I bought a book, The Great Zentangle® Book: Learn to Tangle with 101 Engaging Patterns, by Beate Winkler, CZT, & Friends. I can say at the beginning I am approaching this topic from the art perspective and not the mental health perspective. The idea of making certain shapes "official" and others not goes very much against my grain. However, as I am completing some of these pieces, I am thinking a lot about the uses of orthodoxies when it comes to developing discipline, and the opportunity it provides for thoughts about the principles of design to be swirling around my head while my hand is in motion.
This is my first one. Tangles have names and variations. I am gradually learning the names and as I branch out from the more standard ones, hopefully will provide names and links to the creators of other ones. Again, I don't believe shapes and art bits should "belong" to anyone, but if one wishes to learn more about the creation of a particular tangle and to look for other designs by the same person, references are a nice starting place. At present all of the ones mentioned can be found in the book above. A warning: as I type this I realize I am getting totally "into" the names and needing out with little stories about how I created each one. So actual readers may just want to skim to the images.....there's only 5 to 10 of you, I'm sure you will figure out your own capacity for excessive detail. :-). Otherwise, this is my own personal record of my thoughts and will come in handy for me some day, I'm sure.
So, from top to bottom, Zinger, Onamato, Strircles, Ahh. I love the contrast of the Strircles layer and the more open patterns on the top and bottom. I haven't managed to leave as much white space since, even though I think it's a good design idea. My first cautions variation of line width in Onamato makes me think I should do a study on width variations.
This is one of my more successful divisions of space. The lines are filled with Dutch Hourglass and Golden, up top is Sanibelle. I wasn't at all happy with it, the first thing I filled in on this card. I realized that I was trying to skip ahead of learning the design and starting to make a lot of random, jerky lines. I'm hoping not to toss any of these but just keep plugging along trying to fix what is fixable, so I darkened the outer edges and made a line encasing the whole thing and desired to live with it. On the left I started to make Tripoli, but messed up when it came to joining one shape next to another. So instead I created a series of independent daisies and then filled in with odd shapes that fit in their incurved petal ends with the out curved daisy tips. I filled in the blank spots with random rectangles, meant to reflect the rectangles used in Dutch Hourglass. On the right, a variation of Moving Day. It seemed too op-art for this busy piece, so I only filled in alternate squares and either left the others blank or threw in a rectangle.
This was actually my second one. I started with a rambling line of Laced. I really appreciate the optical illusion it provides. I should have maybe changed the size from small to large, but I was concentrating really hard on just holding this one together. I realize that one has to become familiar with the basic shape and understand how it works before variations are likely to succeed. The smaller shapes are Widgets, the tendrils and leaves are based on Luv-A, the larger flowers are Winkbee (I was starting to learn how to overlap shapes. The long curving road/mesh is a variation on Knightsbridge. I like how it managed to tunnel off under the Laced line. The general outlay on this one is a bit fragmented and busy. Very much a learning piece. The black lines on the sides were created to force Instagram to include the whole image.
A break for some thoughts:
It is relaxing and engaging to cover a relatively small space of decent quality paper with a variety of shapes, and the "I can't draw" thing that I always resort to is somewhat calmed by the realization that I can indeed reproduce something that has been broken down into a few steps (as long as I maintain my concentration). I don't strive for perfection, partially because I like things that repeat but not exactly. But I am also learning when too much variation can make a pattern much less effective. And I am reviewing overall art principles as I tangle, including direction and strength of lines, differing values of patterns depending on how much ink is used per square inch, how to make the whole thing seem cohesive. And I am constantly thinking of how what I am learning might be used in other art forms.
Some personal principles so far:
*if you are calm about your "mistakes" you can often fix them so that only you (or a certified Zentangle inspector) will see them.
*try to understand the essence of a pattern before making variations.
*every line counts, that is, if you become sketchy and broken in certain places, you will have to deal with those places later, unless they are the very edge of a design that doesn't fill the entire page.
*think carefully about the use of repetition and variations. Too much variation will cause the shape to lose its cohesion.
*"strings" or subdividing lines help to hold the whole thing together. When creating them, I try to think about the basic components of design and how spaces can be divided to attract attention.
*use the appropriate diameter pen for the amount of detail needed.
*everything can be "improved", but it's also possible to over-improve. It may be a good idea to prop a piece up somewhere and let it mellow overnight.
*if your lines seem irregular and wobbly, find ways to go over and thicken them in selected areas so that they look much more intentional.
*if you make a mistake in a pattern, see if it's not too late to turn the mistake into a variation, or maybe decide that certain areas should be filled in entirely with black. Several of my variations have started this way.
*if you find your hand is no longer supported by solid paper as you draw, move the paper around until it is. When I don't do that, my lines start to become wobbly and speculative.
*one technique is to use pencil shading to give dimensionality to a piece. I tried to avoid this at first, but found myself starting to experiment with it after I needed to give a too busy section a bit of toning down and a darker value than surrounding areas. I think less shading is better, so I've taken to using my 6B pencil on scrap paper, rubbing the smudge stick across it and using that to add shading rather than the pencil directly.
*a good Zentangle pattern should be reproducible in a variety of positions (unless it is designed to be a single, centerpiece design that other shapes must support and fit around). There should be a sense of connection and grace. This is harder to achieve than one might imagine.
