Life Imitates Doodles

The mind is a funny thing. It takes clues from shadow and shape, size and detail, and interprets how big, how far, how deep.

You can fool the mind into believing there are three dimensional shapes and distance between objects by using shadow and detail.

Upwall is a fun little pattern that plays tricks with the mind.

Triangles and Squares and Circles, oh my! The most basic of shapes become fragile and beautiful with fractal geometry.

Waclaw Sierpinski was a Polish mathmetician who described the properties of these two fractals. They are interesting both mathmatically and visually.

You can create a delicate, lacy effect in your zentangles by adding one of these wonders of nature to your work.

We all come to a crossroads sooner or later, forced to make a choice that will change our life.

This crossroads pattern isn’t life-changing, but it is bold and striking and can change your zentangle in elegant ways.

Peacock Pride by Sandra Kay Strait aka Molossus is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at http://www.flickr.com/photos/aceo/4223563798/.

I varied my peacock pattern for this zentangle inspired drawing.

8.25 x 5 moleskine sketch journal. Various artist and brush pens.

I’ve been drawing in various journals. The moleskine has a smooth finish and works wonderfully with both ink pens and brush pens.

Peacocks are such silly birds but they know they are beautfiul, strutting slowly so all can admire their radiance.

This peacock feather isn’t true to life, but it’s frilly and soft and perfect for that last embellishment in a zentangle.

2 Feathers
A beautiful ATC
by Carolion.

You can see more of her work at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/carolion4864/

Fractal Geometry–math and image combine to crystalize patterns in rare and elegant designs. Each image twisting itself into spirals of mathmatically perfect repetition, over and over.

You don’t need to be mathmatically perfect, or even understand the math, to use fractal designs in your zentangles. Just repeat an image a few times or until it fills the page.

Xpetal creates a lovely floral pattern that adds grace and beauty to your zentangle.

Big cats are the embodiment of grace and power. They glide through the jungle, their coats rippling over muscle.

The spot pattern of the leopard or jaguar makes a simple, but striking tangle that provides movement and power to a zentangle or Zentangle Inspired Art (ZIA).

The spots on both cats are similar.  Just add a dot or two in the center of a leopard’s spots, and they become jaguar.

Bird’s feathers are beautiful things. They flow, they’re frothy and full of hypnotic detail.

You could zentangle forever using nothing but bird feathers as inspiration.

The striped pattern can be used alone, without the feather shape, but the feathers are a nice embellishment for nooks and corners, or for poking out of centers and holes.  They look best in odd numbers-3 or 5 in a cluster.

Well let’s see if I’ve got this right.  I intend to post zentangle tangles that I have created (that is: the steps to create a pattern, not the pattern itself.  Hard to actually create those because they’re everywhere!).

I’ll also post alerts to let people know that tangles have been posted elsewhere, such as when the official zentangle site puts out a newsletter or Sandy Steen-Bartholomew post a new tangle at her website-Beez in the Belfrey.

Any new information I find out about zentangles or Zentangle Inspired Art (ZIA) will be shared here. 

All my zentangle patterns and zentangles can be found at my Flickr site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/aceo/