Living in the Shades: One Zentangle a Day – Day #4

Completely ignoring how the book is split up – working on one chapter each day – I tangled the tile for day 4 right after tangling the second tile for day three. I think that if you’re in a flow, you should use that momentum to charge ahead!

Day 4 was all about the tangle enhancer shading and how it can totally change the look of a single tangle or even of a whole tile. This is a very important thing to aknowledge, I’d go as far as to say that shading is at least as important as tangling. I’m not joking here! I think every tangler has experienced this before that you tangled a tile and you not quite liked it a lot – something was kind of.. “missing2 or wobbly or… something else that disturbs you but on which you cannot put your finger at. But once you shaded the whole thing, the picture has a whole different look and even feel to it. Only because you shaded the tangles. And even if you were happy with your drawing before tangling, you usually will be amazed at how shading can give your drawing the perfect final touch.

New tangles for day 4 were Jonqual, Nipa and Shattuck. I was really happy to finally get another tangle with some darker values to use. The reason for this, as you can read in my post on day 3, is that I kind of have the problem with the tangles up to now that the tonal value is too similar resulting in a big greyish mass without any “attractions”. So I was hoping that Jonqual would help me here. Let’s see what happened:

Tangles used: Fescu, Festune, Jonqual, Knightsbridge, Nipa, Pokeroot, Shattuck, Tipple

Well.. I think I partially succeeded here. I like the different look of Jonqual (edgy) and Knightsbridge (roundish) here, which is a result from shading it. Before shading, they looked very similar, but now I think the difference is very obvious. Festune and its shading is another thing I like on this tile. What I’m not so thrilled about is how the strong contrast (Jonqual and Knightsbridge) stand kind of… isolated again compared to the rest of the tile. That’s also a reason why I decided against shading the “waves” of Nipa, it would only result in another greyish mass again.. I think I already got a little bit better at combining and transferring from one tangle to another (Fescu + Nipa or Jonqual + Knightsbridge here), but it isn’t enough just yet to create a harmonic tile all over (achieving that on day 3 was pure chance I guess XD). But I’ll be working on that!

Finally some progress: One Zentangle a Day – Day #3

Oh my, it has been ages again since I posted something here… Especially if you are looking for anything on my “One Zentangle a Day”-project. But after a very busy Inktober and after I finished compiling and crafting an art supply Advent calendar for a fellow ATC artist on a German ATC website (I’ll show you some pictures of that after 1st December!), I FINALLY found the time again to continue this project!

Since it hast been such a long time I last posted something on this project, here’s a short reminder of the rules (let’s just forget about rule number 1 for now.. :-D):

1. I definitely will NOT be able to tangle or post a tile every day, but I’ll try to squeeze in two tiles per week. If it is just one, that’s fine, too, as long as I make progress.
2. I’ll only use the tangles introduced in the book up to that point for a tile. To be able to stick to this rule, I’ll keep a list (not on the blog) I can refer to without having to flick through the book all the time.
3. No day shall be skipped (even though I already know that the “white on black”-challenge will be very hard for me..) and no excuses are allowed here.

I was stuck on day number 3 already.. New tangles for today were Pokeroot, Festune and Hollibaugh Here is the first tile I did:

Tangles used: Fescu, Festune, Hollibaugh, Pokeroot, Tipple

The problem was that my tile had way too little value. I spent almost as much time shading the tile as I spent tangling and the result is pretty… boring. There are no especially dark or bright areas which attract the eye, it is just one big mass of (nearly the same tonal) grey.. And the effekt of combining Hollibaugh and Pokeroot to create an interesting effect is completely non-existent. I tried to further darken areas with my pencil, but smudging it also lightened it up again, so I didn’t really get what I wanted. This tile was a huge diappointment to be honest, but it taught me a very valuable lesson about tonal values. That’s why I thought I’d still post it here so you can see and maybe learn from it, too. 🙂

The tile above ist actually from some time in October. Yesterday I sat down while I was waiting for my very own Advent calender to arrive (no luck there, unfortunately) and tangled a new tile to see if I could do better. I do like the second tile a lot better, although Pokeroot too small AGAIN. I just can’t help it and I guess we will never be friends.. Anyway, here it is:

