Ending November Early

With the holidays and other events filling up the last weeks of November, I combined several tangles from the November challenges #Gratitangles and #Giveatangle2017 into the same tile.  Some I like, others not as much.  Even though I practice Zentangle most days, I am more or less mindful and meditative depending on the day.  Today, in combining 15 tangles (and forgetting one) in one tile, I lost concentration, made a mistake in setting down the basis of beeline, and was then frustrated.  I rushed the rest of the tangles and shading, giving up on the idea of a "perfect" tile.  Ah, perfect is the enemy of good.  I forget the "no mistakes" mantra of the Zentangle community.  It's a practice.  One I definitely need.

Day 18-21: pokeleaf, bales, fengle, flourish

Day 18-21: phroz, mooka, huggins, Bronx cheer

Day 22: ta-da and fandango

Day 23-30:   With drupe, amphora, zinger, rixty, laced, cruffle, benumber, cubine, viaduct, 'nzeppel, (incorrectly started) beeline, JJ, golven, purk, and chainlink. 

The Lull

Sometimes, I have a lull in my practice.   If we're out of town, if we're busy with things here at home (like the beginning of the school year), if I'm focused on another project like a crocheted blanket for charity, I don't practice Zentangle everyday.  But sometimes, none of those things are happening, and I still feel stalled.  I've just come out of such a period.  After the beginning of school, I started and stopped several tiles, just dissatisfied.  Not in the flow.  Did I have a preconceived idea of how I wanted them to look and couldn't accomplish it?  Maybe.  Was I trying to follow a new Zentangle trend that wasn't a good fit for me?  Sure.  Was I rushing the practice just to say I'd done my tile for the day?  Yep.

And so I gave it a break.  I didn't tangle for a couple of weeks.  I didn't worry that I wasn't tangling.  I just let it be.

Now, I'm back.  One of the ways I find to get out of the doldrums is to pick a tangle and use it repeatedly in various ways.  Sometimes I focus on my "comfort tangles," the ones like printemps and crescent moon, that I've drawn from the beginning; sometimes I add a new one to my repertoire.  I've done this now a few times, with joki and waybop.  Another trick is to go back and do a basic tile, the first tile I learned--a "z" string with printemps, hollibaugh, crescent moon, and florz.  I also change pens--from an 01 to an 08, or the opposite--or change tiles, from square to Zendala or Bijou. I don't try to learn new techniques or tackle something big.  Tangle, shade, repeat.

Here are some of the tiles I've been working on in the last few days as I find my way back.

Recent Tiles

I try to do a tile-a-day, in the morning, after the kids leave for school.  It clears my mind of the morning chaos, grounds and centers me for the day ahead.  As I mentioned in an earlier post I've been working on line weight and rounding.  Here are some of my recent tiles, in rather dark photos because it's been so rainy here the last week or so.

#covfefe

A new tangle I found on Pinterest called Salo

Tangles: spoken, huggy bear, w2, and Zen Gem

My Morning Meditation

Today's morning tile

For me, Zentangle is as much, if not more, of a meditation practice than an artistic one.  Most mornings, summer or school year, I begin my day's routine by sitting in a corner of the couch, drinking tea or coffee, and doing a Zentangle tile.  Then, some days, I photograph it and post it to my Yankee Tangler feed on Facebook.  Which means, that the majority of tiles I post on FB and then here on my blog, were done in a morning's sitting, between 15-60 minutes, depending on my practice.  Sure, sometimes I do a larger canvas or frame or pencil pouch or even a rock but never for morning practice.  Those are my later Zentangle-Inspired Art projects.  My morning tile is all about the meditation.

I used to meditate in the more traditional way in the morning--lying down, counting my breath, and returning to my breath when I wandered into thinking or worrying.  But I found I was so ready to "do" something in the mornings, that I didn't sit well (I know, I know, judgement.)  So, now I meditate in the evenings (where the challenge is not falling asleep!) and I tangle in the mornings.  It's enough of an activity that I am not restless but enough meditation that it helps clear and calm my mind.

I embrace the no-mistakes philosophy.  Sure, I like to make tiles that please me visually and I'm happy to share those; but I mainly make tiles for the making of them, and share those, too--even when they show smudges or wobbly lines or just don't seem to coalesce.  It's all part of my practice and I want other tanglers to know that it's always a work in progress.  Practice makes progress.

