Zentangles - November and December

Here are the last two months of my 2013 Zentangle project.  As you can see, there is little if no additional content for these two months.  Things just got a little too busy.

I did learn some things as I progressed through this endeavor. 

At the start I had filled the string days (Saturdays) with 3 strings and attempted to tangle them.

I tried three different combinations and also tried three of the same.

Then I decided to cut it back to one string and tangle that.  In the empty space I added some words and their definitions.  They didn't relate to the tangles, they were just words that I had collected.  

I began to feel that the strings were too small to work with and that the pen tip that I was using was also too big.  Eventually I stopped filling in the strings altogether.  

I really like the way this one turned out though it seems more like a drawing than a tangle so I guess you might call it a ZIA - Zentangle Inspired Art

Another thing that I realized while doing this project, and rather early on, was that I was able to do follow the steps to the tangles but not having the steps visible in this book meant that I would have to look up the tangles steps in order to duplicate it again.  

Below you see the only addition of color aside for the couple of days which I mistakenly used a sepia pen instead of a black one.

I used a red Sharpie and I'm glad I didn't color any more because you'll see that it did bleed through a little.  

I have to credit all my sources of the tangles.  I know it's a little blurry in the photos, but the creators of the tangles are listed along with the tangle name in each block.  Where there is no name it is either an official tangle or it was one of mine that I didn't name (yet).  How did I find these tangles?  There are several websites that I frequent:

TanglePatterns.com  - Linda Farmer, CZT - several posts a week including Saturday Strings and Refreshers and an alphabetical index of tangles

Life Imitates Doodles - Sandra Strait - with links to tangles and tutorials and much more original art

Enthusiastic Artist - Margaret Bremner - tangles and original art

Tangle Harmony - Genevieve Crabe - weekly Zentangle round-ups

Blog Zentangle - Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas - the originators of Zentangle

My thanks to them all for their willingness to share their time and creativity with the on-line community.

I mentioned earlier that there were no step-outs in my 2013 journal, well I have found a new journal for 2014 that may help to remedy that. Stay tuned for what's coming in January.