On October 1 I attended a Zentangle class at my church.  I have seen many zentangles on Pinterest and was fascinated.  My father was a pen and ink artist (among other types of art) and I thought why not, maybe I could do it too.  I always told people I couldn't draw but truthfully I was too intimidated to try for fear of failure in my father's eyes.  Well I went to the class and was immediately hooked,  The instructor was a certified instructor and did a great job of selling me on this new addiction.  We started out with 2 small tiles.  She demonstrated each step and the history behind the art.  That part went right over my head as I was too anxious to dig into creating.  Here are my two tiles from that class.

We did learn the names of each different design but of course that went in one ear and out the other.  My brain does not work with details like that.  The next day I made a trip to Michaels for more supplies.  It didn't take much.  I bought one notebook, a set of 3 Micron pens, a drawing pencil and some things for smudging the pencil shadings (no idea what the technical name is).  Here are my creations so far.  I get my ideas from Pinterest then make them my own.

I am now studying zentangle quilting as many of these patterns are the same or similar to some used in free motion quilting.  That is something else that scares me but something I will be trying in the near future. Of course since my first love is sewing I decided my new collection of art supplies needed to be stored in a way that I could take them on vacation if I chose.  So I made a quilted case to hold everything.  I didn't have a pattern and made it up as I went along.  It has a slot for the notebook on one side and slots for my pens and markers on the other side as well as a clear snapped pouch for small items.  I like something I can pick up and take with me since I can't do that with my sewing machine.

 I only have a few more pages in my first notebook and have already purchased a second.  Plus some colored pencils (not my favorite), some colored fine tip markers and one brush marker (I see a lot more of those in my future.

I sure wish my dad was still alive so I could have him help me with this.  Hopefully he would be proud that I am at least trying to follow in his footsteps.  Here are two of his colored pen and ink drawings.  Some of my favorites are his black and white ones but I will save them for another blog.