We have another super easy tangle to explore this fine Monday. Easy and bold.
Flontrast is from Dutch tangler Francijn Brouwer, a newcomer to Zentangle®, and it’s her first on the site.
She writes,
“My name is Francijn, I live in the Netherlands.
A few months ago my eye fell on a Zentangle book at the library, and since then I can’t stop drawing patterns 🙂
I named my tangle ‘Flontrast’, after ‘flower’ and ‘contrast’.”
Flontrast is an example of the Japanese principle of notan.
“As a guiding principle of Eastern art and design, Notan (a Japanese word meaning dark-light) focuses on the interaction between positive and negative space, a relationship embodied in the ancient symbolism of the Yang and the Yin.
In composition, it recognizes the separate but equally important identity of both a shape and its background.”
There are quite a few tangles on the site which use this principle including several Zentangle-originals, Strircles immediately pops to mind. I’ve added notan as a new tag so they can be located together but it might take me a while to update the tangles using this principle. Until I finish that job you can find some of them using the op art tag.
Francijn’s Flontrast has two very different looks depending on where you place the contrasting black portions, as she demonstrates in her variation below.
Francijn illustrates the step-by-step instructions for drawing Flontrast below where she features it in a minimalist monotangle along with the variation.

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, altered, reproduced or republished. They are for your personal offline 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. Your comment helps motivate them to continue to share!
Check out the tag francijnb for more of Francijn’s tangles on TanglePatterns.com.
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Have you created a tangle you'd like to share with the community? I'd love to see it.
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When you're ready, simply send your pattern by email following the instructions on the submission page.
I look forward to seeing what you've created.
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Ik hou van deze nieuwe tangle, erg mooie contrasten!!!
I love this new tangle, very nice contrasts!!!
This is such a fun tangle…The contrast reminds me of M.C. Escher’s art..”Sky and Water”.You can view it here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_and_Water_I
Thank you Francijn for sharing your lovely pattern with us!. I am anxious to try it out!
Thank you! I love this tangle! I love the idea of notan in it and I’m anxious to try it in a piece.