A Beginner’s Guide to Zentangle Design

Zentangle, the art of creating images using structured patterns, is one of our newest OLLI offerings. Lynn Fisher teaches two levels of this course: one for beginners and another more advanced. Learn more about how she was introduced to this art form and check out a bonus tutorial.

After attending a Zentangle workshop with a friend, Fisher enjoyed it so much that she decided to take her hobby further. She received teacher certification for Zentangle in Providence, Rhode Island, home of the Zentangle headquarters. She has been teaching for about four years now and is also one of only 16 certified Zentangle teachers in the state of Georgia.

“Everybody can do it,” she said. “It allows you to be artistic, it’s relaxing, and it’s an easy way to pass time.”

Innovators Maria Thomas and Rick Roberts first introduced Zentangle methods in 2003 as the art of making repetitive patterns to design a drawing that is non-representational. Learn more about them at Zentangle.com.

Meant to be drawn in less than 15 minutes, there are no mistakes to be made in Zentangle drawing. Each one is traditionally drawn on 3.5-inch square paper tiles, according to TanglePatterns. Each individual pattern is referred to as a tangle, and there are currently 102 original and official tangles. There is a separation from recognizable objects and scenes, and the “thinking” that is associated with them. Rick said, “We usually choose names that don’t create a preconception of how a tangle should look.”

In this tutorial, instructor Lynn Fisher, demonstrates five Zentangle patterns.

Steps:

1. Draw dot in each corner.
2. Create a string, a light placement
3. guideline, connecting the dots.Begin drawing repetitive patterns.
4. Although true zentangle is done in black and white, color is an option.

Shown:

1. Flux
2. Cubine
3. Shattuck
4. Printemps
5. Huggins

“The Zentangle Method course is the perfect combination of creativity and relaxation,” Lynn said.