How to draw AWHINGING

Today we have a floral-like tangle named Awhinging and it comes with an interesting background story.

Awhinging is from tangler Phylis Chen and it’s her first on the site.

Phylis writes,

My husband and his longtime friend spent several weeks hiking the Haute Route Pyrenees last summer during which time he had been sending me photos of his travels. In one of the small villages along the way, they had stopped at a cozy looking cafe for a well earned coffee and rest break.

It turns out that hanging beside their table were lace curtains with a pattern on it. However, I wanted to increase the ‘uniqueness’ factor of this pattern and so, I started to experiment without knowing whether anything would come of it.

Eventually, I ended up with an unexpected ribbon tangle that bears absolutely no resemblance to the original curtain pattern.

Chuckling to myself, I decided to title my tangle, Awhinging (owing to a hilarious scene from The Game of Thrones where their usage of the word ‘whinging’ has never failed to make others seeing the same scene laugh, too).

As to the tangle’s floral nature, well, I am glad that it turned out this way, because I would like to dedicate this tangle to my Mother who had passed in 2008, and to my Mother-in-law who has just recently passed.

There is much potential for fellow tangle artists to customize this pattern to suit the needs of their own unique Zentangle art pieces.

It is so easy and fun to do that there are really no particular tips that I need to share about it, other than the fact that the additional petals in step 5 can be omitted, if desired. This would lead to a cool ‘flatter look’ where the elongated Flux tangle petals appear to closely adhere to the centre line in a skin tight fashion, as in this example.

The centre line separating the florals to either side was highlighted with the Paradox tangle drawn inside the leaf shapes. This helped to make the Paradox leaves stand out as a vine upon which the florals hang.

For those not familiar with the term “whinging“: it is British and Australian slang meaning to complain or whine, “especially about something that does not seem important“. This link includes an audio clip on how to pronounce it. Tip: it’s not pronounced the same as “whine”.

Phylis illustrates the step-by-step instructions for drawing Awhinging below with her example including the “extra” flux-like leaves. (The version I used for my example.)

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. For more information, click on the image for the article “Copyrights and your blog.” “We must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy.” ~ Albus Dumbledore

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Check out the tag phylisc for more of Phylis’s tangles on TanglePatterns.com.

Related Links

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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. What Makes a Zentangle tangle? 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. Patterns that are drawings of a recognizable naturalistic or actual object, figure, or scene, are not tangles, and tangles never start with pencil planning.
   • A pattern is not always a tangle.
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7. How to submit your pattern deconstruction to TanglePatterns
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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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