Abstract Tangled Art

Now THIS is what I’ve been playing with during my vacation time, something completely different from my usual work. I visited an art exhibit in August and was so impressed by the strong, bold black and white brushwork of a local artist that I decided to try some bold abstract art of my own. I prepared a bunch of black and white background using inks with large, flat 1-inch brushes:

I cut the paper into pieces and took it with me during my holiday. I let the random brushstrokes guide me intuitively to place tangles that I took from the Art Raffle. Here is the first one:

The Art Raffle gave me: Echoism (Zentangle), Thrive (Michelle Dugdale), Ponytail (Angie Gittles) and I added some random Tipple and Zingers (also Zentangle)

Overall, I feel this is a lot more chaotic than my usual work, which tends to have a certain flow. But I LOVE the boldness of it. Here’s a close-up:

I liked this work so much - it has such expressive boldnessI wondered, what would it look like if I printed it digitally really large to hang in my living room? Here's a little mockup (by the way, this is NOT my living room, hahahaha, this was done in Midjourney and simulated in Procreate).

I then worked on a second piece. The Art Raffle gave me a different set of tangles: Ayame (Emiko Kaneko), Cat-Kin (Mimi Lempart), Betweed, Tipple and Floo (all Zentangle).

Here’s what came out of it. I love the use of white over black. This one feels softer and more controlled, less chaotic.

Here’s the progress for that one:

Another view:

Overall completely different from my usual style but I’m tremendously happy with the results, very layered and interesting to look at.

I still have one more that I’m putting the final touches on and a lot more rough papers to play with!

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All of these images are copyright 2023 Eni Oken