and background. Here’s the final tile.

What I like about this tile is that the tangle is very regular but the fill is unexpected.

As always if you see something in this post that you’d like to try in your own work, please feel free to do so.

Blessings,

Lynn

IX and Bales – Square One Focus

I was away from my computer last week so did not get a chance to post my Square One tiles, so I’m combining last week with this week. Last weeks focus was IX, a tangle introoduced by Zentangle HQ.

I see lots of possible combinations of tangles that work well with IX so I did two tiles using several of the options. Instead of showing work-in-progress photos I decided to show why I choose the tangles I did for each of the tiles.

Here is the first tile…

I used IX, plus my tangles Fassett and Fassettoo. Here is a diagram I drew in my sketchbook outlining the common elements of the three tangles.

These common elements give the tile a unified look and help the tangles seamlessly morph from one to another.

In the second tile I used IX, Arukas, and Diva Dance and I added some rounding.

Here is the diagram I made depicting the common elements of Arukas, IX and Diva Dance.

Again the common elements between the tangles unify the tile and the rounding helps with this. Arukas terminates into IX on several of it’s arms creating a Tango of the two. And while Diva Dance has the shared elements of lines and black spaces it’s curvy-ness provides some contrast to the straight lines of IX and Arukas. I also shaded it grey to add to the contrast.

This weeks Square One focus tangle is Bales, and I decided to do something simple. Got to give my mind a break sometimes. I draped the grid for bales over the border on my tile to give it a little interest.

As usual if you see anything in this post that you’d like to try in your own work please feel free to do so.

Blessings,

Lynn

Fugu – Square One Focus

After a brief hiatus to finish Tangle Deck 2, teach at Tangle U and then recover from both those things I’m back to posting my Square One tiles. This week’s focus tangle is FUGU by Sonya Yencer.

Frankly I feel kind of burnt out from the final push to get Tangle Deck 2 finished so I just played with FUGU a little in my sketchbook.

FUGU just seemed to want to have fun so I went with that for the tile.

I started by adding the “football” shapes with auras and then added the orbs and embellishments.

Next I started at the bottom of the tile and began to add some contrast using black pen.

I finished the tile with pencil shading to add a grey mid-tone and some detail.

This tile turned out whimsical and very comic-like to me and for some reason reminds me of Where’s Waldo. I guess that’s what I needed in my life this week.

As always, feel free to use or share anything you see in this post.

Blessings,

Lynn

Tangle Deck 2

Update: Tangle Deck 2 is now shipping. Get 10% off your order thru May 31st by using Coupon Code: 10off when you check out.

Soon I’ll be leaving for Portland, Maine to teach at Tangle U 2016. (For those of you who are not CZT’s Tangle U is a continuing education event for Certified Zentangle Teachers.) But before I go I have an announcement to make.

Tangle Deck 2 and More Tangle Deck Techniques are a continuation of Tangle Deck 1 and Tangle Deck Techniques. The deck contains 45 more tangles introduced by Zentangle Inc. and I’ve included 3 of my own tangles for a total of 48 tangle cards. The included book,More Tangle Deck Techniques, includes some general tangling techniques AND some specific information about some of the techniques I used in the card drawings.

Update: Tangle Deck 2 is now shipping. Get 10% off your order thru May 31st by using Coupon Code: 10off when you check out.

Click Here To Order

Zonked – Square One Focus

This past week’s Square One focus tangle is Zonked by Barbara Finwall. Step Outs can be found here.

As soon as I saw that the focus tangle was Zonked I knew that I wanted to morph it into another Tangle. I didn’t even practice it in my sketch book and I was so absorbed in drawing the tile that I forgot to take work in progress photos. Not to worry though as I have a breakdown of the tangles I used and I’ll explain why I chose these particular tangle to use in the morph.

I started with the curved version of Zonked.

Then for something a little different I used the straight version of Zonked with a little twist. I drew the lines close together on one side and far apart on the other giving the tangle an off-centered look.

This in turn reminded me of Maryhill so that came next. To blend the two tangles I added a little rounding to Maryhill.

Finally I ended with Fassettoo because I wanted a tangle that was quite different from Zonked as the last Tangle. Again I added a little rounding to Fassettoo to create a connection to the rest of the tile.

All these tangles are drawn in triangles, consist mainly of lines and relate to each other when you add rounding to all of them. Here is my final tile.

As always if you see something in this post that you would like to explore in you own work, please feel free to do so.

Blessings,

Lynn

Narwal – Square One Focus

This week’s focus tangle for the Facebook page Square One: Purely Zentangle is Narwal by CZT Sam Taylor. The Step-outs can be found here.

