One Zentangle a Day – Week 3

I’m still slowly working my way through Beckah Krahula’s “One Zentangle a Day”, occasionally drawing the extra exercises when I have time. I’ve been through enough art courses that I don’t feel bad about skipping things, but I may revisit some of them when I’ve completed the full six weeks. Hard to say. There are always more art things to do than time around here.

(Pssst…if you’re wondering what the heck I’m talking about, check out my post on weeks one and two to learn more about Zentangle®.)

On to the drawings!

Day 15

This wasn’t turning out how I meant it to, so I tried filling in the “stems” to at least create some contrast. Sadly, I don’t think that was really an improvement. No take-backs! 😱

• Yincut
• Locar tangleation
• Verdigogh tangleation

Day 16

I was a little out of it when I drew this. Big mistake when you’re trying to layer things as much as I did here. So of course I drew things out of order and stuff ended up behind things they were supposed to be in front of. Still fun. And it cemented my love for Florz. It reminds me so much of fishnet tights. Sexy!

• Florz
• Pepper
• Yinx
• Squid
• Knightsbridge tangleation

Day 17

I’m also a little obsessed with Squid since it reminds me of Japanese chrysanthemums like I used in Coral Chrysanthemum. Some day I hope to have time to make one using french beaded flower techniques to decorate my home. So fancy. If you’d just shown me a completed picture of Squid I would not have thought I’d be able to draw it easily, but once it’s broken down into steps it makes so much sense. From there, all sorts of flowers with similar petal structures make sense and it all feels like a big duh.

I also cheated and filled it in with highlighter ink. I should practice drawing it with bigger arms/petals so I don’t end up cheating like that again…

• Vitruvius
• Courant
• Sedgling
• Squid

Day 18

Isochor felt like it went well with Gneiss and that middle area feels a bit like a deep dark cave to me. Meanwhile, I had fun playing with scale on Huggins and Cadent. I think this was the day where the author suggested drawing a landscape and filling the outlines in with tangles as the extra exercise. I didn’t do it then, but I plan to try it soon.

• Cadent
• Huggins
• Gneiss
• Isochor

Day 19

One thing I struggle with as I follow the book is trying not to unconsciously imitate the sample drawings that the author provides. You’re using the new tangles to make your drawing that day and you can add whatever else you want, but at 3.5″ there’s only so much room for different patterns. So I ended up using Rain the same way the author did and then in my attempt to not copy the rest Beeline got buried. Woops!

And now I have the perfect idea for how to use all three in a completely different way, but it’s too late for Day 19! 😧

• Rain
• Cubine
• Beeline
• Onamato

Day 20

I love how ‘Nzeppel turned out. It’s just so flat and cuts right across the whole image. I was initially going to fill in all the space between the triangular-ish bubbles, but then I realized I kind of liked that space so I faded it out from solid to separate. So you could call this a tangleation of it, but I think it falls under shading more than anything else.

And what is that? Squid again? 😂

• Jetties
• Sampson
• ‘Nzeppel
• Squid

Day 21

This was definitely a case of drawing something and then realizing instantly what I should have done for a better result. All part of the learning process. Still, lots of cool textures happening. Rick’s Paradox and B’tweed are both tangles that feel like it could be one of those cool-looking metal ceiling tiles.

• Rick’s Paradox
• Betweed with an aura
• Rain tangleation
• Tipple

Looking Foward to Week 4

I’ve painted some watercolor backgrounds to use for ZIAs (Zentangle® Inspired Art), which I posted to my twitter feed. It worked pretty well, even though I occasionally painted too much and caused the paper to peel. I will be more cautious in the future. I also pinned them down under heavy books until they are dry to keep them flat-ish. Since I’ve already skipped some exercises on colorful ATCs that I don’t have, I’m thinking of using the same process to make a mix of one- to many-colored ATCs to play with. Maybe I’ll have time to use them, right? 😅

I did end up acquiring some colorful-inked pens at the dollar store, so that might appear next week as well. I bought the pens because my stepdaughter wants to make a unicorn horn pen. (Thanks, YouTube. 😅) While I could use one of the many cheap Bic pens around the house, they are getting old and dry and therefore hard to write with. It seemed mean to make something with her that will suck to write with. So I thought a new pen with purple ink (her favorite color) would be fair if I could find something at the dollar store. And, lo, it came in a pack of six colors, none black. So I am up by five toys.

Plus there may be a unicorn crafts for kids post in the future. A practical one…unlike that darn YouTube video.

Until next time, friends! 🙂