A pattern is not always a tangle

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, the planning, the 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.

“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.

Characteristics of a tangle

1. generally they are at most 2 or 3 simple strokes – “Usually the number of elemental strokes needed are 3 or less. Often, you only need one or two. By ‘elemental strokes’ we mean a dot, a straight(-ish) line, a curve (like a parenthesis), a reverse curve (like an ‘S’), and an orb or circle.”
2. they are simple enough to draw without using a pre-printed grid, or using pencil guidelines
3. they don’t use rulers, stencils, or any other mechanical aids
4. they are abstract, non-objective (non-representational)
5. they are non-directional, they have no up or down orientation – there’s no “right side up”
6. they are usually an overall pattern that grows organically, rather than a single motif
7. they are elegant, unique

Submit your pattern

If you have deconstructed the steps for a pattern that meets the requirements of a tangle and would like to share it on TanglePatterns, please visit the SUBMIT YOUR PATTERN tab at the top of the page for more information.

Related Links

• The Importance of Strings – as important to the Zentangle Method as the tangles themselves, Strings provide structure for our Zentangles

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