One Zentangle a Day

the center with implied lines rather than actually closing in the edges of the incomplete patterns.
    Include a frame on today’s Zentangle tile. It can be created from neat lines, broken lines that create broken boundaries, dots and dashes that lead the eye, or a frame that borders the tile.

Your Style Is All around You
    Look at what you love to find your style. Judy has loved shoes forever and they appear in her Zentangle Inspired Art. In fact, she has a series of them that continues her love of pattern, visual texture, and attention to detail. Tapestry-like designs emerge in her original artwork.
    Fantasy and dreamlike feelings are journaled into her designs—free-flowing organic designs with contrasting geometric areas. Note the Poke Root at the upper heel has been closed with a line and not left open. Judy feels that the line of the shoe was more important, as was keeping an open area.
    This piece is titled
Never can have too many shoes!.
    ANOTHER LOVE OF JUDY’S is the perfect accessory, a handbag. For the ZIA today, use achromatic or color. You can either use the string of a handbag provided by Judy, or draw one of your own on an ATC. If you are not into handbags, make yours a hat. Next fill the string with patterns using a pen and shade. You may choose to keep the project on a tile or enlarge it and work on drawing paper.
    Copy the pattern onto your ATC or create your own.

    Notice the handbag strap is similar to the frame in today’s earlier lesson. When too much is a good thing, Judy adds more! But she does so selectively and with compositional balance. She diminished patterns when areas needed to recede throughout. Check out the Knights Bridge in the upper right and the Zander as it curves around the front of the bag like a vintage trim. There is more patterning in the right-hand twist at the top of the handle.
    HINTS FROM JUDY: Vary the line drawing by repositioning the bag straighter on your tile, shorten the handle, draw fewer twists in the handle, set smaller flowers to the sides instead of the center, and consider whether or not to string the body of the bag at the beginning. So many possibilities! Enjoy the line drawing.

DAY 33 INTRODUCING ZENDALAS
    MATERIALS
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Micron 01 pen
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pencil
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drawing paper cut to desired size
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template from below
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Koi watercolor markers
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compass
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protractor
    ZENDALAS USE THE ZENTANGLE meditative art form, but instead of creating this art on a 3 1/2-inch (8.9 cm) square tile, we use a 4 1/2-inch (11.4 cm) circular tile. This is a great exercise for keeping things fresh and expanding your skills. As a math geek, guest artist Geneviève Crabe has always been attracted by the mathematical structure of mandala, on which the Zendala is based.
    When Geneviève creates the framework or template for a Zendala, she usually works on an 8 1/2 × 8 1/2-inch (21.6 × 21.6 cm) surface, i.e., the largest square cut from an 8 1/2 × 11-inch (21.6 × 28 cm) sheet. To create the circular grid that will be the framework for the design, start by drawing two diagonal lines from corner to corner to create the center. Then use a protractor to draw more lines at specific angles. For example, if you want eight sections around the circle, draw lines every forty-five degrees; for twelve sections, draw lines every thirty degrees.
    Then, using a compass, draw a series of circles about a 1/2 inch (1.3 cm) apart from the center to the edge. Do this in pencil, which will be erased later. Once the circular grid is formed, draw the Zendala lines with a pen, using the pencil lines as a guide to make your design symmetrical. In this particular Zendala, Geneviève drew lines to resemble flower petals.
    Organic in nature, this Zendala template is the string in today’s meditative tile.
    Use the template for today’s meditative exercise and for the ZIA project. The template can be traced or it can be scanned to your computer, resized, and printed out. You can use any of the tangles you have learned. Also, don’t be afraid to leave some sections blank. The achromatic version was done on white card stock. Before shading it, Geneviève scanned it and printed a copy on another sheet of card stock for coloring.

Coloring Your Zendala
    For the ZIA, Geneviève used the same template and Koi Coloring Brush Pens, which are water-based pens with a great brushlike nib.
    “I don’t always color all the Zendala’s sections,” she says. “It can be nice to leave some sections in black and