Spring Has Sprung into Zentangle Chocolate Bunnies

Who doesn't love chocolate and bunnies? Spring sprung up chocolate Zentangle bunnies at the Kensington/Normal Heights Library today in San Diego, CA.  Whether you like dark or milk chocolate, we got our Zentangle on and created a spring tile of colored bunnies and tangled eggs. 

Celtic Kind of a Zentangle Day

At the Poway Library (San Diego, California), us "tangler's" got our St. Patrick's Zentangle day on.  I was concerned when I headed to class this morning if folks would venture out because this dry, dessert location ...........................yes, we had

RAIN 

When it rains in San Diego, new stations talk about the rain coming days before and it is everyone's conversation. The world almost stops when it rains here. Hence the song,  IT NEVER RAINS IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.  Well maybe not never, but average, 10 inches a year.  Do you know your average rainfall for your area?  Northern California gets an average of 32 inches a year.

We had fourteen people venture out in the rain. Below is Sylvia.  She came dressed for the day. Sylvia was heading out, after class, to listen to 5 different bands for her St. Patrick's Day celebration.

To celebrate, I played Celtic music during class, brought Andes candies to share and had a raffle for one of Suzanne McNeil's Zentangle Book.  Fun class, fun day.

The project today was to trace a Shamrock and then tangle  Some of the tangles used:  Mooka, Pokeroot, Printemps, Crescent Moon, Hollibaugh, and Bales.  

Zentangle is a meditative art method. Typically a basic Zentangle tile is black and white.  When you add color -  more thought process.  But who doesn't like a little color now and then? For St. Patty's Day, we added a little color to our tiles.    Some choose to leave black and white.

Zentangle:  no erasers and no mistakes, no art experience necessary.  That why it is called a secret gem.  Anyone can tangle. Enjoy some pics from the day.



I took a liking to my first student to class.  He reminded me of my Dad that had passed away a couple years ago.  He told me he had 50% loss of sight.  I told him he would still enjoy the class because it was very relaxing.  With Zentangle, it isn't about the end result - more about the process while you are tangling.  Didn't he do a great job?




But first......... let me take a selfie of class.

Good Job Tanglers. 

After class, a students shared a tile she created since her last class with me at the library.
Tittled:  Chinese New Year.

  Marvelous ... thanks for sharing.

San Diego Botanical Garden and Mudcloth

March 3rd, 2018, San Diego Botanical Garden, California - Zentangle African Mud Cloth project.  We created leather like fabric from Kraft paper to design a ZIA (Zentangle Inspired Art).

Why is it also called Mud Cloth?

In the Bambara language, spoken in Mali, the word bògòlanfini is a composition of three words. Bogo, meaning “earth” or “mud,” lan, meaning “with” and fini, meaning “cloth.” The word is translated as “mud cloth.”

The Meaning of the Patterns
Just one of the many things that makes traditional mud cloth so special is that each piece has a story to tell. Even the arrangement of the symbols on the cloth reveals something secret about the intended meaning, and this language of the cloth was passed down from mother to daughter.

How Bogolanfini is made:

Traditionally, the men were responsible for weaving the narrow strips of plain fabric that were then pieced together into a larger rectangular cloth.
1. The cloth was first dyed in baths of the leaves and branches of trees (this dye acts as a mordant).
2. The now-yellow cloth is sun-dried and patterns were painstakingly painted with a special mud, which had been collected from ponds during the previous seasons and left to ferment.
2. As the cloth dries, the dark black mud turns gray and the cloth is washed to remove excess mud. This process is repeated numerous times and with each application, the mud-painted area of the cloth becomes darker. The yellow areas are painted with a bleach, which turns the yellow patterns brown. The cloth is left to dry in the sun for a week. When the bleach solution is washed off with water, what remains is the characteristic white pattern on a dark background.

It was nice to welcome my childhood friend and fellow CZT (Certified Zentangle Teacher), Susan Bowden to class also.