September tangles

I didn't do my first tangle until the beginning of September 2013 but once I started, I couldn't stop!

I  was still in 'card' mode at this time, so made tangles that I could turn into a greetings card. Colour was important for this purpose and I began experimenting for the first time in my life with crayons, watercolours, ...paintbrushes even! And was loving it!

This one I called 'Earthpearl' - partly because I thought the four 'Betweed' shapes looked rather like bandaged earthworms burrowing in or out of a tub of pearl shapes...nothing elegant or glamorous about it!

This one was - and possibly still is - one of my favourites EVER. I called it 'Stard' because of the star shape and there's nothing I don't like about it. It makes me feel like an artist when I look at it. It doesn't get any better than that...it really doesn't.

Continuing on the card theme, I did three more coloured tangles that are quite tiny and sweet. Unfortunately, they are both badly photographed and dreadfully mounted! There are still such a lot of things to learn.

As I was doing the first one, it felt as though I was being inspired by a friend of mine. This one was definitely for her.

And it's called 'Sammee'

In this one, I was practising the tangle that has ended up along the bottom edge and the lacy garter pattern along the top. You can probably see which are some of my favourite shapes now. I'm particularly fond of the one I call 'Moomin' - balloony, leafy shapes with little curls around the edges. They crop up everywhere.. 

This is a less elegant combination, I feel. I call it 'Tiger Horns' for fairly obvious reasons but I don't like the colouring and the clashing of orange and blue, but it was another good one to practice new tangles and I spent more time on the colouring on the horn pattern to get better depth.
Awful positioning on the backing card...

And all this time, I had a growing collection of sketches in my notepad...

I was hooked!

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!