I belong to a wonderful group of artists who get together once a month and Zentangle . We are all Certified Zentangle Teachers (CZTs) and proud of it, even if not many people have ever heard of this title. For us, it means we went to Providence Rhode Island for a 4-day training in how to teach Zentangle. This training was a highlight of my life, four of the most enjoyable days I have ever spent. I go back each year (COVID Permitting) for ZenAgain, a refresher for CZT’s. In our group, all four of us have taught classes, and we all love doing Zentangle. Plus it is a wonderful group of people. I look forward to our meetings.
Each month a different one of us is in charge of bringing a project for us to do, and we meet at that person’s house. There are cookies and sharing and lots of good will. Then the project. Elizabeth was in charge this month, and she asked us to do a big Crazy Huggins on an Opus tile that she provided (expensive, thank you!!), and then to fill in all the areas with different tangle patterns. Let me define some terms
Zentangle, an art form, was invented by Maria Thomas and Rick Roberts as a form that anyone can do. It is true, I have taught it to people who have never done any artwork, who are afraid of doing artwork, and then it clicks for them, and they are off to the races. There are two daughters in the Thomas-Roberts family, and one is Martha Huggins. Rick and Maria invented the Huggins pattern and named it after Martha and family. It looks like this:
This diagram shows what we call the step outs for the tangle pattern. You start with the dots, add concave and convex lines vertically and then horizontally and there you have it. The last image here shows a way to shade the pattern.
Crazy Huggins happens when your dots are not lined up. You put your dots all over and you get this:
The image we made is just like this, but done on an Opus tile, so it’s more than 9 inches square.
Once the Crazy Huggins grid pattern was laid out, this project was a walk down memory lane. Elizabeth asked us to draw a different Zentangle pattern in each little area of the Crazy Huggins grid. I chose my favorites known in Zentangle circles as my “mac and cheese” tangle patterns. Thanks Elizabeth!