Ballpoint Shading Mandala

This mandala took me a LOOOONG time. I was determined to NOT use a pencil for shading, only ink. I used a gray tombow brush pen for underpainting and after testing the ballpoint shading technique over another tile (upper left), I set out to shade this monster. It measures 5 inches in diameter. It took me 4 days!

Tangles here: were Bucky, Purk, Bronx Cheer, Betweed, Moonpie (all Zentangle) and Wyforwings (my own tangleation of Wyfore). Here’s the sequence:

Here is a close-up for you to inspect. The depth the ballpoint pen achieves is quite remarkable.

My test tile was done with Ellish and Ratoon (both Zentangle).

Here's the before and after shading of the test tile:

Although time consuming, I loved the effect that I reached with the ballpoint pen. Definitely something I will try again!

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