Zentangle, and your Zentangle "inspired" art

Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas are the originators of Zentangle, a registered company. Visit their site and read how their company evolved, and how they each continue to teach and promote Zentangles.

Read more on possible copyright issues when working with your own Zentangle inspired art, on Linda Farmer's site, TanglePatterns. Thanks to Genevieve too, Zentangle Harmony for your comment on Tangle Patterns, re "inspired art". That's exactly what we're each doing.

This is an ideal opportunity to become familiar with how to post your art online, with a new awareness to many possibly, to what's considered fair play re our Zentangle inspired, drawings and pattern-making.

Stylish Blogger Award

Seems to be the season for awards, and the plus is, I don't need to go out and get a new outfit to receive them. This one, with another big thank you, comes via Melinda of Molly Bee's Attic. This one's an award where I’m meant to make note of seven things you don’t already know about me.

You know of course though; there’s a reason for that.. we don’t usually go tell what we don’t want to ‘reveal’ do we? However for the fun of it ...here’s what comes first in my head to let you in on (nothing riveting so you could save yourself some 'me time' by skipping on by):

1. Love music with a beat, and it started with good ole’ rock ‘n roll (I used to love to dance it too). I favour also, instrumental music over vocals; 12-string guitar, electric guitar, drums, piano etc, and sometimes light classical music (when in the kitchen). When I can spare the downloads, I totally love listening/watching u-tubes from Jean-Pierre Bertrand, starting with his Boogie-Woogie Blues alongwith another talented young piano-player, Luca Sestak. Do check them out if you enjoy some lively music like I do.

2. Have been a ‘typist’ from my early teens; did commercial course in high school and have always had a keyboard to tap ever since.

3. I talk way more with my keyboard than I do on the phone. I love to be in touch but for me, it's via emails. It's just so convenient; you're never interrupting anyone's dinner preparations, or catching them just as they're about to leave the house......

4. In 1968 I was marooned on an island overnight. It was Magnetic Is., Queensland, and we’d missed the last ferry back to the mainland. When we walked to the jetty near 5pm we could see the ferry out there on the water. We chatted with our two companions, and thought looks like we’re the last ones heading back…… Next glance the ferry was smaller, and it was definitely not coming in, but going out L. It wasn’t a romantic overnight stay, with no cash to stay in the island’s only hotel. We walked three kilometres to the next bay in the dark, since that was where the first ferry for the following morning would arrive to pick up passengers. We spent a very long night with our feet tucked up on a bench inside a lean-to shelter at the jetty, in a tropical downpour.

5. Retired from working within the housing construction industry; I always enjoyed the comraderie within the workplace.

6. Here’s a doozie! I lived "inland country" N.S.W., for thirteen years. One of the starters of our everything fur and feathered, to share our first hot and dry farmlet was .. donkeys. Well, they could take on the rocky terrain there, and they would eat down the patterson’s curse and scotch thistles, apart from the good feed from the stock and station agents that is. Some bred, and in the end we had ten donkeys; and yes, many people used to ask us, why?

I wish I had a digital camera in those days - that's way back in about 1978! These images were scanned from slides.

7. I read non-fiction over fiction, every time. Visual, colourful, tutorials, learning more about creative projects, reading profiles etc. Home, garden, cooking magazines and more. Not to say I wouldn’t enjoy ‘a good book’ but I never make the time to do it justice and stick with the story being told.

And 15 bloggers I hand on the Stylish Blogger Award to are ...... (hear those drums?)

Painted Thoughts Blog

All Things Paper

Mill Girl

Arty Aspirations

A Little Bit of This and a Little Bit of That

All things paper

Inspirational

Arty Indulgence

little paper bird

Painted Thoughts Blog

resurrection fern

Pattern Play with Pens

The Sketchbook Challenge

Stamping Ground

Cut Nela Cut

To recipients of the Stylish Blogger Award:

1. add the award picture to your blog

2. thank and link back to the person who awarded it to you

3. share seven (7) things about yourself

4. pass this award to 15 other creative bloggers

My Liebster blog award

Thank you :) Lyn Smith, blogger of Arty Aspirations for handing over the Liebster blog award to me recently. This award is to promote lesser known but quality blogs, helping to gain them new followers who may not have found them, before this opportunity.

