Circling a Square

Maria writes:

Hi all you passionate tanglers out there!

Today I want to talk about our "canvas" of Zentangle art.

A square tile is wonderful to tangle. It's so, so . . . even and straight and predictable and, well, square. It is such a great way to start to tangle. No up and down. No worries. Not too big, no overwhelming time frames, and . . . square.

But along comes this new gal in town. She's a little more sophisticated. A lot more curvy and voluptuous. Something you could really settle down with, be comfortable with. (Some background music, please.) They call her "Zendala." I like to think of her as another "canvas," not a replacement for our beloved square, but a nice complement to its straight edges and right-angled corners. Maybe we should think of them as a "couple" and leave it at that.

Rick adds:

The outside measurement of our square 3.5 inch tile is 14 inches. The outside measurement (circumference) of our Zendala tiles is just a bit more than 14.5 inches - not much difference - less than 4% longer.

However . . . while the area of a square tile is 12.25 square inches, the area of a Zendala is 16.8 square inches - more than 37% larger! A square tile has more sides than a Zendala, but it only has four symmetrical rotations, while a Zendala with its one "side" (or is that an infinite number of "sides"?) has an infinite number of symmetrical rotations. Square tiles can create a mosaic with no spaces, but a mosaic of Zendalas always has space, even when they are all touching.

I'm sure there are some great metaphors to be had in all of that!

Maria continues:

I love our pre-strung Zendalas, but when I pick up a blank one, I tend to use it like a square . . . with a kind of random string and a bit more white space (usually).

On this one . . .

. . . I had some fun with tracing the shapes of square tiles and them tangled them. It was a fun exercise. I tangled black on white then colored in the surrounding edge tiles in black and tangled them in white!

I also love using the Fabrico gray marker to add another dimension to the black and white. Please feel free to try this, we welcome others using our ideas. In fact, this sharing of ideas and inspirations is a wonderful characteristic throughout this Zentangle community.

So, how do you go about tangling your Zendalas??

Our random picker chose "Kathy" (blog- Penstrokes) to win a tile from us. Congrats. Kathy, please send us your snail mail address to zentangle (at) gmail (dot)com.

Click Zendalas to enjoy even larger Zendalas!