Back in January I shared some of my artistic goals for the new year. If you’ve read this blog for long, you’ll know I’ve talked about a daily sketch practice for a while. One technique I tried initially was drawing the first object that came to mind and adding it to a single page. I didn’t sustain that practice for very long.
Then I tried to focus on creating single pieces of artwork, but found difficulty getting motivated and making the time and space.
Fast forward a few years to the end of 2019. I was researching what supplies I should get to start into watercolor and trying to learn more about techniques when I stumbled across fiona-clarke.com She has a post about the best pens to use with watercolour. She also has a post about Zentangle® Patterns. I’d seen ads in our local paper this Fall about Zentangle classes, so I was intrigued. Fiona’s artwork also reminded me of one of my favorite Colorado artists, Phil Lewis. All the signs pointed to learning more about Zentangle.
The Zentangle® Method is an easy-to-learn, relaxing, and fun way to create beautiful images by drawing structured patterns. It was created by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas. “Zentangle” is a registered trademark of Zentangle, Inc. Learn more at zentangle.com.
And that’s exactly what I did. I googled out Zentangle and started clicking through the links laid out in orderly steps on the Zentangle website. The first deviation I made to the method was creating my own tiles to draw on. I’m one of those people these days who almost never follows a recipe as its written, even if it’s the first time I’m trying it out. I always feel compelled to tweak something. I knew I had a pack of scrapbooking paper that I’ve been sitting on for years. I also knew how much I like trimming and cutting paper. For me, I get a zen moment when I’m concentrating on how scissors move along a cut-line. In no time, I had a good collection of square and circular ’tiles’ ready for tangling.
At first I didn’t pay much attention to the patterns. I focused on The Eight Steps of the Zentangle Method, and I seemed to see the lines that wanted to be drawn ‘appearing’ on the page before me. So I followed them. Only recently, have I been looking at a published list of patterns and sometimes purposefully exploring them.
I’ve picked a few of my favorites to share. Some of the things I have loved with this practice is how amazed I am at what appears. It has challenged my ideas of positive and negative space. It’s very freeing to create abstractly where you’re not trying to make it look like anything in particular. I also like how it can be accomplished quickly—usually in one sitting; and there’s no excuse if it’s dark out. I often talk myself out of doing anything with realism and color after the sun goes down as I know I don’t have adequate light sources and perceive the colors differently ‘in the dark.’
Unfortunately, my old iphone doesn’t do the artwork justice. These photos lose a little bit of the subtle shading when photographed. I haven’t gotten out the digital SLR to see if that makes a difference.
Since the new year there have been a few daily lapses. Most of the time if I haven’t sat down to tangle that day, it was because I filled it with something else creative: watercolor, colored pencils, jewelry-making, knitting or picking the mandolin. Now that I’m about 2 months and 38 tiles in, it’s almost time to make more tiles, and I’m considering buying an official kit. Maybe I’ll even take a class, if the timing’s right. In the meantime, I have signed up for a watercolor class. More on that in my next post…
