Greetings my lovelies, welcome back for our last tangle for the month of February!
Alla, today’s easy Monday tangle is from Japanese tangler Mayumi Ogawa and it’s her first on the site.
Mayumi introduces herself and explains her inspiration for Alla,
I learned about Zentangle® in January 2020. I am guided by Shinmi Sato CZT and Hiromi Fukuoka CZT.
This art has been very soothing to my heart. I am grateful that I have encountered wonderful art that will become my friend in life.
I came up with this tangle by looking at the gears, but I think there are many possibilities. Above all, it is “kawaii”.
I confess, I had absolutely no clue what kawaii meant. Thus a bit of Wikipedia research:
Kawaii is the culture of cuteness in Japan. It can refer to items, humans and non-humans that are charming, vulnerable, shy and childlike. Examples include cute handwriting, certain genres of manga, anime, and characters including Hello Kitty and Pikachu from Pokémon.
The cuteness culture, or kawaii aesthetic, has become a prominent aspect of Japanese popular culture, entertainment, clothing, food, toys, personal appearance, and mannerisms.
… In recent years, Kawaii products have gained popularity beyond the borders of Japan in other East and Southeast Asian countries, and are additionally becoming more popular in the US among anime and manga fans as well as others influenced by Japanese culture.
Okay … Somehow my Alla gears ended up looking a little more like abstract florals — more long petals than short cogs — oh well! It could be interesting to change things up a bit and connect the strokes (Steps 4 and 5) using curves or zigzags. Just a thought …
Mayumi illustrates the step-by-step instructions for drawing Alla below and her monotangle example shows some simple ways to embellish it.
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
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Check out the tag mayumio for more of Mayumi’s tangles on TanglePatterns.com.
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February 27, 2023 | 
More like this: 
This is a cute tangle, reminds me of a flower forest.
This fits in with the steampunk tangling some are doing. Think it might make a fun string done big.
A coincidence that while practicing Steampunk-looking tangles, just last week, I was drawing a cog or gear. I was laughing that it came out looking like a flower over and over again! Now I realize that I was just practicing Mayuma’s lovely new tangle “Alla”. My “gear flowers ” have a name!