Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Round and Round We Go

" I don't believe in failure. It is not failure if you enjoyed the process."    Oprah Winfrey

I love zendalas!  I've always known that (but sometimes seem to forget)...there's something about the symmetry in creating a round piece of Zentangle art work that really appeals to me. This past week I worked on several zendalas after receiving the mandala stencils I ordered from fellow CZT Genevieve Crabe at Amaryllis Creations. These stencils make the process of designing your own zendalas so easy.

I've done the pre-strung zendala tiles from zentangle.com, but it's so much more gratifying for me to create my own designs. With these stencils you just pencil in the dots and use them as a guide to make symmetrical lines, curves and shapes ... and voila! You have your own unique zendala! Using one stencil (you get 3 in the set), you can design an infinite number of totally different zendalas. No measuring, no need for a compass or protractor. No folding paper and punching holes as in a method I had devised.

Here's the first one I designed, on watercolor paper. This is unshaded because I knew I was going to add color. 


Then I added the color and shading using  Tombow dual brush pens.


I designed my next zendala on a tile that I colored with watercolors before tangling. That whole area tangled in Paradox started out as several different sections, but as I tangled I decided it would look cool to continue the paradox throughout, and I'm glad I did.



The last one I completed was larger, drawn on a 6 inch circle (the first two were each 4 1/2 inch circles). No color added this time.



I love the way all of these zendalas turned out. And I loved the process - after all, isn't that what Zentangle is all about? 


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