How to draw AUNT FLOWER

Hi everyone, hope your week is going swimmingly!

Aunt Flower is another tangle from the archives and it was submitted by Taiwan CZT Damy Teng on behalf of her niece, Carolyn.

At the time of this submission Carolyn was 10 years old so if my math is correct, Carolyn is now a “senior” teenager and probably a college student!

I’ve always been pretty careful about whether certain “flower” patterns qualify as tangles, mindful of this 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.”

It expands on this from early days of the Zentangle blog:

“This allows you to get into Zentangle’s process without trying to draw something rather than being ‘something to draw’.”

“Drawn as a tangle” means that you repeat a series of elemental strokes in a certain structured way so you inevitably end up with a particular pattern without needing to know what the pattern you are creating is supposed to look like.

On revisiting Aunt Flower, I feel it meets the criteria so today we’re going with it!

Damy introduces sweet Carolyn and her tangle,

Carolyn is my younger brother’s daughter.

Carolyn likes to do anything together with her Aunt Damy. Watching TV together, eating together, tangling together … As long as we’re together, she’s very happy !

Once she taught me to draw this pattern, so it’s named Aunt Flower.

Simply filling different sections in various ways with ink and shading gives more fun and interesting ways to explore Aunt Flower. In Damy’s lovely duotangle tile above with the Zentangle-original ‘Nzeppel she uses beautiful stippling to add shading and interesting texture.

I’m not sure whether Damy or Carolyn illustrated the step-by-step instructions for drawing Aunt Flower but here they are below. In addition to being a sweet mandala-like focal point that can grow outward as far as you want, it makes a good string for showcasing other tangles and has lots of possibilities as a colorful ZIA.

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. “We must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy.” ~ Albus Dumbledore

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Check out the tag carolyn for more of Carolyn’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!
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11. If you have questions about the TanglePatterns.com TANGLE GUIDE, visit the BOOK REVIEWS tab on the top menu bar of any page on the site for COMPLETE details!

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