Gallery
Tim
Zentangles are my legal addiction. They are easier to show than to describe, so examples that I have drawn are below. I learned about them when the artists who invented them came to our school and started to teach us how to do them. When looking at Zentangles, it's difficult to see how they emerge, but the general process is to start with a square of paper and draw lines that divide the square into several regions. Then in each region you begin drawing a repeating, overlapping pattern that gradually fills in the empty space until the Zentangle emerges.
We always work with the best pens and paper we can find or afford. The pen is more like a fine-point marker than like a ballpoint pen. The paper is made of cotton, so it absorbs the ink and doesn't smudge or crinkle. It's not rough at all. Everything flows, and this allows you to focus on the experience and the emerging artwork rather than on the limitations of your materials.
I've tried drawing Zentangles on regular paper with a ballpoint pen, and it's harder to concentrate. The paper rips, the ink smudges, and it's harder to color things in. It's kind of frustrating because you can't finish your pattern, and you're forced to limit yourself. They don't ever turn out as well.
Zentangles are abstract drawings, and I consider myself to be an abstract artist and a very weird fellow, so it somehow seems that Zentangles represent me perfectly. When I do them, I can go to another place, another plane of existence, and my experience spills over onto the paper for the entire world to see. At those times I don't notice how much time I'm spending or hear what's going on around me. There could have been a fight in the room and if no one pushed me I probably wouldn't even notice.
Drawing is one of the things I like to do the most. I have done doodles that became framed prints and were shown in galleries, even one that was transformed into a large outdoor mural. At the Rhode Island School of Design I took classes in cartooning and computer animation, and in one of my internships I helped design a conservation comic book on DVD for elementary school students.
Over the years my interests have changed from my imagination to drawing to computers to playing instruments to carpentry and then back to drawing, but one thing that has remained constant is that I have always been confused as to why people do the jobs they do and how I will figure out what job I want to do someday. I'm sure one day I'll find something I like to do and that will support me, but for now I have no idea what it will be. I think I'll go draw a Zentangle.
