'Tangle to disentangle'

Zentangle Art, a new self-help therapy practice, is trending across the metro cities as it enhances one's relaxation and focus. The city youth are finding it peaceful and cathartic in repeating patterns and angling the tangles to create their own kind of Zentangle art. "I could get into sleep with some relaxation and am able to wake up with calm mind after I have started practicing the Zentangle art before sleeping," says Deekshitha Yadhav, a Content Analyst at IBM, Gachibowli. Zentangle Art helps to relieve stress and anxiety, it nurtures creating in people, she adds.

Explaining the importance of Zentangle, a Zentangle artist Aarti from Madhapur says, "Zentangle is nothing but a combination of meditation and art. The tangling method of drawing not only promotes the concentration and creativity but also increases the personal well-being. This is a kind of state of art therapy which is easy to learn and put one's concentration and focus in control. As work from home process is stressing many of the software employees, they are taking a little time to do this fun art just to have some relaxation and stress free. The students who are completely occupied with online education are getting away from digital screens for some peace of mind and to gain some mental strength by doing these amazing zentangles," she says.

Concentrating to draw small blocks of patterns in a flow lets one's mind to get into calming Zen state and in fact gives out an amazing unexpected final result, say numerous zentangle practitioners who experience peace with pen and paper. Another Zentangle artist D Padma says, "Zentangle designs are non-representative repeating patterns with a definite or larger outline. Zentangles patterns are drawn on small pieces of paper called "tiles" of 3Z size. We call them tiles because we can assemble them into mosaics. We can give out any outlining shape in each tile and must repeat the pattern in the sections and complete the entire tiles with different patterns and we need not to overthink about the pattern but can just draw as there is no need of using eraser in Zentangle art, any pattern is a pattern and its repetition makes the art adorable."

Nowadays, the Zendoole is more on trend, a Zendoodle uses small drawings or doodles that are surrounded by repetitive patterns that bring the doodles together whereas Zentangle is completed within black ink and a random pattern.

How to Zentangle?

l Draw a square boarder about 3 inches wide, which creates a square block

l Draw curves, lines or any random design to divide the block into different individual sections

l Fill the sections with repetitive patterns and change the pattern for every new section

l Finally, add colours and shades to define your Zenart