My First Zentangles

This year at Art and Soul I took a class on beginning Zentangle with Suzanne McNeill. Along with being a CZT (Certified Zentangle Teacher) she is the owner of Design Originals a craft book publishing company. Take a look at her apron and you can get an idea of her ability to make Zentangles.

We stared with a small one (the one on the upper left and made five patterns. After that we did a bit of shading (I need to work on mine in the future). Then we tried white gel pen on black paper, luckily no shading is necessary).

After lunch, we all chose a stencil and used both a .01 and a .05 Micron Pen and learned a few more patterns. I improvised in the top part of my pumpkin stencil with what I filled in on the stem and leaf. I also did a bit of highlighting with the white pen.

Our last exercise was to decorate the outer edge of the very small stamped image in the center. I got a bit out of control and was accused of being an over achiever.

My two tips for doing Zentangles are 1) use your reading glasses if you have them. By the end of the day my eyes were very tired. 2) work in an area with good lighting. The convention center lighting was also a contributing factor to my tired eyes.

All in all a very enjoyable class, Suzanne's personality is suited to teaching this type of class. We left with a great journal to do more tangles in. We also got two Micron pens, a white gel pen and a bunch of handouts from Suzanne to use in future exercises.

WARNING: Zentangles can be addictive. Look for more by me in the future. Don't say you never got got the word.

Until my next post,

Diane