Free One Zentangle a Day by Beckah Krahula

tangle is Striping, which is a great pattern that can be used to add drama, grab the viewer’s attention, or transition between patterns that are opposite on the value scale. You can easily change the tonal value of this pattern by changing the size of the white stripe, black stripe, the ratio, or both. The other pattern is an official Tangleation of Pepper. I learned this tangle from Maria Thomas during my Zentangle certification class.

    Practice these patterns in your sketchbook until they feel familiar. Create a Zentangle tile using today’s patterns and any pattern or Tangleations of previously learned patterns.
    There are many similar parts repeating on each of the planes on this tile. The shapes in Mocha and the Pepper Tangleation mimic each other, connecting the front of the composition to the back. Striping can be seen through Mocha and leads you to the back of the tile. By coloring in the negative area between the Pepper Tangleation, the background was connected to the middle ground.

Combining Ink and Watercolor
    Today’s ZIA is going to combine ink and watercolor, which make an elegant combination. One of my favorite styles of this combination is botanical drawing. Create a tangled tile in the normal fashion from string to shading using organic patterns and the Pigma pen. I have found if you have to go back into a piece with the pen after painting, the Pigma pens work better on top of watercolor and most paints. When you are done, choose a color palette from the warm or cool color wheel and add color to the tile. Darken the color in the shadow areas and lighten or leave white areas for highlights in the high-key areas.
    I used the warm color wheel to choose the colors for this tile. Next I decided on a complementary color palette of blue-green and red-orange. I toned down each color with a small amount of its complementary color to create earthy colors for this piece. I chose to preserve most of the white background and to create a light and airy piece. To balance the negative and positive spaces of the piece, I then used layers of light washes of the toned-down colors to paint some of the tangles. Let the washes dry between coats.
    On this piece, I used the same color palette but chose the colors from the cool color wheel, adding a small amount of the complementary color to the color I wanted to darken created the darker colors. This was also painted using glazes that were mixed much darker than those for the previous tile.

DAY 25 INK AND GOUACHE
    MATERIALS
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Micron 01 pen
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Pigma Sensei 03 pen
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2B pencil
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sketchbook
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white tile
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tile from watercolor paper
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watercolors
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gouache
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small round paintbrush
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small bucket of water
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low-tack tape

Daily Tangles
    Try these patterns. Angie chose to work with a pattern she created called Taghpodz and the Tanglenhancer Perfs.
    Perfs are the last of the official Zentangle Tanglenhancers. The official definition is “adding pearl-like dots that surround your tangle. This was a popular technique used on manuscripts during the medieval times. Perfs were used often around large letters to add drama and focus.” When used to surround a tangle, they can have the same effect. When coloring in perfs to create colored orbs, do not forget to leave a white highlight if the orb is large enough. They combine well with auras and rounding, which are also Tanglenhancers. Perfs are very effective if you take your time and focus on deliberate pen strokes. If you are hurried and messy they can have quite the opposite effect. Taghpodz has a middle tonal range, so it works well for shifting between heavy and lighter tonal patterns. The vertical lines can change to diagonal, horizontal, or crosshatched.

    Create today’s Zentangle tile using perfs on the patterns of your choice. Take your time to draw the perfs. Keep their size and shape uniform. Try them in both black and white and with a Tangleation of your own.
    The large, flower-shaped