Ghosts of Tangles Past

So . . .  this week the Diva Challenge asks us to revisit an old tile and redo it the way we would do it today. I first came in contact with Zentangle in May of 2014 when I was first on Pinterest and saw a couple of drawing that really interested me. They were something called "Zentangle" and I had never heard of it. Well, since I use Google to look up everything, I googled the term and started all kinds of beautiful abstract pieces that I thought I would like to try. So I went to zentangle.com  and started reading the blog there. They claimed that it was an easy thing to do, just one line at a time and you could create beautiful art. I thought that I would have no problem with this, since I had been interested in art my whole life and had even been an art major in college. Of course, that was AGES ago and I had mostly been doing crafts and life since then and I really didn't graduate from college, so I had forgotten most of what I had learned. I mostly drew animals and cartoony things before I got interested in rubber stamps and then scrapboking and when I saw zentangle, it seemed to call out to me.

I didn't know anything about what a string was and I was in too much of a hurry to take the time to do the steps for most tangles, so I would look at something and try to draw it. As a result, most of my early pieces were really crap-tastic and bear no real resemblance to actual tangling. But be that as it may, I started studying what I could find on Zentangle and little by little, I have been teaching myself to do some, what I consider, fairly decent tangle pieces. Check out the before and after and hopefully, there is progress there.

 One of my first tangles done in June of 2014. I really have no idea what the tangles were supposed to be, but my son told me that the big shell type thing was my attempt at Phycops. It took him about 2 weeks of trying to help me see which way the lines went, before I actually had the "aha" moment and figured out what I had been doing wrong. Thank you very much, TB3!

 Here is my redo on this one and I left out a lot of the tangles that were in the older one. I think that I finally learned how to draw Phycops. It's not the same at all because my early ones didn't have strings and no rhyme or reason to them. I feel better about the newer ones, because I feel like I have finally found my stride with them. Hope you like!

Another of my sad attempts at Phycops (also June of 2014), I was fascinated with that particular tangle and just couldn't make it work for me. My son can see things that I can't and he has the knack of helping me to learn the correct procedure. I keep trying to get him to try to tangle, but he really isn't interested. Again, no string and apparently no shading either, so the new try has definitely got to be better.

Again, here is my redo of the old tile and as you can see, I really DID learn Phycops. I used some of the other tangles in this one too, although I didn't use all the attempted tangles that were in the old one. I find that I like a bit of white space as I become more confident in my work. Hope you like! This one was just completed yesterday.









As always, thank you for stopping by and taking a look at my attempts. I am thoroughly enjoying this tangling journey and hope you are too. Thank you also for any comments and CC. It always helps. If you are interested in seeing what some of the other wonderful artists in this community, just hop on over the the Diva's blog (CLICK HERE) and take a look.

Have a great day!