David W. - CloudySunny

CloudySunny.

I got the idea from cave paintings and from looking through a kaleidoscope thing. It has a kind of jewel in the end and makes it look like a zillion little images. Sort of a fly eye view but in rectangles.

First divide up your space into flowy rectangles. Think Flag. You can sort of make a line across the middle, that waves and follow that. You can sort of make one that's kind of halfway between the curve of the top and the curve of the bottom. Then keep doing that until you have flowy flag-like rectangles. My favorite is to start at the middle of the side and go to one of the corners in a long curve.

Trick: Look where you want your pen to go not where it is, your line will be smoother. It's not like you are tracing, so just keep your pen moving.

Next, Put in some weather. I like a sun with a horizon line. I saw that in a book about cave paintings in Australia. I put in dots for rays of the sun and some puffy clouds. The Australian Aboriginal people use a lot of dots. I like dots too.

Do lightning or rain or whatever weather you like. The idea is not to make them all exactly the same. I sort of think about making a movie of the sky. Sometimes I let the cloud go across the sun. Sometimes I do a cloud turning dark and getting a dimple and then with some lightening.

A tree with a poofy top can be nice. Show a cloud or the sun going by.

This is a real good example from my big colored Father's Day Tangle. The one I made for my Dad and he even framed it for his desk. This tangle can be very fun because each little space is a new Tangle space. Sometimes I try to make a picture and add a single line or dot with every little panel. It looks really cool when it is up against a bigger tangle.

The hard part about coloring a tangle is stopping. I sometimes do too much coloring. It is really hard to decide when is the best time to stop. If I go too far, I just say, aww Snap! It's not like I'm getting graded, or something.

Using too many colors can be too much too. I pick out a few colors and put the other markers away. If I really really want another color, I have to get out the case and pull out another marker. So I think about it more. So I get a chance to think if I really want to do this or not. I learned that trick at a Manga workshop at the library.

Right next to this one, I used blue over black dots to be water. I didn't want the cloud and the sun under water so I didn't color on those dots. If I didn't have water next to it then I would probably color the sun ray dots yellow or rain dots blue or even just color some of the squares all the way. So in this one I just outlined the top and right side of each little tiny panel.

Psst, I make a color copy. Then I try my next color on that copy first. My mom says that isn't in the spirit of Zentangle, but sometimes I really want it to be special. Sneaky!

Sometimes the hardest thing about drawing is when to stop.

David W