The Evolution of a Tangle

I'm not sure exactly when I first saw the tangle Floatfest, but I remember a beautiful tile on the Zentangle app Mosaic by my co-CZT#22, Anja Schaffeld (the link leads to photos of two tiles on her blog) that featured the tangle--and almost as importantly, it's name, Floatfest, a tangle by Carole Ohl, CZT.  I wanted to give it a try.

And so, here, I'm documenting how I go about learning a new tangle.  For me, this one was particularly challenging, a high-focus tangle.  I found a link to a step-out by Adele Bruno, CZT, on Pinterest; I used that as my starting point.

I first tried it in my regular sketchbook, working fast and trying to get down the pattern.  Bruno's notes were helpful, especially the one that said it didn't matter where the arches started or ended.  And so I practiced.

And practiced.

And practiced, not completely happy with my understanding of the tangle quite yet.

And so I put it on a tile (photographed here with a rainbow from a prism.)

My second tile went through it's own progression; first, with white arches.

But I had liked the play of black and white in my first tile and so colored some arches in, which has the bonus of hiding some "mistakes" in the hollibaugh-like overlap.

But I didn't like that much either and so I colored them all in.  I think I prefer the first one, uncolored. Oh, well.  No mistakes.

Which led me to the next two tiles, with the words "Try" and "Practice," and different heights and widths of arches.

 I combined it with fengle and crescent moon, making a mandala of arches (with prismatic rainbow.)

I tried it with another new tangle I learned this weekend, Rubenesque, and some perfs, an idea from Anja.

Which brings us to this morning and a Zendala (Zentangle Mandala) that I made with geo-flower, Rubenesque, and floatfest.  I'm getting the hang of floatfest now, after several attempts; I'm comfortable enough playing with it but know that I'm still not consistent with it (or with geo-flower and Rubenesque, for both of which I've worked through a similar process as floatfest.)  

And that's okay.  For me, it's about process--all of those tiles above and the relaxation and calm I experienced doing them (okay, not in the first few attempts, which was concentrated learning)--not product.

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