Getting Tangled

Its not unusual for drawings in my sketchbook to look something like the one above. If you are at all familiar with Zentangles, you can see why I would find the idea of them intriguing. But, until last Thursday, I hadn't been able to do much exploration of Zentangles. About all I knew was that they were a structured form of doodling. Then my quilt guild, The Material Girls, had a visit from Pat Ferguson. She is a certified Zentangle instructor, and she also uses Zentangle-type patterns to quilt her quilts.

Pat gave us a little lesson. We created two tangles on tiles she provided during the meeting. I made a couple more in the following days. Apparently doing this is supposed to have a meditative effect. 

I found these to be fun, but trying to remember all the rules was kind of anxiety inducing, which works against the goal. 

Pretty soon I was back to my sketchbook, ignoring rules, and having fun.

I'll probably investigate Zentangle drawings further. If nothing else, it should give me some new ideas for machine quilting my quilts. Sometimes I get stuck quilting the same patterns over and over, and this could get me out of that rut.

And as a bonus, this has spurred me to pick up my sketchbook again. Somehow over the last year, the book had been quite neglected. I think that following the Sketchbook Challenge blog, instead of inspiring me, has been intimidating me. My sketchbooks are very plain, mostly black and white, and may have weird things like grocery lists, and lists of books in among the drawings. They don't compare to the glorious sketchbooks being shown off on that blog. But, it feels good to be drawing again.  So I'm going to keep drawing, in the way that works for me. A little bit zen, a little bit plain, and a little bit random.

 Do you keep a sketchbook? Do you draw Zentangles? Or is your sketchbook something completely different?