Doodling with intent...

I don't know what I was looking for one day about six weeks ago, but what I found was Zentangle. And what a find! I am a creative soul but my creative talents are really quite limited. I can (and do) make handmade chocolates and have done so for the past 26 years or so but our move to Spain - detailed in my ongoing blog  - means that chocolate making can only take place during the cool winter months.

This summer, my daughter Romy, who is 9, and I began making cards together. Something we could do in the hot, lazy afternoons when having a siesta felt like wasting time, but when anything more energetic was out of the question. I used to enjoy calligraphy and can only imagine that I was searching for something related to that when I discovered an art form that really beckoned me. Serendipity, it was.

Zentangle seems really big in the United States and there are now various 'branches' of the 'original' forms of it. I don't want to get too tied up in the politics of how it all works and understand that Zentangle is a registered trademark and there are obligations on those who use the word and the official patterns.

I don't want any obligations, I just want to share the passion that has been sparked in me by the idea that doodles can become amazing works of art. I like the word 'tangle' - which is one way of describing a more complicated doodle and I have to admit, the act of doodling with intent does create a state of deep concentration and relaxation that at times could be described as rather 'Zen-like'.

I didn't want my 'everyday' blog to become a tangle blog so have started this one to record and share some of the pieces I have done. I'd also like to take up some of the various challenges that exist - either in creating a tangle based on a particular shape or using particular patterns.  Wherever I can, I will use the names that are in circulation for certain tangles but some with be names I have invented because I have - or think I have - made up the doodle/tangle.

What follows is a chronological set of tangles. I don't think I am getting 'better' at it, I don't know that this is the approach I take. Sometimes I really don't like what I've done but they're all here - warts and all! (Now, that could be an interesting new tangle....'Wartz'...anyone done that one?

The very first tangle I ever did...inspired by Maria Thomas,
one of the originators of Zentangle - this, I believe is an Aura Star

Here there are nine individual squares that I worked on, one at a time, practising lots of different tangles. I started top right and finished bottom left, working from right to left along the three rows.

This is a close up of the final square. The star is also inspired by Maria Thomas - using a tangle called Betweed, which is one of my all time favourites.

And so it began!