Zentangle® founders Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas just published instructions for drawing the existing tangle Chainging and added a tangleation of the pattern named Punzel.
Maria demonstrated her new tangle at CZT #7 and the class gave it the name Punzel as it reminded people of hair – thus Rapunzel, thus Punzel. (Though we all know that, like Zentangles, tangle patterns are abstract and non-objective and therefore this does not represent hair!)
Both of these patterns are so much fun to draw and shade. “While simple in its basic element, this tangle benefits from a certain level of focus and mindfulness.” After you’ve drawn Chainging, to transform it to Punzel you visualize the continuation of the “horns” out the other side of Chainging to create sort of an “S” shape and continue their lines on that side.
Maria illustrates the steps for drawing both official tangles Chainging and Punzel here, along with beautiful Zentangles and studies showing variations on these two.
As a side note, I’d like to welcome all the new tanglers joining this community every day. I thought it would be useful to point out some Zentangle basics and this is from the Beginning Zentangle booklet in the Official Kit (now available through TanglePatterns!).
From the "Beginning Zentangle" booklet in the Official Kit
I will say that it does take me way more than 15 minutes to draw a Zentangle, but I LOVE every minute of it. The point here is that it isn’t necessarily time-consuming but that it’s conveniently small and portable. And you should take whatever time you want, “one stroke at a time”®.
Check out the tag zentangle for all of the official Zentangle® patterns with online instructions.
Related Links:
- Linda’s List of Official Zentangle® Patterns – the complete list of official patterns (i.e., created by Zentangle founders Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas), including those not published online
- Zentangle terminology – definitions of terms related to Zentangle
Linda, I totally agree. I always spend way more than 15 minutes but love the time spent. In fact, I get grumpy if I don’t get regular time to tangle each week
Thanks for sharing all this great stuff with us. I am a big fan!
Thanks for saying it takes you more than 15 minutes. I was wondering if I was tangle-challenged.
Loved it. What a great lot of information you have added to help the student zengangler. Many thanks and appreciation for this. Regards Barbara
Wow, This is beautiful. Am only a beginner so I’m going to sit and practice this one. Looks hard but I’m sure it is easier then it looks…..I hope!
Thanks for the inspiration. Nola.
I’ve been playing with Chainging for over a week and for the life of me, it still just looks terrible. Most patterns I do a few times and I get the hang of it, not this one. I love this look. Any tips. Before I pull all my hair out, heeee. Syb
One way to practice it is to draw a pencil string on the page and use that as a guideline to align the pattern. After a few times you will get a feel for it and be good to go without the pencil “training wheels”. With some patterns it’s good practice to get your muscle-memory ingrained for the feel of the pattern. Hope that helps. Anyone else have suggestions on drawing Chainging?