We all can do with a little push into new arenas! My three favourite blogs I'd love to promote, are the following.

Wild Cards on my Workbench by Ros' C, in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Ros' shares her most creative cardmaking and baking skills along with other interesting posts.

Water Blossoms blog by Margaret Storer, a wonderfully inspiring watercolour artist.

and Jane Davies CollageJourneys; a well-known artist, but a blog I know many more will benefit from.

It is the "name of the game" for each blog-owner to continue the award by 'passing the baton' to others they feel can do with a little lime-light.

Also, to include in their follow-up post, the Liebster blog image, shown at the top of my post.

Special Note from the Originator:
Dear bloggers:
The aim of this action is that we bring unknown, good blogs to light, so I would ask you not to blog fellow bloggers that already have 3,000 followers.

New pattern idea: Whirlygig, for your Zentangling

Late last night I wondered quite what to draw ... was it too late to make a start ... should I just get to bed? Instead, I thumbed through a home-decor magazine, and a single cane light suspended over a rustic table gave me inspiration.

Imagine the light I saw, being just one quarter of the overall design I've came up with. For a moment I thought to call it "lantern," but when the pattern shaped up it appeared more of a 'whirlygig' instead.

I'm sure there's many wonderful variations to be made with my whirlygig pattern by Zentanglers around the world, and I hope you'll leave a comment with a link to your drawings.

I'd really love to see where whirlygig travels, and what you create with it.

Zentangle: Florez

At TanglePatterns.com is this link to "How to draw Florez"; a design by Andrea Shuman.

Thanks Andrea (and Linda), for offering new challenges for beginners with wonderful tutorials on how to construct a certain pattern type. Florez is delightful Andrea.




This Zentangle play is drawn on a Zentangle tile.

Nature's Bounty, with a web of beauty

After gentle overnight rains, some fabulous finds in the garden with several large webs like this. After sharing most recently my Zentangles, I kind of thought who couldn't marvel at the artistry of a single spider? While I was sleeping, between them and Mother Nature, some wonderful creativity was going on.

Valentines Twist to a Zentangle

I promise it's just this once more, with my previous Zentangle.

Turning it into a .ufo object file in my Corel PhotoImpactX3 programme wasn't as easy as I'd hoped. Because of all the pencilled shadows around the Zentangle, they showed up as graphic "jaggies". A major tidy-up was needed before I could work with it further.

It was a fun project, and I hope the many ardent and creative Zentangle artists whose work I admire so much, will approve of my little side-step from the norm, just for Valentines Day.

A little more Zentangling ...

And then with some colouring-in enhancements using Corel's PhotoImpactX3

Caught up with tangling - Zentangles

In a recent post I mentioned about 'doodling' and along the lines of wishing there was somewhere online a 'doodling school' where I could learn the art of. Part of the comment was a little-tongue-in-cheek because there isn't a speck of a natural drawing ability within me. Not to say I wouldn't like to try ... if there was an easy way!

Seems there is!! Without any hesitation, long-time email pal Bonnie living on the other side of the world to me, wrote and said she had all these Zentangle items just sitting waiting for someone to play with them, and they could be mine if I'd just say yes. They were packaged and on their way from the freezing U.S., to the searing east coast of Australia, in a heart-beat!

Zentangles? I went looking at, and saving websites, watched u-tube demonstrations, and thought perhaps I could do this (with a lot of practice); and I started mine in a specially assigned, notebook for tangles.

When the parcel arrived a couple weeks later, this is what it contained! I am indeed the very lucky recipient from a very generous friend, (who I've never met). Stands testiment to how friendships are often established and nurtured within cyber-space.

So yes, I have continued "practicing", mostly at the very end of a day; when the computer has been turned off, and it's nearing bedtime. I will continue often till quite late, totally absorbed and penning away with a Zentangle pattern.

It does command your complete focus on every pen-stroke, and for that very reason really, it is ideal "therapy" almost, to take your mind away from the every-day, and to ....another place. It happens right there on the Zentangle tile, or in a journal or note-book; whatever you choose to Zentangle in, and I equate it pretty much to sitting with a crossword puzzle, or reading a book in your own special time.

On Enthusiastic Artist blogsite by Margaret Bremner, is a tutorial for Lilypads, the basis on the first pattern for me to share here.