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How to draw FLISH

Zentangle pattern: Flish. Image © Linda Farmer and TanglePatterns.com. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. You may use this image for your personal non-commercial reference only. The unauthorized pinning, reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal.Friday greetings, y’all!

Our tangle for today is an easy grid-based one with lots of options to exercise your creativity with embellishments.

Flish is from New Jersey CZT Mimi Topping and it’s her first on the site.

Mimi shares two monotangle ZIAs featuring Flish, This first is on a Renaissance Tan Zentangle® tile.

Mimi introduces herself and explains her inspiration for Flish:

I’m a CZT from class number nine. Covid has given me more time to explore my craft and I’m sharing my latest creation.

I was trying to create a different pattern and stumbled upon “flish”.

It made me think of flying fish at my mom’s back-yard pond in St. Augustine, FL.

{Aside: Wow, I can’t believe it’s already been six years since Robert and I moved back to South Florida from St. Augustine. It was too cold up there for us, and we missed the palm trees 🙂 }

So, what do we know about flying fish?

The Exocoetidae are a family of marine fish in the order Beloniformes class Actinopterygii, known colloquially as flying fish or flying cod. About 64 species are grouped in seven to nine genera.

While they cannot fly in the same way a bird does, flying fish can make powerful, self-propelled leaps out of the water where their long wing-like fins enable gliding for considerable distances above the water’s surface. The main reason for this behavior is thought to be to escape from predators.

Barbados is known as “the land of the flying fish”, and the fish is one of the national symbols of the country. The Exocet missile is named after them, as variants are launched from underwater, and take a low trajectory, skimming the surface, before striking their targets.

The oldest known fossil of a flying or gliding fish, Potanichthys xingyiensis, dates back to the Middle Triassic, 235–242 million years ago. However, this fossil is not related to modern flying fish, which evolved independently about 66 million years ago.

… Flying fish live in all of the oceans, particularly in tropical and warm subtropical waters.

… The flights of flying fish are typically around 50 m (160 ft), though they can use updrafts at the leading edge of waves to cover distances up to 400 m (1,300 ft). They can travel at speeds of more than 70 km/h (43 mph). Maximum altitude is 6 m (20 ft) above the surface of the sea.

That’s a lot more than I did before! To see what flying fish look like, check out the images on this Google search.

Mimi’s second ZIA demonstrates Flish as a ribbon-style tangle. And just as a reminder, most grid-based tangles make great ribbons or borders …

For my example of Flish I wanted to keep it to Zentangle’s non-objective aspect, and so it wasn’t a literal “fish” looking tangle I left out the “eyes”, as did Mimi in her two ZIAs above.

Mimi illustrates the step-by-step instructions for drawing Flish below and she includes several examples of ways to vary and embellish her tangle. You can also find Mimi here on her website.

How to draw the Zentangle pattern Flish, tangle and deconstruction by Mimi Topping. Image copyright the artist and used with permission, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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 a discussion entitled “Artists for Respect” by several prominent artists. “Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.” ~ C.S. Lewis

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 thanks helps motivate them to continue to share! And please share a link to your favorite tangles on social media. Thanks!

Check out the tag mimit for more of Mimi’s tangles on TanglePatterns.com.

That’s it for the first week of August, see you again next week for more tangling delights!

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.
  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!
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4 comments to How to draw FLISH

  • Cub

    C’est magnifique. Mille bravos pour ma 1ère newsletter

  • Linda Dochter

    Mimi – Flish. What fun. I’m going to look specifically for flying fish next time I’m in Florida and definitely use this tangle in one of my many souvenir tiles (even though they don’t look like ‘a thing!’)

    Linda – I must say that the extra detail you add to the descriptions for new tangle discoveries intrigues me. Many thanks.

    My best to both of you. Linda Dochter, CZT

  • Love this little flish fragment. And thanks Linda for a good read on flying fish. Have always enjoyed seeing them when we were on cruises.

  • Deborah Davis

    Mimi,

    Thank you. This tangle has so many uses and is beautiful. I’m sure I’ll use it!

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