How to draw ODEE

Monday’s elegant Odee tangle comes from Missouri CZT Susan Mayes, and this is Susan’s first on the site.

Odee reminds me of the Chinese Lantern plant (Physalis alkekengi) translated to an abstract version. It’s perfect to start the week — a simple, pretty tangle to add to your repertoire. A bit festive too, right?

Susan writes, “I named it Odee because it is a bunch of O’s and a bunch of D’s.

I just found myself drawing this tangle one day and I discovered that it has tons of potential for tangleations. I have included one with my submission. I think I like it better than the basic tangle!

I live in Brookside Missouri but I will travel to any part of the Greater Kansas City area in Kansas or Missouri. I am a retired educator and am excited to add the Zentangle Method to my teaching repertoire.”

I agree with Susan, this ribbon or border-style tangle has tons of potential for variations with embellishments. For my Odee example I used Susan’s favored variation shown in Step 5 but as you’ll note in her tile below, the original is very attractive and can be made bolder with black orbs. Shading to either version adds some nice dimension.

Susan illustrates the step-by-step instructions for drawing Odee below and she features both versions of her tangle in the Zentangle® tile along with the Zentangle-originals Paradox and Msst.

Image copyright the artist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please feel free to refer to the step outs to recreate the tangles from this site in your Zentangles and ZIAs, or link back to any page. However the artists and TanglePatterns.com reserve all rights to these images and they should not be publicly pinned, reproduced or republished. Thank you for respecting these rights.

As you enjoy any of the tangles on the site, please do leave a comment of thanks and encouragement to show the artists you appreciate them for sharing their creativity to inspire yours.

Check out the tag susanm for more of Susan’s tangles on TanglePatterns.com.

What is a tangle?

A tangle has no pre-planning with pencil guidelines, grids or dots, no erased lines.
It’s just pure Zentangle magic . . . one pen stroke at a time.

The Zentangle Method™ was designed to remove the thinking, planning, decision-making and other obstacles that often hinder creativity or even prevent people from creating art at all.

For this reason Zentangles are intended to be as little like drawing pictures as possible. Thus patterns that are drawings of a recognizable naturalistic or actual object, figure, or scene, are not tangles. For example, floral patterns are not usually tangles.

“Keep it Non-representational. Zentangle artwork is intended to be non-representational. Zentangle’s elemental strokes are also non-representational. We don’t teach complex elements such as hearts, stars or flowers. Tangles are also non-representational.”

From The Book of Zentangle

“It’s also why (for the most part) we give our tangles names that have little relationship with what a tangle looks like,” writes co-founder Rick Roberts. “We usually choose names that don’t create a preconception of how a tangle should look.”

This is the heart of the Zentangle Method. By eliminating recognizable objects or scenes — and thus the associated “thinking” that goes with them — we become totally focused on each stroke of the abstract, structured pattern-making that grows organically into the usually-surprising end result. This process intentionally short-circuits the restless mind and facilitates the pleasurable calm we experience in our Zentangle practice.

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