How to draw SWIMZ

Monday greetings, y’all! Hope you’re all well and flu season behind us. Easter bunnies on the horizon …

Today’s easy continuous-line Swimz tangle is from Australian CZT Sandra McKenny and it’s her first on the site. Sandra is from the 19th CZT certification class.

She writes,

I hadn’t tangled much during 2017 so decided to use the 12 days of Zentangle® challenge to become re-inspired.

By day 4, and Rick’s great variation on Diva Dance (one of my favourite tangles), I was back to tangling every day.

I live in the beautiful Northern Rivers region of New South Wales [near Brisbane] in Australia. A year ago, at the end of March, cyclone Debbie caused widespread flooding in our area. We were very lucky compared to many and our house weathered the storm. However our 8 acre property and gardens didn’t fare so well and our dam was almost completely filled with flood-mud (along with an amazing assortment of other things!).

Months later, when we were finally able to have the dam dredged, I became fascinated by the creatures that swim on the surface of the water. They are so fast and create wonderful swirls and ripples.

These little swirls started to appear in my Diva Dance. I have named my tangle “Swimz” in recognition of the talent of these tiny creatures and to celebrate the rebuilding of our dam and gardens.

Cyclone Debbie reached landfall one year ago this Wednesday, on March 28th, 2017. The height of hurricane season in this part of the planet is at the end of Summer and the transition into Fall when the ocean’s had all that Summer heat warming it up. And its about that time of year “down under”, will their Fall just underway. Fingers crossed, no more cyclones in 2018. Or hurricanes for that matter.

Swimz starts with a springy-Printemps in the center and works outwards from there. It’s quite addictive to tangle and (you’ll notice) I found it tempting to add the loops everywhere. Surprisingly Swimz turns out different every time and it’s also fun to use orb shapes in place of the teardrop loops for a little change of pace. Swimz is a really good tangle for getting us to slow down and enjoy each stroke as the ink flows from the nib of the Micron. It can fill any shaped section in your Zentangle tile as the auras flow in waves out to the edges.

Sandra illustrates the step-by-step instructions for drawing Swimz below and she features it in a Zentangle tile with the Zentangle-original Florz.

Image copyright the artist and used with permission, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please feel free to refer to the steps images to recreate this tangle in your personal Zentangles and ZIAs, or to link back to this page. However the artist and TanglePatterns.com reserve all rights to these images and they must not be publicly pinned, altered, reproduced or republished. They are for your personal offline reference only. Thank you for respecting these rights. Click the image for an article explaining copyright in plain English.

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.

Check out the tag sandram for more of Sandra’s tangles on TanglePatterns.com.

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