Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Eccentric Circles

Laura Harms, Certified Zentangle Teacher, hosts a weekly challenge on her blog, I am the Diva, in which participants are asked to do a Zentangle in accordance with guidelines she lays down. One week we may be using a specific tangle, the next playing with color. This week's challenge (number seventy-four!) is to experiment with strings. She asked us to use "eccentric circles", which are circles drawn a little wonky and lopsided.


This reminded me of a lecture my drawing teacher gave his class last fall. He talked about circles and how difficult it is to draw a perfect circle freehand. It is possible, and Giotto famously possessed this skill.

But Zentangle isn't about perfection. It's the imperfections that make each one interesting. And even when something isn't quite right, the shading typically makes it look great, if not wonderful! In this tile, near the upper right corner, I attempted a two sided Paradox (trying to imitate the beautiful example Rick posted here on the official Zentangle blog). It didn't turn out as I had hoped, but it still looks kind of cool. When you're focused on the process, not the outcome, it doesn't matter if it came out how you wanted - I love that about Zentangle!

Notice the pebble-esque pattern? I usually do that with circles, but decided I should use a tangleation of oblong shapes instead. See the half-moon forms? If you connected those, they would definitely not be perfect circles. Even the ends of my fescu tangle are quite uncircular. Fun stuff! Thanks for the challenge, Laura!


11 comments:

  1. This is amazing! Great work Zachary!

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    1. Thank you so much! Like they say, anything is possible one stroke at a time...

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  2. i'm all about 'wonky and lopsided' - haha! circles are not my friends. your drawing is wonderful - footlites is one i like to use. i like that you used round patterns that flow and swirl into each other - pulling my eye through the drawing. nice!

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  3. Your zentangle is quite beautiful! I like the black parts of footlite very much!

    Annemarie Huijts

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  4. You are doing some amazing art, one stroke at a time. This is beautiful!

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  5. Great tile! Thanks for sharing your process..

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  6. I am amazed by my grandson! I thought, as you wrote, "I should use a tangleation of oblong shapes instead. See the half-moon forms? If you connected those, they would definitely not be perfect circles," that imperfect circles could be viewed as perfect circles, placed on non-plane surfaces from various angles or even a perfect circle on a tilted plane surface. What is in that mind of yours? I know that The Creator has placed something special there!

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  7. This is really cool! I especially like the interesting auras on the left around Fengle:)

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  8. This is gorgeous, Zach! And I love that you're from Texas (I'm from the Houston area, though transplanted to Minnesota, but my sons moved back down to the Ft. Worth area, blah, blah, blah, lol!) God has certainly given you a creative mind and I'm enjoying your zentangle skills! :)

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