Tangle Brain

Hi, I'm David. I like to tangle, it's a fun way to draw. It's almost like a game with a cool drawing at the end. I never know how it's going to come out.

This is my first Blog post ever and it's a little bit of a big deal for me to show my tangles to everyone. I draw a lot. I usually show my drawings to my sister first. They make her laugh when I tell her stories about them. I show them to my mom and my dad too. Dad always wants to figure them out himself. Mom lets me use her markers and she shows me cool stuff that makes me want to draw more.

The hard thing about making up this blog post was thinking about what to write. When I talked about doing it I just had zillions of things to say. Then I got jammed up and couldn't figure out what to say.

To get unjammed, I decided to draw a Zentangle to get my brain in gear. Drawing does that for me, it sort of holds my brain from zooming. If I'm all jammed up, my brain calms down and then starts pumping the smart juice around again.

Zentangles are like the best kinds of games. There are just enough rules to keep you going. There are lots of examples of tangles to try. Then when ideas come, bend the rules and, SNAP! Tangles everywhere.

It's super easy to do. Divide up the space with "strings" which are just a way to carve up the space into little bites. A simple way to string is to make a big Z or a tic tac toe board. Then pick out a way to fill one of the spaces. At first, don't think about anything else, just find a cool tangle and fill that space. Twirl it around and upside down however you need to draw. Then do the next space, till it's full up. Shade it with a pencil if you want, color it if you want.

There doesn't have to have a story or a plan, but it's okay if you do. That's what makes it like a game. There's no plan, but it starts making strategies and plans of its own in your head so it's even more fun the next time. Just like playing any skill game, it just cooks in my head. I call it Tangle Brain. So that's the name of this tangle.

After a while, I started seeing tangle patterns everywhere. In Tangle Brain I used Btl Joos (SB) and Holey (KAY) from the Totally Tangled book to show my brain reaching out and getting tangle ideas from everywhere. I get them from

• video games,
• movies (I saw 2001 a Space Odyssey yesterday)
• documentaries (like the one on the Monterey Aquarium and the Moon Jellies and Kelp forest)
• Zentangle books
• books (like Make a World by Ed Emberly which I got when I was 7 for my birthday)
• Stuff I see, like airport runways
• and I ask my sister, "What do you want me to draw next?" She likes fish, chickens, cats, butterflies, and clouds.

David W
(I guess you want to know, I'm 11)