How to draw MINLINE

On Mondays I like to start out our week with an interesting tangle that’s also very easy to draw so anyone new to the site and to Zentangle® can manage it easily. And they’re all fun for the rest of us too! Later in the week we can get a little more challenging.

Minline from Taiwan’s Damy Teng is a perfect example of a very easy, and quite unusual tangle. Today Damy and her daughter HsinYa Hsu are in Providence for the CZT17 training seminar along with one-hundred-or-so other Zentangle enthusiasts.

Damy has shared several cool tangles with us and you can locate them with the tag damyt in the left sidebar under TANGLES BY ARTIST.

Damy writes that Minline was inspired by these pretty tatting earrings.

Continuous line tangles are so much fun, and Minline is one of these. You can find more on the site by clicking on the tag continuous line in the TANGLES BY TYPE section in the left sidebar.

In this tangle the strokes go back and forth creating an M-shape, alternating a large arc with a small arc. That’s how Damy came up with her tangle name, “M in line” = Minline. Very creative, both the tangle and the name.

I played with several versions of Minline and debated which one I wanted to use for my main example. In the end I went with my own interpretation, but I was tempted with this one that’s pretty much totally derived from Damy’s own Zentangle below where she describes it as looking like pine cones.

I found it does help to have a shape, like a section, to place the tangle into but you can also use it as a free-form shape anywhere on your tile. It’s fun. It’s easy. And it fills up a section very quickly with a very pretty tangle. Shading, of course, adds dimension and depth to the tangle.

Damy illustrates the step-by-step instructions for drawing Minline below. Her Zentangle incorporates the Zentangle-original tangles Hollibaugh and a Strircles influence.

Image copyright the artist and used with permission, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. You may use this image for your personal non-commercial reference only. Republishing or redistributing pattern deconstructions in any form is prohibited under law without express permission of the copyright owner. For more information, click on the image for a discussion entitled “Artists for Respect” by several prominent artists.

Here’s Damy’s Zentangle featuring Minline, “When I finished this pattern, found it so much like pine cones.” [Christmas cards, anyone??]

Check out the tag damyt for more of Damy’s tangles on TanglePatterns.com.

Related Links

1. Looking for tangles by Artist or Type? For details visit the ABOUT > HOW TO FIND TANGLES BY ARTIST OR TYPE page on the top menu bar of any page on the site.
2. What is a Zentangle? — if you are new to the Zentangle Method, start here for the fundamentals.
3. Zentangle terminology — a glossary of terms used in this art form.
4. How to use the site — an excellent free video tutorial showing how to use the site as well as pointing out lots of useful features you might have missed.
5. 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.
6. "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.
   • Un motif n’est pas toujours un tangle — Qu’est-ce qu’un tangle ?
   • Un diseño no es siempre un tangle — ¿Qué es un tangle?
7. How to submit your pattern deconstruction to TanglePatterns
8. For lots of great FREE tutorials on TanglePatterns, click on the TUTORIALS link in the pink alphabetic menu bar below the tangle images at the top of any page.
9. Strings! Have we got STRINGS! Click on the STRINGS link in the pink alphabetic menu bar below the tangle images at the top of any page for 250 different (free) Zentangle-starters. More than enough for any lifetime!
10. Never miss a tangle! FREE eMAIL NEWSLETTER - visit the SUBSCRIBE page on the top menu bar of any page on the site and sign up to get notices delivered free to your inbox.

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