A Zentangled Journey

Checking out the social streams of my amazing classmates in Brené Brown’s The Gifts of Imperfection 6-week e-course, I found some impressive drawings by @artbreaking on Instagram.

A little later that same day, lingering at Michael’s a nudge too long, Kass Hall’s book Zentangle Untangled leaped out at me from the rack. It was similar to @artbreaking’s work in spirit. Three oscillations later I decide. I buy it. I read it all in one sitting that night. The next day I try it out.  My first zentangle:

Cabin Floor is the name of this receding pattern. Next, I tried combining a zentangle with a stamp using the pattern Five-Oh created by none other than Kass Hall:

Then, the App Whisperer, Joanne Carter published an interview of Davide Capponi, I discovered through his work a vector drawing app called DecoSketch. (He uses the app to great effect. His blog, Rubicorno, is fantastic.) So I tried it out:

DecoSketch comes with a number of “brushes” that draw pre-set patterns similar to the idea of pre-set patterns in Zentangles. In the above image, I followed the feeling of play. DecoSketch draws on a clean canvas or on an imported photo or image. Naturally, my next step was to try the app on an image.

I edited this image first in Snapseed, then in PhotoCopier before working on it in DecoSketch. I experimented with many patterns to find a pattern, placement, size, and directionality that I hope actually adds meaning to the photograph. Here’s the image before I added the patterns.

This tangled free-form journey pattern that started with Brené Brown’s Gifts of Imperfection’s e-course and ends, temporarily, at DecoSketch is simply amazing to me.  Following the wish to learn, grow, and “play” set the lines of the pattern that I moved along.

What sets your pattern?

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