Marziottangle

I have been struggling with shading. At the beginning of my tangle adventure, I simply skipped shading. Then I started doing it every now and then, when I felt inspired. Now I am following the Zentangle Primer 1 and I feel like I must do it. And then I reached chapter 4. Shading. My hope was that all secrets about shading would have been unveiled, but I felt like they weren't. Since I did not want to go to Chapter 5 without being a bit better at shading, and still had two tiles to fill a page of 6, I was checking the web. And Barbara Langston came up, with this video I indeed recommend it if you want to learn something about different ways of shading. If you are a bit in a rush, check this post or the following video with 7 tips about shading by Tracy Ann Wilkinson. More than tips these are questions we need to answer to understand what we want. I also did a tile inspired by the following video by Miura Takao. Not usual shading, but cross hatching is also an option! In the end I di...

So, I have finished some days ago the Zentangle Primer Volume 1. You can find some posts about the first half of the book. Chapter 1 & 2: The First Tiles Chapter 3: Strings and Verdigogh Chapter 4 : Shading Here I want to talk about the rest of the book. In Chapter 5 they talk about embracing mistakes, and maybe take advantage of them. A wrong stroke could bring to a new pattern, or can be recovered with a block over it. I have some errors here and there that I attempted to recover in a bad way, but it does not occur often fortunately. In Chapter 6 they introduce 14 tangles and some concepts: sparkle and auras, linking, layering and tangleations.  Sparkle and auras are basic enhancements. In sparkle you draw a line, lift the pen while moving it and then land on paper a bit further away, leaving a gap. Aura is contouring something. Sometimes the aura touches the pattern, more often it does not. If you have tangled for more than one week you should already know what an aura i...

While I can keep idle for ages for other sections of this blog, the coloring one must be done straight away, since I want to keep track of different stages and have to upload the pics more or less straight away. Here I still got some inspiration from  #tinpokeleaf  tiles. Pokeleaf, Tipple. 8 March 2026 Also adding the version taken with daylight, since the coloring is quite different and more similar to the real one! I did not want to color or shade the rest of the tile. Somehow I like it like this. Pokeroot, Flux, Jolly, Corfo. 8 March 2026 I worked on it at my tangle meeting, I need to work on it further with better lighting, the orange stain is pretty subtle and the shading and highlight done so far do not help much. Paradox. 8 March 2026 I started following a tutorial by Christina Carroll, but I had to wait for the tile to dry out. I used india ink instead of watercolors. And here the background! Done with black ink. Added some shadow, with charcoal pencils. Brown and dark...

And after many tea bag envelopes, it's on hold for one day now. I wanted to stay in par with my home sketchbook and add a post when I reached around 20 patterns here. So I can better talk about the drawings if they are recent. Nothing has shading, I did not feel like shading, maybe I will add some colors, if I do I will add another post with the reworked pages. I found the flower pattern probably while surfing in Musterquelle. I first drew it in a tea bag envelope, but it staid with me and I had to draw it in my sketchbook. All rest was drawn with the idea to fit there. I also needed a couple of days probably to find what to draw on the lower part to keep the balance. Ganloo, Crescent Moon, Podz, Tipple. End September 2025 Here I started with a pattern of mine that came out after thinking about chain patterns for an acquaintance that needed it for a caviardage piece. Caviardage is an Italian interpretation of blackout poetry. I like the idea of blackout poetry, I also already order...

It took four weeks, but I managed to organise another meeting here in Berlin to tangle with other people! Numbers looked good on paper, the attendancy seemed more than double than the previous event by checking the attending and interested members. But we know, attendants in Facebook don't always mean attendants in real life. The Facebook group where I organise the meetings is Zentangle Café Berlin , in case you want to join. Cold arrived in Northern Germany, and people are getting sick. Almost everybody was sick on Sunday. I arrived at the café where we had the meeting, and in my room many elder people arrived for a birthday party. It was a bit messy but it was fun! But fortunately one girl joined! We moved to another room, a bit more quiet, chatted a bit and started tangling. I found it pretty interesting to see Zentangle with the eyes of somebody else. Also how drawing some patterns the other way round could bring to similar results, and how something that for me is super obviou...

I have been following several YouTube channels to find inspiration and to learn how to draw patterns, even if lately I rely strongly on the steps from tangle patterns. Lately I found another one, that is quite interesting, TanglesandToons . The first thing I checked was the ocean project . Here you can find the first video. I liked the approach that was not pure zentangle and the easy approach to shading. I did not make all elements together yet in the same drawing, so far I simply did a page with all tangles and one with the toons part. I will probably update the post later when I do the drawing. Seashimmer, Phicops, Oysteroid, Zenemone, Coral Seeds, Rayz, Indy-Rella, Jelly Legs, Quabog. 13 July 2025 I also copied a couple of elements that David didn't explain in the ocean project, but that can be seen there. 13-16 July 2025 Since I loved the Ocean Project, I checked out some more videos. There is one where he draws Arukas, in a way that inspired me.  I always found this pattern i...