I decided to try my hand at a zentangle.
What is a zentangle?
Until my partner Reid asked me, I didn’t think there’d be a need to explain what these things are. A zentangle is basically just a structured way of drawing patterns.
Honestly, it’s really similar to an exercise I learned in art school. Sometimes the biggest obstacle to creation is inspiration. One of my teachers had us do this thing where we did these big open scribbles on a large piece of paper, and then filled in all the gaps with different pictures and patterns.
A zentangle is kind of like that, but far more structured. Like, there’s literally a trademarked method for making these things that are basically just an exercise art students all learn in their first year, if not in high school.
The trademarked version known as Zentangle™ is special though. It’s supposed to be great for releasing stress and promoting creativity. You know. For finding zen. In a trademarked and profitable way.
My hand hurts so bad
I had no idea normal people don’t hold pens and pencils like this. This is a common grip for people with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome.
Let me tell you, there was absolutely nothing zen about this effing thing for me. For some reason I thought 81 was a reasonable number of patterns to start with.
Part of my disability is that my finger, hand, and wrist joints are hypermobile. I’ve had arthritis since I was a kid, too. You’d think that the stiffness of the arthritis would cancel out the hypermobility – or vice versa. But you’d be wrong.
What actually happens is that I get tired and get my joints stuck in painful positions for long periods of time. So the two conditions end up in an arms race for destroying my hand function with pain.
Right now I’m not using splints to support my fingers, hands, or wrists. I’m starting to wonder if I should. Using a splint would offer me support and pain relief for sure. But if I do then I can get too used to them and end up weakening my hand function.
I spent about 10 hours on this. Which might not seem like much. Or it might seem like a lot. I don’t know. Either way. My hand hurt so bad when I finished that I decided to title the piece, “The Finger Cramper”.
So why would I subject myself to this torture?
The cats and eyeballs are my favorites, actually
In some of my previous pieces, I noted that I was struggling with fine detail and texture. Sometimes texture can be created by patterns – and zentangles are perfect for practicing fine detail.
Forcing myself to come up with 81 unique patterns is also a challenge for my brain. The first fifteen patterns were easy to think of. Then I started struggling to think of things to draw.
By the time I got past the cats my brain was literally casting for anything, ANYTHING for inspiration. This is exactly where I wanted to be because this is where my brain starts getting its weirdest.
Eyeballs. Kelp. Melty smileys. Quill and ink (which isn’t even an effing pattern but my brain couldn’t be convinced). Tentacles. Flying mustaches.
It’s when my brain is in this space of untethered, unhinged desperation that I get my best ideas. I’m not actually trying to inspire myself to do a zentangle. I’m trying to rustle up some new ideas for compositions and subjects for new pieces without using a random word generator.
I made my first time-lapse
For this piece I turned on time-lapse recording. I ended up screwing it all up at one point because I got impatient to add color (and forgot I was recording).
Still. I’m trying hard to just make content and not care about perfection. The time-lapse still looks really cool even if you can’t see the whole color process.
Here’s the finished piece in all of its finger cramping glory:
