Not too long ago, I was browsing through the Zentangle Mosaic app, and saw a tile that caught my eye. It was by Eva Wu, a CZT from Taiwan. I was mesmerized by this tile, not sure if I could say why exactly. Then I read what she wrote about it. "It was a mistake, a beautiful one."
I messaged her and asked to hear how this tile came to be. Eva replied, with a lovely account of her journey. She agreed to let us post it on our Zentangle Blog.
And the rest, as they say. . . is "herstory."
Eva writes...
This is my #1064 Zentangle creation. It looks great, isn’t it? But before the final shoot, it really frustrates me.
I can recall clearly that day, 10th July, 2019, quite peaceful, and routine. In the morning, I answered questions to my on-line Zentangle students, and wrote my Tarot diary, what I draw is the “Magician”
Ha! If you familiar with Tarot, “Magician” bring us the message of “Anything is possible." I wondered what will happen in that day.
The afternoon I went to my street dance class, but my coach was absent. The studio had assigned a substitute one, he is good but I can hardly follow his beat and felt my hand-foot movements were totally out of coordination! What’s wrong with me?
Usually, my daily Zentangle time is in the evening. Perhaps my body was too tired after the dance and the hot, humid summer night in Taiwan makes me feel uncomfortable, I was totally out of my mind on what to draw.
Well, that was not news, we all experienced the “no idea” moments. In this kind of condition, I will start with some simple tangles. Printemps, the swirl is a good start. Then Mooka, my favorite. And placed some tiny flowers. So far so good.
(Because I didn’t expect sharing it, there are no process images available. This photo is my recreation, to show you what happened on the tile. )
So we had flowers, they must be accompanied with some leaves. That was the beginning of tragedy: I made wrong directions, they looked so awkward!
Something like this …. believe me, much more worse than it. Impossible to re-do the original “mistake,” but I can remember clearly how depressed I was with the chaos.
Why I felt so anxiously about the “mistake”? Partly because I had made a suggestion in the morning to my students about the direction of plants. In Zentangle, they don’t need to be realistically, but taking attention on the way they grow will make the drawing more beautiful visually.
Yes, I know they are not mistakes; they looked exactly leaves, but not what I want! I prefer they are dendritic but not parallel to each other. The feeling is like my mind and hands are belonging to different bodies, I can’t control my hand to draw my thought.
OK, this is a “mistangle”. I love the way Maria names it. No mistakes, only mistangle. It should be a strong believes to every Zentangler. I have finished more than 1000 Xentangle artworks, and how many pieces had been trashed? No more than 5. How can I make it? Because I feel certainly, there will be a way out, not only Zentangle, but also life. What we need is a little bit patience, God will show us the path.
Then I decided to let it stay on my desk and went to bed: “Tomorrow is another day.” As Scarlett said in Gone with the Wind.
The next morning I woke up and felt no hesitation to black the periphery with a brush pen. Adding Flux and Printemps with metallic gold pen. In the center, maybe Scena is a good idea?
It took only about 30 minutes to finish the revision. And I shared it on WeChat, remarked it as: Things are not as bad as we image, after a sleep, there is a peach blossom Shangri-La.
What I have learned from this tile is: never stuck yourself in the emotion of making mistake. In anyway, it happened. Try your best to find out if there is anything you can do. If not, surrender and accept. If yes, do it. You will never know what the next is; maybe another open window is waiting for us?
All we Zentanglers are gifted magicians, with micron pens as our magic wands. I do believe Zentangle is our spiritual alchemy. Find out the inner gold, our life will sparkle.
Love you all. Abracadabra.
Eva Wu, CZT#29, Taipei.
You can see more of Eva’s work on the Zentangle Mosaic app @EvaWuCZT
Heather Moffatt on