Tangles for Shelley

Anyone who has been following this blog for awhile, or has read Totally Tangled (is there anyone out there who hasn't?!) has "met" Shelley (see page 46). And as you can see from this photo, Shelley is one of the world's biggest Zentangle® addicts. She has filled countless journals and accordian sketchbooks with her designs.  When I first taught her how to tangle, she was at first resistant because she didn't "do anything artsy". But as soon as she saw her first finished tile, she was hooked! She's gone through her various color phases too - her blue period and green periods... where she adds in a bit of those colors. I think of Shelley as the poster-child of Zentangle. She's the perfect student too. I find that people who don't know they can do creative stuff, are much easier to teach and usually come up with the coolest variations. Also Shelley has a wicked sense of humor and she works in my store, Wingdoodle (in the background of the photo).

So now that we have established that Shelley is cool... I want to ask for your help! This spring she was diagnosed with lung cancer and has gone through all the chemo and radiation and just when things seemed to be looking a bit brighter, all systems crashed. Shelley's in the hospital again and things are looking grim. Throughout everything she kept tangling. She filled quite a few sketchbooks in the waiting room and the treatment rooms and she has been pushing me to teach the other patients and write a book for them to use in the waiting rooms! But now that she is so sick, she doesn't even want visitors and I don't know if she is still able to draw. She's needs Zentangle more than ever!

If you would like to create a Tangle for Shelley, you can mail it to the store at:

Tangles for Shelley
c/o Wingdoodle
PO Box 145
Warner, NH 03278

and we'll get it to her.

It would mean the world to her to know we are all rooting for her. Thanks folks.

Heavy Metal Tangling

Ten Second Studio has a video on using Zentangles on metal! Aside from the fact that they are pushing the other Design Original books (Zentangle Basics and Zentangle 2) and not mine (boo hoo), it's a pretty good instructional video. Well, also, I don't think they read Suzanne's books, just used a few tangle instructions for inspiration, because they don't know ANY of the proper terminology (tongue in cheek here) and, horrors, they call it doodling... ah, amateurs. But these ladies really know their metal. If you haven't tried tangling on metal, you should! It is very satisfying and gives a bit dimensions to the art. I actually tried it last year. I had been looking around the studio for something else to tangle on and thought - AH, metal! I didn't get very far in my piece because I had to run over to Wingdoodle (my store) and tell everyone there that we needed to carry metal supplies! (Which we now do). I will force...ahem... request that all employees watch this video and play with tangles and metal... because it is just so freaking cool!

Maybe I'll be inspired to finish my piece.  And speaking of new books, Suzanne McNeil's new Zentangle 3 book is out. I haven't seen it yet, but it's about Zentangle and rubber stamps. Should be fun!

Zentangle® Classes

As you can see, I do not have a ton of classes listed for this summer. Students have been contacting me to set up classes on days that suit them and that works really well for me too. So, I have a few listed here and I encourage anyone reading this who has not taken a Zentangle class with a REAL Certified Zentangle Teacher (CZT) to hunt one down and take their class! (Just click on the Instructors link at www.zentangle.com). Accept no imitations! (hee hee)

Meanwhile, back in the batcave...

Yes, it does seem like I have been holed up in a cave. There's some stuff going on in my personal life that is causing chaos and mayhem, but possibly, in a good way. When things stop quaking I'll write more about that. For now, please accept my apologies for "disappearing". Here are a bunch of things to help catch up:

In a recent post, I introduced Carole Ohl and mentioned she was working on a piano mural. Well, take a look at her blog to see how the creation is progressing - "Music to My Eyes" Piano Mural. Oh-mi-gosh. Is it selfish - and un-Zentangle-y - of me to want to own something of hers?

A very nice review of AlphaTangle and also one of Totally Tangled, by Linda Farmer at tanglepatterns.com

If any of you folks are Amazon users, could you please, please, please, leave some ratings and reviews on the AlphaTangle page? Totally Tangled has 17 reviews - pretty cool! And they are really nice things to read when I am feeling down in the dumps!

Speaking of which! (Books, not dumps!) I am planning the sequel to Totally Tangled. Yes - shocking isn't it? I thought I poured every single thing I knew into that book and what more could I possibly write about... well, I've thought of a few things, but I would really like to know what you all would like to see in the next book? More tangles, more in-depth tips, projects.... Post your thoughts in the comments here.

Also, I would like to know... who are the superstars of the Zentangle® world? Traditional or cutting edge (we need to come up with a term to describe the Zentangle rebels... Zebels...Rebanglers... hmmm)? I have stumbled across some insanely amazing work being shown on Flickr and other blogs. But I'd like to know who have you discovered? (Post a link in the comments) And yes, if YOU are amazing - let us know!!!

Vote for Me Me ME!

I finished my entries for the Munny Munth contest and after trying to upload photos using FOUR different browsers - I succeeded! And just in time - the deadline is tomorrow. Phew! So now I need all of you folks to go and vote for my Munnys!! And don't look around because there are a ton of other amazing creations, but mine is covered with tangles so it's the best! Hee hee. Just kidding. You can vote for someone else's creature and I promise I won't hold it against you. Really. Go vote... right now.... I'm waiting!

