UK tangler Sarah Fowler was exploring the new-ish Zentangle®-original Toodles over the recent Christmas period and developed this charming tangleation she’s named Rayz.
Sarah most recently shared her Harvey tangle with us. And her whimsical Strutz tangle is literally the structure that props up and ties together the tangles on CZT Michele Beauchamp‘s ingenious and beautiful ZIA cover of the 2018 edition of my TanglePatterns.com TANGLE GUIDE. Just looking at it makes me smile!
Simple, graceful and flowing, Sarah’s Rayz is a fine tangle to get our last week of January underway.
She writes,
I was tangling Toodles and kept thinking….”what does this tangle remind me of?”
Finally I figured it out. They reminded me of manta-rays or sting rays!
So I played around with the idea and came up Rayz.
This pattern is super simple and has a nice flow when drawing it with its curvy lines.
The ‘wings’ also lend themselves to plenty of filler options using other tangles.
I’ve also included a zendala tile as an example which includes Toodles, the inspiration for Rayz.
I think in this one Rayz look like mayfly rising up from a stream….
Lovely touch of highlights with a General’s® White Charcoal Pencil on this Renaissance Tan Zendala tile.
BTW: did you catch the captivating New York Times photo essay/article about General Pencil? Love, love, love the photos by Christopher Payne, and what a fascinating process!
“Photographs like these … preserve the secret origins of objects we tend to take for granted. They show us the pride and connection of the humans who make those objects, as well as a mode of manufacturing that is itself disappearing in favor of automation. Like a pencil, these photos trace motions that may be gone some day.”
(This article has upwards of 700 comments which are interesting reading themselves. Thanks to the recent Zentangle newsletter for the heads up on this story.)
Sarah illustrates the step-by-step instructions for drawing Rayz below and shows a couple of fill variations as well as featuring it in a lovely monotangle Renaissance Tan Zentangle tile.
Image copyright the artist and used with permission, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please feel free to refer to the steps images to recreate this tangle in your personal Zentangles and ZIAs, or to link back to this page. However the artist and TanglePatterns.com reserve all rights to these images and they must not be publicly pinned, reproduced or republished. They are for your personal reference only. Thank you for respecting these rights. For more information, click on the image for the article “Copyrights and your blog.”
As you enjoy any of the tangles on the site, please 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 sarahf for more of Sarah’s tangles on TanglePatterns.com.
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- Linda's List of Zentangle-Original Patterns — here is the complete list of original tangles (aka "official tangles") created and introduced by founders Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas, including those not published online. If you are new to the Zentangle Method I highly recommend learning a few of the published Zentangle classics first.
- "A Zentangle has no up or down and is not a picture of something, so you have no worries about whether you can draw a hand, or a duck. You always succeed in creating a Zentangle." Thus patterns that are drawings of a recognizable naturalistic or actual object, figure, or scene, are not tangles. A pattern is not always a tangle — here's what makes a tangle. TIP: tangles never start with pencil planning.
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January 29, 2018 | 
More like this: 
I had the same thought about ‘toodles’ so I will have fun with ‘rayz.’
Hello,
Very nicely done…I often wonder, at this stage with over 1000 tangles, whether “new” tangles today are actually “tanglations” of tangles previously introduced ..?
Further to my previous comment, what about a little “Divadance” under the Rays????
Toodles is tops and Rayz is a great tanglelation.
another great tangle Sarah! well done!
Love this tangle, Sarah. It is so easy and elegant. It really feels as if there should be some of these living somewhere in the world! Thank you for sharing.
Lovely and so graceful! Thank you, Linda and Sarah!
On a recent trip to Tahiti I had the opportunity to swim with Stingrays. These graceful, gentle creatures were captivating. I’ll relive this experience whenever I draw the beautiful tangleation of Toodles.