Category Archives: Zentangle

Underwater Tile: Quib and Sedgling?

We are nearing the end of the Zen-Untangled project and this week’s tangles had several I’ve never even heard of before. Among those brand new to me are Kathy’s Dilemma, Orlique, Warble, and Sedgling.

Sedgling reminds me of Pokeroot with some extra auras in it. ;) I’d love to know the reasoning for the name of both sedgling and Kathy’s Dilemma. The toughest tangle this week is probably Jonqal. I’ve done this one before and still made a mistake when I started the second set of lines. So, I whited it out. :) Yep I did.

I added some shading on Warble that made it look quite different from the sample I’d seen but I like it still.

Well, here is the tile before shading, first the scan and then the one taken in natural light, which was nice and sunny today. :)

In case you are wondering, the tangles are Orlique, Quib, and Kathy’s Dilemma across the top. Warble in the center-ish, with Sedgling and Jonqal across the bottom. I wish I’d have done the jagged lines on Jonqal going up and down and the solid/straighter lines going across but, it is what it is. ;) Static was the only other tangle for the week and I just didn’t see anywhere to put it today.

Here is the finished tile, first the scan and then the natural light picture.

It’s  a little harder to see the shading in the bright sunlight. Let’s see if this one looks better.

It’s really odd because that section with sedgling looks a lot darker in real life. :D

Well, that’s all for me today. I hope you do something artsy this week; it’s good for you.

Until next time, God bless,

Michele ºÜº

Crown Tile: Marasu, Juke, ‘Nzeppel, and Stoic

Out of this week’s seven tangles: ICanThis, Juke, Marasu, ‘Nzeppel, Quandry, Stoic, and Zenith, I only had the step-out drawn for ‘Nzepple. I’ve used ICanThis, Zenith, and Marasu in tiles before but haven’t made the step-out for them yet. I don’t care for ICanThis or Quandry, so I didn’t use them in this week’s tile.

I forgot to take a scan or picture of my tile with the string before I did any tangling on it. But basically it looks like a crown on a diagonal in the center of the tile with no borders. Of course I wanted to do something a bit different and chose not to simply tangle inside the string.

I decided to use ‘Nzeppel because it is one of the tangles I enjoy. It’s interesting though because I had a difficult time befriending that tangle. I decided that Stoic and Juke would work well on other sides. I also decided Marasu could work between the points.

Here’s how I tangled it (first the scan and then the picture in natural light).

Then I did some shading. Here is the finished tile, first the scan, then the picture I took outside in the sunlight. :)

I like how it turned out. :) Each of these tangles are super simple; anyone can do it, really.

Thank you for stopping by. I hope my endeavors encourage you to give it a try.

Until next time, God bless,

Michele ºÜº

Striping, Scoodle, and Yincut

This is my participation of week 21 of the Zen-Untangled 2020 Project. This week’s tangles are Chainging, Punzel, Mysteria, Opus, Scoodle, Striping, and Yincut. Although I thought Striping was an enhancement instead of its own tangle, but I guess they called it a tangle before they came up with the enhancements. ;)

Here are the step-outs I had to draw this week: Scoodle, Striping, and Mysteria.

I was surprised how much I liked scoodle; that’s the one that looks like curly S’s.

I started to mark up my tile for shading before I remembered to take a picture and scan of it, so you’ll see a little of the beginning stages of shading on it. Here is the scan and the picture in natural light of this week’s tile.

It’s been ages since I tangled yincut and to be honest, I’ve never done it justice. ;) I thought I’d do just one big yincut square but I didn’t like it at all. So then I decided to fill in another section with yincut. Well, I forgot that you alternated the direction of the lines when tangling it. :\ This did not help my dislike of the large yincut square. So I blackened it out. :D Then I tangled regular yincut in white. Problem made better. :)

Here is the scan and the natural light picture of my finished tile.

Since I had my white pen out, I decided to add a little highlight on striping. :)

Here’s another view I have of the finished tile.

Well, that’s it from me today. Thanks for stopping by. I hope sharing my work encourages you to put pen to paper and draw. :)

Until next time, God bless,

Michele ºÜº

Zander, Meer, and Betweed

I’m still amazed that Betweed and I are friends. :D I actually enjoy tangling it.

This past week was another catch-up week for the Zen-Untangled project 2020. I took it as a breather instead. On catch-up weeks seven strings are provided to keep us full of tangling ideas. I was busy trying to finish up a book that I’d been reading for a while, The Robot of Dawn by Isaac Asimov, and playing Super Mario Odyssey again from the beginning. :) So, I didn’t take any time to tangle this week until yesterday when I needed to do it for this post.