I am starting to see connections between tangling and other things, like free motion quilting, counted thread stitches, optical illusions, repeat pattern designing, obtaining different values using only black and white (as in regular pen and ink drawings), the concept of notan, weaving diagrams, etc. etc.Once I gain some proficiency in producing tangles I am hoping to feed my own knowledge of these things into my efforts, and in return use Zentangle patterns to inspire other crafts, including stamp carving and embroidery. I am hopefully gaining better control over my hands while drawing and am becoming acutely away when I stray from being exact and start to become approximate (and learning when it matters and when it doesn't).
I know I will start to stray from standard patterns. Zentangles are not "supposed" to be representational, but I personally have no problem with creating representational patterns and using them in a variety of circumstances (stamp making, journaling, etc.). My goal is not just to amass a collection of patterns I can do, but more to discover how I can spontaneously put them together into their own complex ecosystems. I am paying attention to spaces that should be left blank, how patterns might be related, when to show contrasting patterns, effects of different values, etc. I am still not an "even and steady lines" kind of person, my lines go thick and thin. I was working on a sample of just lines, one after the other. But this has proven to be boring. Without the possibility of failure or "failure", at any moment, as in a more complex design, there is a lot less thrill in just learning how to reproduce the standard designs, even if it does allow me to stop midway through, label my effort as wrong and try to improve on it on the next line. Each piece, once completed, is just another art lesson. To the extent where each one is less effective than it could be, I am learning from it.
Also I am starting to have mental maps of types of tangles....lines, mesh fillers, braids, op-art, flowers, leaves and branches, individual shapes. More ideas: Can I take traditional quilting patterns and turn them into tangles? Tesselations? Celtic braiding? Rangoli patterns? Patterns found in nature (bark, leaf veins, feathers, ripples, cell structure)? Counted thread stitches, or just embroidery stitches? Mathematical relationships? Well, of course I can, once I have mastered more of the basics.
Now, done with the rambling and back to the efforts. I started this one with a large grid of Chemystery. Back then the lines between the balls were unfilled and I was quite happy with it. I added Florz next and was still happy. It reminds me of the stretched and twisted meshes I make out of cheesecloth or plastic vegetable wrap. Next I filled in B-Horn, looking less woody than the example in the book. I then added Huggins and was pleased with the result, but lacked the courage to extend it to meet the edges. I was having enough trouble concentrating on filling in the swoops between the dots correctly. In fact, I missed one and ran it out when it should have been curving in. This caused me to decide to add my first pencil shading in hopes of making it less obvious. It worked, sorta. Then I made a real mistake and decided to do something fancy in the spokes between the balls. I should have either left them blank or just put one kind of line in there. I finished by darkening it all with pencil, to distract from the excessively busy spokes. Very much an educational piece! :-)
I started my next one with two lines of a Onamato variation. Not all that effective, but I like the emphasis of the darker dots. I could always go back and make them all black. Next was a variation of Fracas. I gradually extended most of the sections into points, learning to let them run into other things without panicking. Some not very circular Printemps as filler. An experimental stab at Paradox triangles. I pretty much blew the first one but gradually learned. I covered up some awkwardness by making certain sections solid black. I filled in around it with more Florz, which I think will become one of my go-to patterns. Two bands of Shattuck on top and bottom. I live near a street with that name, wonder if there is a Berkeley connection? I added more Fracas at the edges and was pleased with the effect of the repetition. Overall, pretty busy and not enough good contrast between dark and light. I like the subdivisions.
I started this one with a big fat set of Blooming Butter flowers. I was determined to have them lead into each other as the example did, and I think I did OK with that. I decided to make use of my colored Micron pens on the edges. I ran some Aura-Leah leaf shapes off the sides, again a learning experience. My first ones were too round and chunky. I'm learning to make them more like leaves with parallel veins. I covered over my mistakes (as usual) by making sections of each leaf black, then I added green to make them more leaf-like. Here is a thing with Micron pens in general: there are not actually all that many colors. I was hoping somewhere in some art store, real or virtual, there would be selections of 60 some colors, like colored pencils, but no such luck. There must be some technical reason for this. There are several width possibilities, at least with the blacks in my set, and it does make quite a difference which width you use. Mine go from .25 to .5. I filled in the blank spaces with Ahh and some stipling, then a bit of cautious pencil shading. It's sort of OK. Overall, I like the division of space and the way the flowers seem to burst forward.
Whew, that may be it! Here is something I took away from this last piece, where I made my leaf mistakes....curve it more. But also I'm thinking of making a carved version and a foam stamp version and using them with some other tropical stamps.
Final, final thoughts:
Look at nature and how it fills in spaces....often a heavy center, fading to lighter edges, larger too smaller. This can be due to the effects of plants reseeding out from an original clump, not filled in yet on the edges. Another pattern in nature I have discovered just this year: the extremely even filling of space of a canopy of leaves....each leaf gives way to its neighbor to allow maximum sun in to all (they don't extend this courtesy to other species struggling for the same light source, those plants have to scramble up as best they can). Anyway, I tried to copy the first kind of space filling when adding filler shapes to my projects.
For me, these Zentangle pieces are like a computer game where a person plays without knowing how to reach the goal, often not even knowing what the goal is, and only learns through a series of mistakes. The outcome may only be marked as successful in hindsight. I don't play these kind of games because I find them to take up too much precious time only to produce an immeasurable kind of virtual success, but I can relate to something that produces dark lines on paper and allows free thought to flow. I feel like each card has been a kind of fantasy adventure and I have a sense of affection for even the more imperfect results.
No comments:
Post a Comment