I tried Narwal when the step-outs first came out but never explored it very much and I didn’t feel like I really knew the tangle yet so I did some drawing in my sketchbook to try and get to know it better.

After I felt I was getting the rhythm of the tangle I started a tile. The S curve used to draw Narwal is the same as is used to draw Cadent, so I decided to explore this in my tile. I started with a 3 sided cadent figure drawn in the round and then began adding Narwal.

I continued around adding Narwal coming off the points of the Cadent figure.

When I’d finished outlining the Narwal I began to add some detail.

I added some shading to the tangles but felt it needed more so I began to add an aura around the perimeter. When I got to the tip of the first Narwal arm it seemed like that was enough and I liked the way it looked so I repeated the effect on each of the arms.

This was much better but it felt like it was detached from the background so I added some shading to one side of the aura to ground the drawing.

I liked the sketches I made using Narwal and Dragonair together. Again there was the common element of the S curve and it just seemed right that two such magical tangles should be used together so I drew a second tile.

I am happy with both tiles and in the end really enjoyed drawing Narwal.

As always if you see something in this post that you would like to explore in you own work, please feel free to do so.

Blessings,

Lynn

Heartswell – Square One Focus

This week the focus tangle for Square One was chosen specially for Valentines Day. The focus tangle is called Heartswell by Helen Williams. Steps -Outs can be found here on her blog.

I really enjoyed learning and playing with this tangle. On the top of this page I explored drawing it in a Hollibaugh way. At the bottom I drew it on a Rope string like I used last week. This sure gave different results and it helped me understand why Helen said not to have your initial lines too close together. I also tried out several variations.

In the end I decided to go fairly simple for my tile since this can be a very busy tangle. I started with just two curving lines.

Heartswell is fairly easy to draw and I just continued adding “swells” until they began to run together and off the edges. Then I added an Aura around the entire tangle. I liked the black aura I tried in my sketchbook so I filled it in with black.

I added three hearts as focal points and broke up the rest of the hearts with a couple of variations that were repeated several times randomly. This gave a little contrast but kept it simple.

Finally, I added shading to add dimension and complete the tile.

Happy Valentine’s Day

As always if you see anything in this post that you would like to try in your own work please feel free to do so.

Blessings,

Lynn

Printemps – Square One focus tangle

This weeks Square One focus tangle is Printemps. This is one of the tangles I use all the time so I did not feel the need to explore this tangle in my sketchbook this week.

I have been wanting to do a tile using Margaret Bremners “Rope String” idea though and thought this might be a good time to try that.

I started off with a Rope string and began filling it with different variations of Printemps.

Then I added some black background, line weighting, and sparkles to some of the variations. This added a little more contrast to the tile.

Finally I added the shading to finish the tile. I wanted the section with the large line weighted spirals to be in the forefront and then each section to be on top of the next moving toward the edges of the tile. Each section was shaded only along one edge to help create this illusion.

I like the way the Rope string provided discrete sections for the Printemps variations and also tied them all together (no pun intended or maybe it was).

As always if you see anything in this post that you would like to try in your own work please feel free to do so.

Blessings,

Lynn

C-Scape – Square One Focus

This weeks Square One focus tangle is C-Scape by Susan Rink Olsen CZT. The stepout for this tangle can be found here on tanglepatterns.com.

This is another tangle I’ve never tried so I did lots of playing with it to get familiar. One thing that struck me right away was that I thought there was a relationship between this tangle and Peanuckle so I knew I wanted to use them both in my tile. But first I had to learn C-Scape.

As I began to get a feel for C-Scape I decided to start a tile. While C-Scape makes a great border I wanted to do something else. I settled for a curved stacked effect. I started with the C-Scape in the middle and worked out from it in both directions to the edges. As I worked I didn’t really know where this was going so I just kept adding one line at a time.

When I finished the outlines I really didn’t know what to do next. I added a couple auras then certain shapes just seemed like they should be filled in black so I started there. Next I began filling in the Peanuckle sections with the traditional lines.

This set the tone for the tile so I just continued adding black accents and auras.

Finally came the shading that really made all the folds look 3-D and tied it all together. I like the way C-Scape and Peanuckle worked together and I like the way the two upper right sections blend together but seem to be going in different directions.

Some tiles excite me from the beginning and I can’t wait to draw the next line. This tile wasn’t that way. I really had no moments of vision for this tile but I always work through and enjoy the process till the end. That’s when a tile’s spirit is truly revealed and this one now brings me joy.

As always, please feel free to try anything you see in this post in your own work.

Blessings

Lynn