How to draw KANNA

Hi there! Welcome back for our Wednesday tangle.

This cool curvy tangle named Kanna is from Japanese CZT Yasuko Kawatsu and it’s her first on the site. This one enjoys a bit of real estate to develop so don’t let my very minimal example mislead you about its potential, which you’ll see in Yasuko’s video 🙂

Yasuko introduces herself and her Kanna tangle,

I’m a CZT from Shimane, Japan, and I go by the nickname ZENCHAN.

This tangle was inspired by the memory of my grandfather working as a carpenter.

I imagined one of his traditional tools, the kanna (Japanese hand plane), and expressed it through this design.

While overlapping the lines, I draw in a way that I can feel the rhythm of the sound of the shaving and the flow of the wood grain.

Watching him so deeply focused made me realize that the state of mindfulness — being completely absorbed in the moment — is something timeless.

Yasuko illustrates the step-by-step instructions for drawing Kanna below and shows ways to vary the basic shape as well as ways to use it in a Zentangle® tile, including “in a circular infinite way“.

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

You can read more about Yasuko and her grandfather here on her blog. Below is is her video demonstrating multiple ways of tangling Kanna, including a vining/ribbon version and examples combining it with the Zentangle-originals Tipple, Pokeroot, Pokeleaf, Mooka and a “fluted” Icanthis-ish version too.

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Check out the tag yasukok for more of Yasuko’s tangles on TanglePatterns.com.

Some Zentangle News

If you aren’t following Zentangle’s 2026 Bijou Be Well Series …

I encourage you to check out Canadian CZT and “mental health professional and registered Canadian art therapist specializing in trauma recovery” Jennifer Marchand’s fascinating and inspiring two-part article, Bringing the Zentangle Method into Trauma Therapy: Drawing as a Pathway to Presence, Regulation, and Healing, on Zentangle’s blog. You’ll find links to the two part article on the TanglePatterns Chronology page for the series for Days 9 and 10.

Well worth a read! xx

NPR Podcast

If you missed it, yesterday Rick and Maria were guests of Elizabeth Barrett on the NPR Podcast A Conversation With the Reluctant Therapist. You can listen to the 58-minute conversation on the ZENTANGLES > GUEST PODCASTS AND VIDEOS page, just visit the top menu bar on the site. PS – The conversation gets underway at the 8 minute mark into the recording.

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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!
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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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