Learn how to shade Zentangle® with Eni Oken • enioken.com

Last week's Shading Zentangle FB group challenge focused on Bales, a very easy grid-pattern. Well, I'm not exactly crazy about grid patterns, so I tried to find a way to make it more fun and 3-dimensional by wrapping it around some wavy strings.

Here's the original line-art, along with some very light shading and "rounding":

I want to show you how I approach shading sometimes, by starting with the larger masses instead of shading the smaller details. Think "big picture" first:

After establishing the basic masses, I worked in the details:

Here is the beauty of Zentangle: even though I established the light source as placed on the upper left side corner (marked with asterisk), I turned the final tile around and I love this other position as well:

Here is another point of view:

I feel like I could add more to the background -- the negative space -- maybe fill it up with black or add some really light gray background tangle. Maybe next week I'll work on it more.

Tangles used: Bales (structure), ruutz, pufcookie, paradox, crescent moon, arc flower.

Black and brown ink, gray and brown copic markers, F graphite pencil.

Bales Challenge

Here's the original line-art, along with some very light shading and "rounding":

After establishing the basic masses, I worked in the details:

Here is another point of view:

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