How to draw NAPA

Welcome back to a new week of fun and creative tangle inspiration 🙂

We begin this week with Illinois CZT Leslie Barr’s Napa, a ribbon-style tangle and her first on the site.

Napa shares DNA with CZT Daniela Nielsen’s Why but it is slightly different and I think you’ll enjoy exploring this one too.

Leslie introduces herself and shares the fond memories associated with Napa:

I’m from Champaign, Illinois. I discovered Zentangle® 13 years ago when I was going through a difficult season of grief after my sister suddenly passed away. It was a beautiful way to find some respite. A year later I became a CZT.

Recently, a good friend lost her life to cancer. While thinking of her, her love of family, friends, laughter, and good times shared over a glass of chardonnay, I decided to express it all in tangling.

I played around with my pen and came up with a new ribbon tangle. It seemed so simple and easy to do, yet has a cool mid-century modern look. 

Leslie illustrates the step-by-step instructions for drawing Napa below and includes a Zentangle tile showing some very simple ways to vary it by changing the size and shape of the strokes in Step 3 and/or adding auras and shading. For my example of Napa I went for something a little different than her suggestions, adding ink fills overlaid with an aura of dots from an #05 White Sakura Gelly Roll pen. Lots of easy embellishment ideas to play with!

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. (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

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 leslieb for more of Leslie’s tangles on TanglePatterns.com.

PSA: Call For Seasonal Tangle Submissions

Believe it or not, soon it’ll be holiday season and many in the community love to make Zentangle-inspired greeting cards and handmade creations for their gift-giving. They usually work on the projects well in advance and the craft stores have been stocking seasonal supplies for a couple of months to cater to the early starters.

With this in mind, if you have a new tangle to share that works well for the holiday season please don’t wait until the last minute to submit it. Although the schedule is always flexible I usually plan our tangles a few weeks ahead so get your submissions to me ASAP and I can fit them into my planning. And if published your tangle will be included in the 2026 Edition of the TanglePatterns.com TANGLE GUIDE coming out in January. I look forward to seeing what you’ve come up with!

PS – we do have a tag especially for christmas-themed tangles, you can locate them in the TANGLES BY TYPE in the left sidebar.

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
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!
10. Never miss a tangle! FREE eMAIL NEWSLETTER - visit the Here's how to SUBSCRIBE button (top of left sidebar on any page) and sign up to get notices delivered free to your inbox.
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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