How to draw MI

Three weeks from today is Valentine’s Day so I thought I’d get you started early with Taiwan CZT Mina Hsiao’s sweet tangle named Mi.

Mi is Mina’s 14th tangle on the site and it’s kind of a reverse version of Helen Williams’ Heartfully tangle.

In Heartfully the hearts face inwards, where Mi‘s hearts face outwards and also overlap.

Hearts are always popular and so we bend the Zentangle® rules a little with these tangles, because they can’t really be called “non-representational”. By tag count we now have 38 heart-based tangles on the site.

Mina writes that the Zentangle-original Fengle was her inspiration for this tangle and “When I finished it looked like a heart.”

I think Mi is most interesting when you vary the “full heart” of Mina’s Step 3 by choosing different corners of each grid square so the overlapping heart (the one on top) falls in alternating places around the grid. And the hearts that end up “behind” also change position around the tangle.

Mina illustrates the step-by-step instructions for drawing Mi below and she includes several suggestions for embellishing Mi. In her first tile she shows Mi simply with auras and some shading.

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Here Mina explores several Mi embellishments:

Here she demonstrates how to create an open, woven variation of Mi:

In this tile Mina shows how the open variation could appear in a grid:

And because Mina likes tangles to have their freedom, here she demonstrates Mi in a Zentangle tile without a grid:

And finally, in this Zentangle tile Mina shows a variation (See #4 in Embellishments) of Mi playing nicely with the Zentangle-originals Mooka and some free-form Flux pods.

There you have it. Enjoy your heart-y explorations as you prepare your cards and things for Valentine’s Day. (If you come up with another heart tangle, don’t wait too long to send it in!)

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 minah for more of Mina’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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