Tangles used: Crescent Moon, Festune, Hollibaugh, Knightsbridge, Pokeroot, Tipple

I really like the tangle connections here, especially how Hollibaugh keeps the whole thing together! Crescent Moon now looks like a tunnel Hollibaugh is crawling through. Overall I think that the effect is even stronger on the screen than on the tile, which is nice for a change. ^^ It is only Pokeroot that I’d really love to eradicate from this piece.. But of course I can’t and I wouldn’t do it because that’s Zentangle and because it is another good lesson for me to learn.

See you soon for the next days and lessons to be learnt!

The next Step: One Zentangle a Day – Day #2

Day 2 was about tonal values tangles have, that is their respective shades of black, white and grey (not THAT shades of grey 😉 ). The three tangles introduced today are a good example for tonal values: Knightsbridge has a strong contrast between purely black and purely white. Nekton has a more greyish tone depending on the space between the lines while, Fescu is a very light, airy tangle with a very bright tonal value.

Today’s task was to use all the tangles introduced so far to tangle a tile. Here is mine:

Tangles used: Crescent Moon, Fescu, Knightsbridge, Nekton, Static, Tipple

I always found Nekton hard to draw and although I like the look of it, I avoided it because of this. The illustration in the book wasn’t actually very helpful for me so I set out to google the pattern and found a very helpful >>video<< on YouTube by Ellen Wolters. In it she uses a different approach than Beckah Krahula which I find easier to follow. Maybe it will help you, too! I’m positive that in the future I’ll use Nekton more than before.

I’m totally happy with this tile and hope that the next ones will turn out as well! Although I guess I won’t be able to use all tangles in one tile anymore very soon because they are slowly getting too many.

When I started this project, I wanted to find a better understanding of merging or connecting tangles to get a smoother overall look. Here I used quite a few transitions and combinations I’ quite happy with: Crescent Moon and Fescu look quite nice together, the combination of Crescent Moon and Knightsbridge gives Knightsbridge a new look, I think, and Static gives a big Tipple-Bubble just the look of a marble, don’t you think?

I’m already looking forward to the third day, the theme is creating depth (have to admit that I already had a look and tried it this time, too O:-) ).

* This is no cooperation with anybody, I haven’t been paid or asked to do this and the book I use was bought by me.

A fresh Start: One Zentangle a Day – Day #1

“One Zentangle a Day” by Beckah Krahula was my first Zentangle book and I already own it for quite a few years. However, I’m embarrassed to admit that I never came to really work through the book because the rhythm of 1 tile per day is just way too fast for me. This makes me a little sad, since it is a great book (I’ll write a review as I go along or after I finish this project). Now that I have this blog I decided to give it another try.

I set three rules for this project:

1. I definitely will NOT be able to tangle or post a tile every day, but I’ll try to squeeze in two tiles per week. If it is just one, that’s fine, too, as long as I make progress.
2. I’ll only use the tangles introduced in the book up to that point for a tile. To be able to stick to this rule, I’ll keep a list (not on the blog) I can refer to without having to flick through the book all the time.
3. No day shall be skipped (even though I already know that the “white on black”-challenge will be very hard vor me..) and no excuses are allowed here.

Without further ado, here is my tile for the first day:

Tangles used: Static, Tipple and Crescent Moon

There was no string given so I made my own which resembles the letter “p”.

Recently I discovered that tiles and Zentangle-inspired artwork where one tangle transits into another appeal more to me and that the reason why I didn’t like my own work sometimes was that I totally lacked this aspect. There was no flow between the tangles, just stop&go, if you know what I mean. That’s why I want to try to incorporate the technique of tangle transitions into this project and learn more about it. I didn’t have much choice for the tangles of this first tile, but with the next ones coming up I’m sure I’ll have more chances to explore them. Here I like the transition between Crescent Moon and Static. Although now that it’s finished the border I made with Tipple is a little disturbing, I still like the tile!

* This is no cooperation with anybody, I haven’t been paid or asked to do this and the book I use was bought by me.