Author: Lynn Mead

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

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

This week the Square One: Purely Zentangle focus tangle is Henna Drum.  As stated on the Square One site, because so many in the Zentangle community are experiencing family medical crisis or the loss of a loved one, “this week’s ONE focus tangle [Henna Drum] is directed with care and compassion toward them.”

Henna Drum is a tangle that I have not used before, so I started as usual by drawing it in my sketchbook.

I wanted to do a tile that used a variation of Margaret Bremner’s “Flying Birds” string. I liked the bird shaped drawing from my sketchbook but not the Crescent Moon I used with Henna Drum (although I do like them together as they have some common elements).

I started my tile with a few “bird” strings.

Then I added the Henna Drum along the string edges. I used a simple version of the tangle without changes and embellishment. It felt feathery to me.

I thought about adding some tangles in the background but decided in the end to keep it simple and only added some pencil shading.

This is the result. Drawing this tile is my way of sending my love and support to all in the Zentangle community who may be in need of it at this time.

If you see anything in this post that you like, feel free to try it in your own artwork.

Lynn

This year I’ve decided to do a post each week on the tiles I do for the Square One: Purely Zentangle FaceBook page. If you are not familiar with the Square One page, each week they post a focus tangle which you are then supposed to use some way in a tile. The tiles must be 3.5″ x 3.5″ white tiles and you can only use black pen and graphite for shading.

Some weeks the focus tangle is one I know really well and sometimes it is one I have never used before. In any case I always start out by exploring the tangle in my sketch book so I get to know it a little better and/or feel more comfortable drawing it.

The focus tangle for this week is Umble, here is what I drew in my sketch book.

There were a couple of effects I liked and wanted to incorporate into a tile. Following are Work In Progress photos and some explanation of my thought process along the way.

I started with looping bands around a circular shape.

The bands seemed plain so I added what I call Ant Trax down the middle. This adds a little interest and I think it helps emphasizes the over/under layering.

I felt it needed some contrast so I started filling in the spaces between the loops with black. I got about half way around and then thought “If I continue to fill all the way around it will be too much black and not very interesting.” so I stopped.

Then I had to balance out the light and dark so I added the black and white crescent shapes to either side. These help to define the edges of the circular shape.

I played off the light and dark separation again when adding a couple more Umble variations to the outside area of the tile.

This is the final tile with shading, which you can see does a lot to define overlaps, shapes and edges.

If you see an effect you like, please feel free to explore it in your own work.

Tangle On…Lynn