One Zentangle a Day – Week 4

We’re at Week 4 of Beckah Krahula’s “One Zentangle a Day” and I haven’t fallen behind yet. But with several hobbies going at once, I’m not able to do many of the extra exercises in the book and that means no rainbows. The new colorful pens I mentioned last time? Still unused except for regular writing. Same for the watercolor ZIA tiles I made. I have drawn a few extra tangles, but they were ink and graphite as usual so I could use them for backgrounds in all the graphics associated with this. *sigh*

Luckily I have nail art to keep my rainbow heart warm. 🌈💅

My Beef

Possibly I should have mentioned this in week 3, buuut…on day 19, Krahula tells you to place all your tiles side by side to form a mosaic and see your style emerging. This, she tells you, is part of the reason for the whole tile thing: so they can fit together in a mosaic. And it pissed me off unreasonably because in the graphic of her tangles, all of the un-drawn-on parts are trimmed off, making it look like a nice little mosaic of full ink drawings.

But the reality the book-follower faces is that part of the whole Zentangle drawing process includes drawing a border, then a string that divides the paper up into pattern areas, and then DRAWING INSIDE THOSE AREAS. *silent scream* I had been drawing inside that border like a responsible student, but after that bit of nonsense I started busting some of my tangles outside of the border/string (or just drawing them to accommodate border busting).

Let the rebellion continue!

(When it feels like it.)

Day 22

You can see where I got distracted in the middle of drawing Chainging and just flubbed it Yay. Definitely not starting the week on a strong point, but I do love my tangleation of Beelight. It’s like little targets, except not.

• Chainging
• Tagh
• Tat
• Beelight tangleation

Day 23

This Zentangle is a great example of busting out of the borders. And I love the depth I was able to show by adding a second strip of Jonqal and tangleating(?) it into a darker pattern. I could have done better drawing the arc of Flux. That is one I want to practice since I love the shape. I know I’ll use it lots on my own.

Meanwhile, I’m really happy with how the triangular Kathy’s Dilemma turned out. It’s not my favorite tangle, but it’s easy to draw.

• Jonqal
• Jonqal tangleation
• Flux tangleation with aura
• Yincut tangleation
• Kathy’s Dilemma

Day 24

Today I got lazy and just drew the two new tangles in the book. That raised area in the middle of Striping is called a “dewdrop” and is an extra technique that Krahula likes to use. I don’t believe it’s an official Zentangle technique like auras are. But a tool is a tool and I should remember to use them more often (besides auras and shading since I have those down).

I also feel like what the author calls a Pepper tangleation should be a Sedgling tangleation since Pepper is more pod-like with bold black areas and Sedgling has a stem with a bunch of circles on top. *shrug* My opinion. I’d say I’m about the size of a single-cell organism in this pond so keep that in mind…

• Striping
• Pepper Tangleation

Day 25

Possibly I should have used a few bolder lines elsewhere since the perfs I added around the rose-like Vitruvius made it so dark in comparison with the rest of the tangles. Ah, well. I’ll just pretend I was making an abstract monster picture instead. 😉

• Taghpodz
• Sampson
• Courant
• Vitruvius tangleation with perfs

Day 26

It amuses me that this opens up into even more Pokeleaf. Maybe I should have mixed in some Pokeroot instead? I also tried splitting Growth into two different strings. I think this would have been better-served if I’d just overlapped one over another. Good experiment, though. I know I’m being terrible about practicing concepts in my sketchbook first so I know they work, but I only have so much time in a day.

• Pokeleaf
• Sedgling
• Growth tangleation

Day 27

This is easily one of my favorite tiles so far. I love all the motion and stomping all over the edges of the tile. Reef does rather disappear into the ribbon-like Meer, but I don’t mind too much. I think Reef is one of those tangles I need to practice more before I’m happy with how I draw it, so having it disappear into the background doesn’t bother me.

Ribbon-like tangles are so my jam.

• Meer
• Enyshou
• Enyshou tangleation
• Reef with enhatching

Day 28

Look at that. An opportunity to use Squid again, but instead I made Taghpodz into a round shape. I am growing as a person! I’m not sure rounding Taghpodz out counts as making it a tangleation or not since the author did the same with B’tweed and didn’t call that a tangleation. *shrug* I also felt I was being very sloppy with the scribble-y Eke, but it turned out okay in the end. Finally, I really like Sez. So I think that makes a clear trend towards liking tangles with big patches of black. It’s a very good thing that I am using a re-fillable fountain pen, because I can easily use a lot of ink once I’m tangling on my own.

• Sez
• Tat
• Taghpodz
• Eke
• Chillon

My Dilemma

I feel a little bad that I keep talking about these tangles/patterns while not making a clear line for you about which ones I am talking about. It doesn’t help that the names are deliberately not related to their subject. There are trademark and copyright issues tangled up with this. I definitely cannot post someone’s instructions (even if I drew my own version) on how to recreate these patterns unless I ask for permission.

And I’m not sure I’d get it, let alone the delays in posting while I wait for responses. So as far as instructions go, I’m going to continue to point to the official Zentangle^® site and TanglePatterns.com.

But I am playing with the idea of an official page for this that will list a picture (drawn by me) of each tangle I’ve learned and its name. Still a gray area because some of the tangles haven’t been officially posted online because they want you to learn from a certified teacher. However, I’ve looked around enough to find that most (if not all) of them have been released in one way or another so I’m not the first person who will have let them out of the bag if I do this.

Bear with me, friends! I’m trying not to step on the toes of much bigger internet presences than mine. Plus, y’know, morals. 😱

[Edit 5/18/2019: Alphabetically organized page of the tangles I know added here.]