How to draw PARASOLS

Hi there my friends and welcome back for another week of tangle creativity!

Rain, rain, and more rain.

That’s what we’ve had lately on Florida’s Treasure Coast and the landscape is absolutely lush as a result. All of this moisture made me think of Texas CZT Suzanne McNeill’s easy grid tangle, Parasols. Because you sure can’t venture outdoors without one right now unless you enjoy being soaked to the skin 😉 .

As you may know Suzanne was the first to publish books/booklets about Zentangle® through her Design Originals publishing company. She also had a blog and would frequently feature tangles from her books on it, which I would then link to from TanglePatterns. One unfortunate day in 2014, someone failed to renew her blog’s domain name so her blog unceremoniously vanished into the ether. All her posts and images were lost.

Around that time Fox Chapel Publishing purchased Suzanne’s company and now hold the copyright on the contents of the Design Originals publications. Both Suzanne and Fox Chapel Publishing have graciously given me permission to add the steps images for her tangles on the site and at the time, if memory serves there were nearly 75 on the site. Recently I’ve been going back through all those early tangles and have added the steps for them all so if there were any you were puzzled by, you can now locate the steps for them. And today we add another.

Parasols is from Suzanne’s Zentangle 7 – Inspiring Circles, Zendalas & Shapes booklet. This is from the review page when the publication first appeared:

Zentangle 7 includes “ideas for making beautiful Zendalas. Talented Certified Zentangle Teachers share their tips and designs for using watercolors and circular stencils, making mini Zendalas on metal rim tags, creating a Zendala spinner, or using the pre-strung tiles.”

In addition to Suzanne’s tips and art, several CZTs whose names you’ll recognize are also featured in the book with their Zendala-related art and techniques: Margaret Bremner, Sue Jacobs, Julie Evans, Sandy Steen Bartholmew, Angie Vangalis, Sandhya Manne, and Erin Koetz Olson. These CZTs all “generously share their secrets for creating basic circle designs, and how to add color, resist, layers, and more.”

For my Parasols example I added a touch of graphite in the “spokes” areas and it ended up looking a bit dark. So I got out my white 08 Sakura Gelly Roll and added a dot of white in all the centers, including the little black orbs.

Suzanne illustrates the step-by-step instructions for drawing Parasols below.

© Suzanne McNeill and Fox Chapel Publishing. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. You may use this image for your personal non-commercial reference only. Republishing or redistributing IN ANY FORM including pinning is prohibited under law without express permission.

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. Republishing images isn’t allowed. Thanks!

Check out the tag suzannem for more of Suzanne’s tangles on TanglePatterns.com.

For detailed Book Reviews of the available books about Zentangle®, visit the BOOK REVIEWS tab on the menu bar at the top of the page.

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." 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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