I chose one of the easiest strings and then some very simple tangles from the last four weeks to put in those sections. Meer is a favorite, so that was a simple choice for one of the sections. As I said, I’m liking Betweed since we became friends last year, and so I decided to add it in a section.

The trouble I have with Zander is the highlight spots on it. I never seem to get them in the right places but it’s an easy enough tangle, so it won the last section. ;)

Here is the scan and natural light picture of my tile before shading.

Here is the same tile after shading in both a scan and a picture in natural light.

Well, that’s all for me today. Thanks for stopping by. If you have any tips for Zander and it’s sparkle, please let me know.

Until next time, God bless,

Michele ºÜº

Zen-Untangled Week 20: Indy-Rella, Msst, and Squid

This week’s tangles in the Zen-Untangled 2020 project are Bronx Cheer, Indy-Rella, Squid, Msst, Zander, Fengle, and Raddox. The string this week really screamed to have Zander down the middle and I just simply refused to do that. :D I wanted to be different.

Here’s the string.

I decided that I could have Indy-Rella up the center strip. :) I really felt that Squid should go on one of those rounded sections. I decided to use Squid but in a different spot. ;) For my third tangle I went with Msst. It’s an easy one and I like it. :)

Here is the scan of my tile followed by the picture taken in natural light on a windy day. The wind blew my tile off the little easel thing, so I had to resort to holding it. :D This is before shading because I think there is usually a marked difference after shading, so I like to show before and after.

Here is the tile after shading, first the scan, then the one in natural light.

I think it looks like fish swimming in front of some kind of land mass with currents and some other kind of sea life. ;) Tiff thought it looked like some kind of alien abduction of some sort. :D

Thanks for stopping by. This art form is really easy and generally just involves four simple shapes–a curve, an “s” shape, a line, or dots/orbs. All are simple to do and anyone can do them. So I hope this encourages you to give it a try.

Until next time, God bless,

Michele ºÜº

Toodles, Pokeleaf, Nekton, and Quabog Tile

Things a considerably better around here but I still didn’t get all my step-outs done this week. Of the seven tangles: Nekton, Pokeroot, Pokeleaf, Toodles, Quabog, Tortuca, and Rain, I only had the step-outs for the first three already made. But then I ran out of baseball card size cards (ATC) and needed to cut some more. I haven’t gotten around to doing that yet. ;)

I went ahead and decided to jump right to the tile for the week. ;) I think my favorite of this week’s tangles is Rain, and I didn’t even use it in my tile. :D I like Toodles but struggle adding more than one to a section. Of course, I struggle a bit with layering Pokeleaf and pokeroot too. Nekton has never been a favorite tangle but it filled in a small section nicely.

I don’t recall ever using Quabog before. The section I used it in was a bit squished so I wasn’t able to “hollibaugh” it enough, intertwining the upper section with the lower one. But it is okay. ;)

So here is the scan and picture of my tile before shading.

Of course, it was cloudy out when I was ready to take pictures outside again. :DThen I shaded it and this is how it turned out. I kind of like it. :)

I didn’t want to have a solid black fill, so I left it with lines behind toodles and pokeleaf.

Well that’s it. I think Toodles kind of looks like some kind of bird head–like a woodpecker or something. :D

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you try your hand at some tangling; it can be a great stress reliever. :)

Until next time, God bless,

Michele ºÜº

Keeko, Scena, Meer, Jetties, Tripoli, and Betweed

This week has not been the best week!!! And that is putting it mildly. So this is going to be pretty short.

The tangles I used this week are Betweed, Meer, Jetties, Tripoli (just one triangle), Keeko, and Scena. I used one big Jetties and then a few small ones in the center of the one Tripoli.

First will be the unshaded scan and then the picture taken in natural, albeit overcast light.

Yes, my huge jetties is not round because I filled the oddly shaped section with one instead of many jetties. :)

Here’s the final tile, shaded (first the scan and then the natural light).

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you have a better week than me. ;)

Until next time, God bless,

Michele ºÜº

Zen-Untangled Week 17: Isochor, Beelight, and Sez

Well this week’s Zen-Untangled tangle list includes some that I don’t really care for. ;) Beelight, BeeLine, Isochor, Pendrils, Scaribou, Sez, and Shattuck are the tangles of the week. I have to admit that I absolutely do NOT like Scaribou!!! Not at all. ;)

I also don’t care for Pendrils, Sez, nor Isochor. However, I love Shattuck and it is one I like to use. Beelight and BeeLine are two that I haven’t used much and even struggle with BeeLine a bit, when I have chanced to use it. ;)

So choosing three tangles to use on the suggested string this week was a bit of a challenge. Now you might guess that I used Shattuck since it is the tangle that I really enjoy but surprise, surprise, I didn’t. I could have found a place for it in the tile but I just didn’t feel like it fit easily this time.

