Fanciful Fragment S9

I was invited to be a speaker at Samsung’s Alt+Tab event where I and four other fantastic speakers shared how we've turned our passion into our profession. I spoke about how I stumbled into my career as a Certified Zentangle Teacher, and it was great fun hearing from the other speakers: Moushumi (a colour consultant), Eugene (an esports shout-caster), Chef Al (a private dining chef) and Dr Angeline (a vet who practices both Western and traditional Chinese TCM).

Here's a digital illustration I created as publicity material for the event:

To commemorate this wonderful opportunity, I deconstructed a new tangle that I'm calling "Fragment S9" because the Alt+Tab event was also the official launch for Samsung's Tab S9.

 Here are the basic step-outs to it:

However, you can also draw it in other ways:

If you scroll back up to look at my Alt+Tab illustration at the start of this post, you can spot four other ways to use the tangle, too.

I was looking at the previous illustration I had drawn on my Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 tablet and wondering why it felt so different from my traditionally done work… And I came to the conclusion that the reason was that when I work on paper, I would have to take a photo of it, in order to show it to you; whereas digital art has a more flat, almost perfect look to it.

I had this sudden thought of taking a photo of a blank tile, and then using that photo as a base for a digital drawing.

There’s been talk in some of the Zentangle groups I’m a part of - about whether digital art goes against the spirit of the Zentangle method… I pointed out to them that for some people with eyesight problems, digital medium might be the only way they’re able to create art as they aren’t able to work on a small scale. Someone else then mentioned that you could use rulers and mirroring tools with digital mediums; but you can use a physical ruler and carbon paper with traditional mediums, too.

With the above illustration, I played around with making my digital brushes and pens look more textured. Eventually, I found a rhythm and also streamlined my work flow. I’m proud of what I created. For me, this illustration toes the line between traditional and digital creation… They’re both valid forms of art. The spirit of the Zentangle method is to find calm in the process of drawing repeated, structured patterns. How you do it doesn’t really matter - pen and paper, sand and a stick by the beach, the S Pen and a tablet… What matters is that you take the time to create something to nourish your soul. Fragment S9 is featured on the lower middle portion of the above illustration. I'll be playing around with this traditional x digital technique again soon. I hope you got something out of this blog post. :) If you use the tangle S9, please tag me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/havepen_willdraw/ Until next time... Keep tangling! - Stephanie J., CZT 21 Singapore