Zentangle and the art of doodling...

So this week is a bit of a diversion from Smagula and his Creative Drawing course. I borrowed a book from the library art section that happened to catch my eye called "Zentangle Untangled" by Kass Hall and decided to have a go at some of the Zentangle exercises. Well, everyone knows how to doodle, but it seems someone has renamed and rebranded this idea into a type of philosophical movement called Zentangle, which is quite interesting ! So it's now used as a meditation technique, the idea being that using repetitive line work to create patterns helps you get into a meditative, fully relaxed state of mind. You can do courses in this, become a certified Zentangle teacher and buy your own Zentangle kit !  Well someone had a good business idea  - wish I'd thought of it !www.zentangle.com

Well... I wont get too carried away, but I really enjoyed having a go at these doodle patterns. The instructions in the book were very easy to follow and much easier to do then they look.
 

Was the experience meditative? Yeah I suppose so.. It was certainly relaxing and I spent the best part of a day last week doing the black and white versions, then another few hours another day colouring them in with watercolour paints.

So, you are supposed to do these zentangles on "tiles" of drawing paper. There is a certain optimum dimension they suggest, but I just cut out squares and didn't worry so much about their exact size. I used some old 185gsm watercolour paper I had, not as thick as the one I would use for my paintings and cut it into squares. I used a fine point black felt tip pen for the zentangles and then watercolour paint with a fine brush for the colour. The patterns I did were "basic zentangles" from the book "Zentangle Untangled" and you can combine these together and make up your own to create more complex patterns.