So I went with an easy one, Beelight. I followed Holly’s sample mixed up the direction that I pointed the arches. I think it turned out pretty nice. Although I’m not good at auras, I enjoyed tangling with Isochor when I made the step-out for it this week. So I thought it would go nicely in this string and give me some much needed aura practice–so in it went.

I decided to go with sez for my third tangle. I went and got some sesame seeds and dropped them down on the section and replaced them with dots as actually directed by the tangle instructions. I struggled a bit with the shading for this one.

Well here is the tile before any shading both scanned and a picture taken in natural light (on our nice sunny day).

It kind of looks like a Wall-E type character looking at me. :D

Here’s the shaded scan and natural light picture.

I like how this turned out and, more importantly, I enjoyed tangling it. :)

Have you ever seen the tangle Scaribou? It is definitely a weird one (kinda looks like caribou heads, I guess).

Well, I’m going to run for today. I really appreciate you stopping by and I hope you have a great week.

Until next time, God bless,

Michele ºÜº

Zen-Untangled Week 16: Purk, Gneiss, and Tidings

This week’s tangles in the Zen-Untangled project are Assunta, Bales, Gneiss, Gourdgeous, Pea-nuckle, Purk, and Tidings. I love Gneiss and enjoy Purk but Gourdgeous is not a favorite at all, neither is Pea-nuckle. Tidings, however, is brand new to me. I didn’t think I’d like it but I actually did.

I got behind this week and although I only had three step-outs to draw, I didn’t do any of them. I looked at the string provided and decided right off that there was no way to make the tangles fit perfectly  in the sections provided. So I went with purk in the purk-shaped section. Since I love Gneiss, I was determined to find a way to use it in a section. And finished it out with Tidings filling in another section. I decided to keep one section blank.

Here is a scan of the tile before shading.

I’d taken pictures outside on this rainy, overcast day but something happened and they didn’t import. I’ve now learned to check to ensure that they actually imported before I delete them off the camera. :(  So I had to take them all over again but I couldn’t exactly remove the shading. :D

So here it is both the scan and the picture after shading.

Which angle picture do you like best? I couldn’t pick my favorite, so I included them all. :)

Right

Center:

Left:

This is how overcast it was the day I took these pictures. ;)

I’m going to run for now. I hope you have a good week.

Until next time, God bless,

Michele ºÜº

Zen-Untangled Wk 15: Ratoon, Ambler, Waybop

This week’s tangles were Ambler, Paradox, Ratoon, Three & Three, Vermal, Waybop, and Xyp. Some of these are really great tangles: Paradox, Ratoon and Waybop. But Vermal! Really? Looks like alphabet soup. Some people couldn’t even make themselves put this tangle in their projects. :D I did simply because I wanted to remember what it was if I ever heard of it again. ;)

Three and Three is a pattern in the strictest use of the word pattern with 3 vertical lines followed by three O’s and repeated as desired. I can see it can be useful in some situations.

Ambler looks so much like Emingle to me. I’m told that Ambler is supposed to be drawn in ribbon fashion, like Hollibaugh though. Okay, whatever. ;)

I already had step-outs for Ambler, Paradox, and Xyp. And although I have used Ratoon before, I didn’t do a step-out for it, so I had four step-outs to do this week.

The other night, I grabbed one of my scratch-off tiles and showed Sean and Tiffany how to draw Waybop. I’m really enjoying that tangle a lot. :)

I didn’t get my spacing right and had to squeeze in one more seed but it still turned out nice. I really like it on this rainbow tile. :)

This week’s string was really loopy and not really conducive to the tangles we had to choose from. But strings are suggestions, so here’s what I did with it. (The first is the scan of my lineart and the second is a picture taken outside in natural light.)

I wasn’t sure what to do about that hill and loop. I thought about blackening them but was afraid it would be too drastic. Then I thought I could try shading it and if I didn’t like it I could blacken it digitally before putting pen to paper. But as it turned out, I rather liked the way it turned out shaded. ;)

Here’s the scan of the finished piece.

As usual, it looks a bit better smaller. ;)

I really like that short ambler on the top of the first loop; it kind of reminds me of a train. :D

And here it is out in natural light.

As you can see, I only did half a Ratoon and I tried to keep Waybop in its loop at first, so it is a bit lopsided. But I really like the shading on those two tangles. Not too sure how to shade ambler though. :D

Well, I’ll run for now. I hope you have a great day.

Until next time, God bless,

Michele ºÜº