How to draw WOVN

Hello my tangling friends! Hope you enjoyed a beautiful weekend and are ready for another week of tangle inspiration.

As you may be aware all eyes in Florida are watching Hurricane Ian, aiming for “somewhere” along our west coast towards the end of this week. It’s projected to be a major Cat 4 = “catastrophic damage”. Not good for those in its path.

Fortunately for us and this storm, we live on the east coast of Florida and though by Tuesday evening we’ll still get the outer bands of Tropical Storm force winds and rain we’re nowhere near as anxious as folks in the path of the storm center itself. Prayers for all …

Today’s super easy Monday tangle named Wovn is from Texas CZT Suzanne McNeill, introduced in her Zentangle 10 booklet. Zentangle 10‘s theme is Zentangle®-related “Ideas for Origami & Paper Crafts”.

Suzanne has bunches of tangles on the site so be sure to scroll through them for more fun and easy creative explorations.

Some time ago Fox Chapel Publishing purchased Suzanne’s Design Originals company and the copyright ownership and both have graciously given me permission to add her steps to TanglePatterns.

As far my limited understanding of it goes, Wovn makes use 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.”

The dictionary definition:

the combination of lights and darks especially as used in Japanese art : the design or pattern of a work of art as seen in flat areas of dark and light values only.

This yin-yang symbol is often used as an example of Notan though more broadly in the art world there’s much more to it. But for our tangle purposes, this simple concept works as a guide for me.

The early Zentangle-originals Strircles, Eye-Wa, Jonqal and Striping are also good examples of this principle.

For my example of Wovn I used pretty straight lines in Step 2 however I think it has much more interest when you give your lines a bit of character as Suzanne has done in her illustration.

Suzanne illustrates the step-by-step instructions for drawing Wovn below. As easy as this tangle is to construct, it does require your focus to get the fills in the right places, best be methodical … word of warning 😉

Image copyright Suzanne McNeill and Fox Chapel Publishing and used with express 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. (Small side note: if you look at the legalese in Pinterest, you are legally responsible for obtaining permission to post every photo that gets ‘Pinned’. Giving credit or sharing the source link doesn’t count.) 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

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Check out the tag suzannem for more of Suzanne’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
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