Week 7 ~ Time to tangle

Another foray into stress relief this week as we take some time to play with Zentangling.

Zentangle is the official name of a drawing practice created by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas. Rick is a former monk and Maria is a calligrapher. When Maria told Rick about the effects of doing calligraphy, her sense of timelessness, focus and relief from current worries, he realized she was describing something very similar to meditation, so they worked together to create "Zentangle".

Zentangle has developed over the years into a formalized product and system, which now includes classes to become a CZT (Certified Zentangle Teacher). Traditional Zentangles are created on a 3.5" cardstock "tile". Each tile begins with pencil drawing: first a dot in each of the four corners of the tile, a loose border connecting the corner dots into a frame and a "string" which divides the enclosed area into workable segments. Then you switch to a drawing pen - something fineline and permanent works best, like a drafting pen, where the focus changes to filling the segments with a variety of repetitive patterns that overlap and join in interesting ways. A further last step can include using a pencil again to create shadow and depth.

But there are lots of informal ways to use Zentangle as well. Many people have branched out far beyond the 3.5" white card tile, and also are now including colours as well as shading to their finished work. Here are a few of my sites to inspire you to when creating with Zentangle:

One of Lily M.'s tangles, showing how she uses colour and shading.

Lily's Tangles usually sticks to the traditional tile size, but has some truly amazing examples of using colour in her work. She's quite prolific in her tenagling, and as a result, very good at it. I doubt I'll ever reach her level of detail or consistency, but I do find her work inspiring. I also love that she photographs her tiles against a spread-out fan ~ very lovely.

If you want to follow the official route to Zentangle, I recommend looking at the official Zentangle blog, which has lots of new tangles posted, news about the Zentangle community, and a very long list of zentangle blogs around the world.

If you want to learn new patterns, there are a multitude of ways to do it. Firstly, online of couse. My favourite resource for patterns is TanglePatterns.com. It has a fabulous list of patterns, sorted alphabetically, as well as videos for beginners, tutorials, stories of how Zentangle has changed people's lives and you can even join a weekly newsletter where they'll send you a new pattern to learn every week.

I have two quite extensive Pinterest boards for Zentangle: one for step-by-step patterns, and one for zentangle inspiration, both of which I add to regularly. Many people have put wonderful patterns up which you can find easily by searching within Pinterest, or by just using Google. I'm very much a "collect the whole set" kind of person (must be my "inner librarian"!) so I'm always watching out for new patterns to catalog.

One way I thought might be interesting is by creating playing card sized versions of the step-by-step for patterns. As usual, I'm not the first person to think of it, and I recommend checking out the Yoga for Your Brain card sets by Sandy Steen Bartholomew (CZT). They're fun little snippets to try. One side has the pattern used in a tangle, and the other side has the step-by-step instructions.

So ... on to some tangling of our own. First some basics. As I explained above, the basic steps are this: 1. Draw a border. 2. Draw a string. 3. Fill the spaces with patterns. 4. Create shadow:

This week I thought we could Zentangle our hands. Here are some examples of hands other people have created:

And here's a step by step for doing your own hand, which includes my own zentangled hand:

I've collected some of my favourite tangle patterns from my Pinterest board on the following two pages. I used some of them in my hand above, so you can see what they look like when used:

Well ... that should keep us all busy (and relaxed) for a few days ...