Trust me, I'm an art historian and spent decades in academia and the museum world discussing composition, style, connoisseurship, etc etc etc.  I know what follows traditional artistic "rules," especially about internal and consistent light sources, perspective, vanishing point, realism, three-dimensionality, etc.  I've looked at tens of thousands of works of art from all over the world, in a variety of different media, and know what constitutes beauty, a "masterpiece," in many cultures.  In fact, I believe it is what hampered my own creativity (except crochet, which is "women's work" and never appeared in my art history classes!)  And now, I have my Zentangle practice.  Sure, the academic art historian in me wouldn't call my little morning tiles "art," though I would recognize the long-time human occupation with patterns.  But I also recognize that the tiles are pleasing to me both in and of themselves and because of their meditative value.  And if you define art as an artistic expression--which is a pretty broad definition (yep, I took theory and philosophy of art, too)--then my tiles do qualify.  But, honestly, I don't care anymore.

If you look around the web, especially Pinterest, at Zentangle tiles, as many new tanglers do, you'll see so many beautiful, almost perfect ones and it's hard not to "compare and despair."  But there is something you need to know:  sure, some of these are made using the steps of official Zentangle, but many, if not more, are perfected pieces of art not made in a single sitting--first, sketched out in pencil (sometimes even with a grid and eraser) and then traced in pen, often by practitioners trained in the graphic arts who work professionally; they are not amateur tanglers.  This doesn't lessen the beauty of their tiles, but I would hesitate comparing them to a regular tile.   I would call these Zentangle-Inspired artworks (ZIAs) and think it's important to differentiate between them and meditative  Zentangle tiles, like my morning practice ones.  Now, I find great inspiration in those amazing ZIAs made by talented Zentanglists, but I no longer expect mine to look like them; our purposes are different and, knowing that, I am not discouraged.

All of which is to say, choose your practice.  Are you tangling as meditation?  To express your creativity?  To improve your drawing technique?  To make beautiful works of art?  To sell or publish or teach?  Once you know what you want--and on different days, it might be different--have your practice reflect your goal.  I do practice my drawing technique and seek to make something pleasing to look at, but meditation is first for me.  And teaching is second, hence this post and the frequent sharing of my tiles.

Whatever your practice, happy tangling!

Tile-a-Day: Tangles as Strings

I experimented with another technique today:  using a tangle as the string.  To do this, I made the string-tangles on the large size so that there was enough room to add the tangles.  It's easier to understand visually.

Here is chaining writ large with a variety of tangles inside, including bannah, kunstler, eddy, pipz, a huggy bear variation, ING, and shattuck, with a florz background.

This is a large hollibaugh with a bunch of tangles in the interstices, including munchin, 'nzeppel, quandry, crescent moon, pokeleaf, zensplosion folds, black and white zigzag, printemps, framz, and pipz.

I wonder what other tangles would make good strings?  The white interstices in knightsbridge?  The basketweave of W2?  Can't wait to experiment.

Tile-a-Day: Practice, Practice

I've spent the last week or so learning several new tangles.  But instead of practicing the step outs in my sketchbook the way I usually do, I've been working directly on tiles.  I found many of the tangles on Pinterest and some from my friend and fellow CZT#22 Katrina Starkey Thiebaut.   I've discovered that working several new tangles together, I can better determine my favorites.

Below you see the back and front of one tile.  I think the string was too tight for all those tangles, especially for practice.  But since the process is the most important part for me, I'm sharing it anyway--even without shading, even with "mistakes."  On the back, you'll see that I noted the names of the tangles, if I had them.  I think I like the middle swirly line of Eddy and the canyon-like Taxi, plus the interwoven Gotcha, and especially the black-and-white zig zag.

*Rotate this 90 degrees to match up with tile above

For this tile, I borrowed the ribbon-across-four-tiles idea of Ellen Bruce CZT and again filled the string with tangles I was learning.  

Starting in the upper left tile and moving clockwise, approximately (completing each tile before moving on):  Fassett, Cheesecloth, Quandry, (a version of Waves?), Enyshou, (something with dots and strings), Frames, (a rose), Huggy Bear, Kunstler (waves), Flitter, Amoeba, Voly, Spoon Flowers, Stribations.