Happy Birthday!

I made this for my mom on her birthday last week. 

My Zentangle Weekend at Kripalu

The "Tangle to Tangle" workshop at Kripalu with Zentangle founders Maria Thomas and Rick Roberts and their daughters Molly and Martha was amazing.  I attended the workshop with my mom, who has been tangling on her own for about a year and was excited to take a class and to experience the restful and rejuvenating atmosphere of the mountain retreat center.  This was a class to broaden our skills by exploring how tangles can connect together.  There's no way to capture the experience of taking a class with the Zentangle founders--their generosity with supplies, their funny stories, their easy rapport, their mantras and sayings to encourage and instruct us.  So here, I'll just detail some of the tiles we made--and encourage you to take a Zentangle class with Maria and Rick or your local CZT!

We started each of the four sessions with clearing our workspaces and then a meditation to center our minds and tap into our creativity.  And then we explored several ideas in a structured step-by-step way.  But even though we all essentially followed the same directions, each tile in the final class mosaic showed our individuality and creativity.

Tile #1

Tile #1:  hollibaugh, pokeroot, crescent moon variation

Our beginning tile introduced ideas of connecting tangles together.  Hollibaugh is one of the most useful tangles for this because the lines can easily morph into shattuck, mooka, and, here, pokeroot.  We also looked at varying tangles like crescent moon to create new effects.  We paid a lot of attention to shading to take our tiles to the next dimension.

Tile #2

Tile #2:  tripoli, rixty, fracas

Here, in the center, we played with morphing from one design into another with the decoration of tripoli.  It's hard to see in my tile because I only made a few tripoli.  Then we used the negative space of tripoli as the stems of rixty.  The triangular shape of rixty complements tripoli.  The rixty also weaves in and out of the fracas, a drama tangle of black and white that pulls everything together.

Tile #3

Tile #3:  knightsbridge, huggins variation, auras, peeld, and springkle

This started with the huggins variation (which looks a bit like an old-fashioned telephone handset) which we aura'd several times.  And then I learned the new tangle, peeld, where the line seems to just jump away from the pattern, here ending in springkle.  So cool!  Again, there is a black and white drama tangle, here knightsbridge.

Tile #4

Tile #4:  spiral string with nzeppel, mooka, perfs, and pokeleaf

Here we practiced intertwining mooka and pokeleafs, with perfs and the black filler to emphasize the tangles. The spiral string complements the Zendala's round shape. 

Tile #5

Tile #5:  crescent moon variation, Bronx cheer, squid, and perfs

This renaissance tile has so much going on:  dots in the crescent moon to mirror the perfs, same with the Bronx cheer; the etching technique in the squid leaves; the intricate shading in graphite and white charcoal of the whole thing.  

Bonus:  On Saturday night, as part of a fun activity, we all decorated Zentangle pencil cases that they gave us.  It's a canvas bag covered in Mod Podge Fabric, which takes ink better.  We used an Identi-pen and a Fabrico gray marker for shadows.  And you can see where I tried to connect tangles together.

Thank you, Maria, Rick, Molly, and Martha for a great weekend at Kripalu.  My mom and I loved it--and are hoping to attend if you offer it again!

Tile-A-Day: Serendipity

I usually tangle first thing in the morning after the kids leave.  It centers me, a little quiet after the hubbub of the morning.  Today, the sun is shining and my prism cast this rainbow on my tile.

Tile-A-Day: Connections

I've been playing with connecting my tangles in smoother transitions, not simply with the border of the string.  I've read some suggestions on how to do this, this post at Open Seed Arts being very helpful.

I'm learning:

• to work from the outsides in, trying to leave at least one blank space between tangles until closer to the end;
• to leave the edges of tangles incomplete until the end;
• to study the tangles on either side of an empty spot to see how they can connect;
• to look at where tangles end appropriately against the string and see how to bridge to the next one;
• to start with rounded or tangles meant to overlap first (like pokeroot, flux, or mooka) and then work "under" or "behind" them;
• specific ideas:  grid tangles (cadent, w2, huggins, bales, etc) flow nicely together, as do some triangle ones (munchin, tripoli, kathy's dilemma, swarm,  cadent variation, etc.); hollibaugh makes a great bridge; crescent moon and hollibaugh can also be tangled with additional patterns to flow into the next section

Here I started with the ribbon (not an offiicial name), which led into hollibaugh, then crescent moon, with a few bales in between.  From the other side of ribbon, I did cadent.  And cadent morphed into munchin for just a bit in the upper right corner.   Finally, fescu came off the ribbon in the lower left.  It's definitely a start. 

Tile-A-Day: Frames

Now I just need to practice my lettering so I can put quotes on the inside.  A friend recommended either Joanne Sharpe's Art of Whimsical Lettering or David Harris's The Calligrapher's Bible as a resource.

Tile-A-Day: Go Large!

When I feel like I'm in some kind of a tangle rut or I want to try something different, I remember the suggestion to draw patterns extra-large for a new effect.  I imagine I could make them even larger.