Back to Basics

Zentangle is an awesome art form. So often, once we get familiar with everything, we tend to dive off into the realm of Zentangle Inspired Art (ZIA) and forget what the roots are and why we started this in the first place. I am guilty of it, but find that being a Certified Zentangle Teacher (CZT) that I have to intentionally pull myself back to teach the basics.

So it was quite appropriate for what I have been working on this week to get pulled Back to Basics for The Diva’s 250th Challenge. I’ve started a Tangle Journal with a class for a few of my students, to break down the tangles we use, and find “tangleations” of them. And in this weeks San Deigo/Temecula Zentangle Friendship group, we did a page in a spiral bound tangle journal that pulled together 4 very random tangles and a string from tanglepatterns.com to make that most basic of black ink on white paper, original Zentangle.

  
So that was fun…Here is a picture that Jan took of us all working diligently…

  
And here are some of the pages from my other Journal Project, which are basically mono-tangles.

I have just started Mandala Magic 2016 with Julie Gibbons. I’m quite excited, as I have been so drawn to round things lately (really, since I started my foray into the art world) and this is already quite an eye-opening experience. I did a little warm up exercise in a “self portrait” to put in my journal for this project. I am not much for drawing anything that actually looks like real life (yet) so I stamped the eyes and nose with a cute little stamp I have, and tangled in the rest. I know…looks just like me!

So, this weeks’ blog is being produced on my iPad Pro, trying out the new keyboard, trying to make sure that I can “take my show on the road” successfully and still stay connected. Hopefully, it looks better on the browser window than it does here!

Names’ cray my friends, keep making stuff…crazy is better!