One Zentangle a Day

steps each time, a ritual is created. The ritual becomes more familiar, comforting, and relaxing with use. Benefits such as developing new skills while enhancing old ones, stimulating creativity, purposefully redirecting your mind and thoughts, improving focus, calming and centering the mind, and releasing stress become easier to achieve. The eleven steps are as follows:
    1. Relax, stretch a little, and make yourself comfortable.
    2. Breathe—take a few nice big breaths in and out. Smile. Remember to enjoy being in the moment.
    3. Examine and admire your tools and your paper and appreciate this time to create.
    4. With your 2H pencil, create a light dot about 1/4 inch (6.4 mm) in from each of the corners of the tile. No need to measure; just place them where it feels right.
    5. Using the 2H pencil, draw a line from dot to dot creating a border. Don’t worry about it being straight because the eye finds curved lines more interesting.
    6. Create a string. The string creates a division of areas in which to lay tangles. It is the creative map of your daily Zentangle journey. The string can be any shape, size, or on any spot inside the square and doesn’t have to be a continuous line. Not every section of the string has to be filled with a tangle. If instinct tells you to leave an area blank, then follow your gut. The string is meant to dissolve away into the background of the finished Zentangle like an invisible border or edge. Never draw the string in ink because then it creates a border that becomes the focus, much like the effect found in a coloring book. It is no longer a suggestion; the string is now a rigid border that limits the options for placing tangles. When the string is in pencil, experienced tanglers can study the piece and imagine what the string looked like when drawn.
    Steps 4 through 6 are spontaneous and generally created quickly. Like fingerprints, no two strings should ever come out the same.
    7. Pick up your Micron 01 pen. Turn your tile and examine the pattern that the string makes from each angle. Hold it out at arm’s length so you also see the composition from a distance. Following your first impulse, start filling in each section of the string with the tangles learned that day. Do not overthink your decisions and do not hurry. Be deliberate and focus on each stroke. Turn your tile as you work to make it easier to create your design.
    8. With your 2H or 2B pencil, shade your tangles. In the beginning, we will shade the tangles by using the side of the pencil around the edges of each tangle and then smudging it with our finger. This type of shading should be darker toward the edges, lightening as it comes into the tangle to control the amount of gray used. Shading is not effective if the whole piece is gray.
    9. Once again, turn your tile and view it from each angle. Decide how you wish the piece to be viewed. Using the Micron 01 pen, place your initials on the front of the tile. Turn the tile over and sign your name and date the piece. You may add any comments here, like where you were, with whom, or if it is a particular event that day that this Zentangle honors.
    10. Reflect on your piece of art.
    11. Appreciate and admire your piece, not just up close but also from 3 to 4 feet (0.9 to 1.2 m) away. It is amazing how the piece changes from a distance.
    Shading only adds to the design if there are tonal contrasts between shaded and nonshaded areas.

CHAPTER 1: BASICS AND ENHANCEMENTS

    EACH DAY WE WILL LEARN new patterns, techniques, and skills, but the format will stay the same. With Zentangle, we learn, "Anything is possible, one stroke at a time." A complicated tangle becomes achievable by being broken down into simple, repetitive strokes. Each day will start with learning new tangles. The patterns will be diagrammed in a series of 1-inch (2.5 cm) squares numbered in order. The new step is drawn in each square in red ink. The last box of each diagrammed pattern contains one example of how to shade that pattern.
    Every day the directions will call for you to practice the new pattern in your sketchbook before creating a Zentangle using the pattern. Some readers will copy the diagram steps for each pattern, and then start re-creating the patterns in the sketchbook until comfortable with creating them. Others learn better by drawing only the pattern, and then practicing it a few times.
    Either way is fine; do what feels most comfortable to you. An important tip is to label each tangle with