How to draw NANALEE

Happy Monday and welcome to another lovely new week!

This coming weekend is Canadian Thanksgiving which, on the second Monday in October, always coincides with the Columbus Day holiday here in the US. Thus, much of North America is coming up on a nice long weekend. And I’m busy thinking about my first Thanksgiving menu — it’s such a treat celebrating two Thanksgivings!

But let’s get back to today and our easy, get-the-week-going tangle, Nanalee.

CZT Mary Fein shares Nanalee with us today and it’s her first tangle on the site.

Mary introduces herself and explains her inspiration for deconstructing Nanalee,

I am an artist who paints and makes Zentangles. I love being a CZT and sharing this passion by teaching others. I discovered Zentangle® in 2016, and have pursued it passionately ever since. I started a monthly meeting of 4 or 5 local CZT’s who get together for a few hours on Saturdays and tangle. It is a joy. I have been to zenAgain and to 1440 with Rick and Maria. I have signed up for zenAgain this year and am looking forward to it.

I also write, and my novel is going to be published this coming June, by She Writes Press, a publisher of books by and about women. The book is called Stitches in Time and is an immigration story about my grandmother who came to the Lower East Side of New York City in 1900 from Lithuania.

Other than all that, I am a mostly-retired website programmer. I had my own business and worked in Computer Science for most of my adult life. I am 76, and I live in Auburn, California now, but was an East Coast girl most of my life. I am happily married to a wonderful man. So things are pretty good. Life is a pleasure!

How can I thank you for your beautiful website and all the benefits I have received from your work! What a treasure your created for all of us. I love being part of the amazing Zentangle World Community, where everyone is always encouraging and friendly.

As for Nanalee, I saw some banana leaves and was inspired by them.

Nanalee, ’nana lea-ves … 🙂

I hope this lush photo of bananas with leaves does justice to Mary’s inspiration from which she’s abstracted an excellent, fun tangle. In the way it’s constructed Nanalee is not unlike the Zentangle-original Sampson.

Image by Carmem Cândido Rodrigues Carlotinha from Pixabay

After playing with Nanalee for a bit, I wondered what it would look like if I used a stroke that’s more like a flick of the Micron starting from the center “vein” for Steps 2-4 and turns out that produces some cool results too with a tapered end to each flick. Think I may go back to the tangling board to explore this a little more …

Mary illustrates the step-by-step instructions for drawing Nanalee below where she features it in a monotangle – a similar effort makes for good practice at “drawing behind”, à la Hollibaugh.

Image copyright the artist and used with permission, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. These images are for your personal offline reference only. Please feel free to refer to the images to recreate this tangle in your personal Zentangles and ZIAs. However the artist and TanglePatterns.com reserve all rights to the images and they must not be publicly pinned, altered, reproduced or republished. Thank you for respecting these rights. Click the image for an article explaining what copyright means in plain English. “Always let your conscience be your guide.” ~ Jiminy Cricket

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 maryf for more of Mary’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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