OK, you're back. The picture crops off parts so I'll post the full pics here. It's a Superhero Family: Meg is mega at 20" or so, Minnie is mini at 7" and BooBoo is mini-mini. They all have "Squid" on their heads.

I love Meg's butt-crack and tattoo. Minnie wanted a tattoo, but she's too young, so she got a cape instead. Accessorize, baby!

"My life is a dark, darkroom" with Clowns!

I have been cleaning up and re-organizing my studio these past few weeks. It's the only way to get at all those dust bunnies, but it also gives me the opportunity to rediscover forgotten (lost?) projects, and to remove the stuff that is no longer useful. While shuffling junk around, I unearthed a painting I did in art school (20 years ago!) It is actually my most-favorit-est oil painting I have ever done. I have been painting since I was a little kid. My grandmother was an artist and she'd make us paint still lifes of flowers. I loved my grandmother, and I love making art, but I hate oil painting and I hate still lifes! The irony of this painting that I "found" is that it is actually done on the BACK of a stretched canvas with, guess what? - a still life on the front. It's a still life of shapes with part of a still life/model on top of that. We tended to re-use canvases a lot. Not just because they were expensive, but because we had to stretch them ourselves and we were lazy! So, this clown face is on the back of a recycled canvas. I must not have expected to like it or want to keep it. And I'm pretty sure it wasn't for an assignment - those were done on the fronts.

What I am posting here is a photograph of a painting I did of a black and white photo that I took of a girl whose face I painted! Got it?

Click the image to see it larger

 In what seems like another life... I had a business, as a teenager, painting faces at local arts and crafts festivals. I also was studying Black and White photography and the Zone System with David Marr. We'd spend days making test strips to get the perfect whites and blacks and grays. I have some very "pretty" photos from those days. Needless to say, I rebelled. I set up my own darkroom at home and stopped timing anything! I would just "wing it". And that's the stuff that got into gallery shows, stolen from gallery shows(!) and even sold. I even did a series of photos exposed from microscope slides of gallbladders. They looked like faces. I know, can you believe it? And I sold one to Kodak! That's another story...

This was before Photoshop. I loved the magic of watching the images appear from a blank piece of paper. I felt like a wizard... powerful. But, I hated sitting in the dark for days on end. And complete darkness (to develop the film) did yucky things with my depression-troll. When I dropped out of SVA, I gave up photography.

Meanwhile, back in my half-clean studio...
I decided to put the clown picture up near my computer, but the raw, ragged canvas edges looked really bad. Distracting. So I trimmed them the best I could and painted them black! What a difference, eh?

Now I stare at her face while I am thinking and I look into her eyes. I am amazed at how much depth there is there. I love the details. What floors me is that I painted this way in my teens. I loved to take photos so I could paint and draw from them. And yet, I studied photography, then illustration in art school... and it took me another 15 years to UN-LEARN all the crap from school... so I could start painting this way again!

I finally did something with the original photograph - I made some postcards. So if you love this image as much as I do, you can get some cards for yourself at my Etsy shop. I hope to post some more in the near future too. I'd love to know what you think!

PS Title comes from the movie "Beetlejuice"

Guest Tangler - Carole Ohl

I've been exchanging emails with Carole Ohl who is working on a Zentangle for a mural above a piano  (we need to see pictures when it's done!) My fee for all my free advice was that she send me some pictures to post here on the blog. Don't you LOVE it when someone describes themselves in a way that makes it seem like they are a newbie... and then WHAM! ... you see their art and are blown away!

Here's what Carole says about these two pieces:

"Attached is a Zentangle-inspired piece i did. it is actually 22x30". I had so much fun doing this, and it was my first attempt at adding color. (Editor's Note: uh-wha!!?) I used watercolor and Inktense pencils. Because I was intimidated by the idea of color. I decided to approach the color the same way I approach a Zentangle: one step at a time, and it was great fun that way. This one is now framed and in a gallery.

I've also attached a group Zentangle (black and white) that is also 22x30". The string was drawn by me, and shaded by me, but the tangles were made over a period of a couple of months by about six different people. It was donated to a local non-profit."

Carole is a new CZT, too - take a look at her blog, Open Seed Arts for some really lovely new Tangles! I particularly love "Inapod".


As a an aside, Carole mentions Inktense pencils, which are made by Derwent. I've bought gazillions from Dick Blick, and here's a link to the pencils on Amazon, too. These are watercolor pencils and yet, they are something MORE! As the name implies, the colors get really rich and intense when water is applied to them. But the magic is that they are "ink". So when completely dry - the colors are permanent. That means, You can wash yellow over a dried blue... and they don't blend! Since the yellow is transparent, you will have green where the colors overlap, but the yellow will not pick up the blue and smear it. This can be really useful.   It can also be frustrating, if you don't work quickly - you can't re-activate the dried colors to do additional blending. If you have never tried them... DO! The colors are so freaking gorgeous. BUT - my advice (if you are OC like me!) is to make a swatch chart of each of your pencils (dry to wet), cut out the swatches and tape to the tops of your pencils. The colored end of the pencil is not very accurate. I just made a very quick scan of a few of my pencils so you can see how different the colors are (and how intense!)