Quandary is the latest official tangle published by Zentangle® founders Maria Thomas and Rick Roberts.
Introduced at the tenth CZT® training class last September, this one has been under wraps for a while and I’ve been waiting for its release “to the wild”. Today’s the day!
It’s based on the “Flower of Life” and in a way it’s sort of related to CZT Molly Hollibaugh’s Fife tangle – but Quandary is a “pulled apart” version of the Flower of Life.
I have to confess I found Quandary particularly challenging though Maria describes it simply as a “tangle of 6 rice shapes … When trying this new tangle, take care to make each basic shape (that rice shape) with care and attention. If you continually draw them in the shape of the triangle … it will create a ‘flower of life’ like image of (more often than not,) 6 petals.”
As much care and attention and deliberation as I give it, I still find it difficult to judge proportions well and I struggle getting the groups of rice shapes to come out to my satisfaction – aka perfect. Quandary challenges me the way Tripoli does.
In the end — in a quandary about how to draw Quandary — I came up with my own method for drawing it. I spaced the vertical rice shapes in offset columns as you see in solid black in my example. Then adding the remaining rice shapes wasn’t as difficult, the trick is visually keeping a very small O-shaped space in the center of each 6-petal “flower”.
Maria illustrates the step-by-step instructions for drawing Quandary her way, here. And don’t get me wrong, I’m going to persist in practicing it Maria’s way. One of these days my brain will “click” and I’ll get the organic version of both Quandary and Tripoli to my satisfaction.
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. If you are new to Zentangle, I highly recommend learning the published official tangles first.
I too had trouble with Quandry. Trying from their newsletter, I got the first and second boxes but after that I got confused. I even got colored pencils, one for each box. It was better but I am sure I will do better using your method. Who says we have to all follow the same way if we get the result?
I am now struggling with Opus with an Aura. So far it is looking pitiful.