How to draw FLONTRAST

Greetings, my friends!

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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Share your tangle on TanglePatterns

Everyone is invited to share patterns on TanglePatterns.com, you do NOT need to be a CZT. In order for patterns to be considered for publication they must be submitted to me by email. In other words you have to let me know about them.

For a submission to qualify as a tangle it must be a genuine pattern (“a repeated decorative design”) and not “a thing to draw”.

From The Book of Zentangle:

“Keep it Non-representational. Zentangle artwork is intended to be non-representational. Zentangle’s elemental strokes are also non-representational.

We don’t teach complex elements such as hearts, stars or flowers. Tangles are also non-representational.”

Remember that tangles never start with pencil planning.

"A tangle has no pre-planning with pencil guidelines, grids or dots, no erased lines."

If you need a refresher on what makes a tangle, read the A PATTERN IS NOT ALWAYS A TANGLE page on the ZENTANGLES menu bar at the top of any page.

For details on how to submit your pattern for consideration visit the SUBMIT YOUR PATTERN page on the top menu bar of any page on the site. On that menu you will find these two pages:

1. 1. How to submit your pattern deconstruction to TanglePatterns, and
   2. Why hasn't my pattern been published?

The first page includes instructions on how to prepare and send your JPGs. (Please save me time and do not send PDFs). It also includes a link to this PDF submission form.

When your examples include additional tangles from the site, please list them in your email. (This saves me time and my memory some wear and tear.)

If your pattern is posted on your blog, attach your steps and tile JPGs to your email and be sure your email includes the direct URL so I can link to it.

And remember, to quote Zentangle's co-founders Rick and Maria: tangles should be "magical, simple and easy to create", non-objective patterns of repetitive strokes that are easy to teach and offer a high degree of success to tanglers of all ages.

"Keep the tangles as little like 'drawing something' as possible."

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