The Shades of Gray between ZIA and Zentangle

Rick writes:

In 2007, we started BLOG Zentangle and began our enjoyable series of conversations within our Zentangle community.

In reading through these blog posts with their insightful comments, we decided to bring a few of them to your attention from time to time. It is easy, for me anyway, to sometimes think of old information as stale information. But these insights and conversations are anything BUT stale!

Today, we invite you to revisit this blog from 2018...

                     Begin previous post . . .                  

Molly writes:

This topic comes up often. We see it discussed through different social media portals. People offer many different answers and often ask us to clarify it.

The truth is the definition is a bit gray and we do not get so caught up in finding a fine line to land on. The term ZIA (Zentangle Inspired Art) was organically started to describe artworks that are not drawn on a Zentangle tile but still use the Zentangle Method in the creation of them. For instance a pair of shoes that are tangled, a large canvas covered with Zentangle art, a ceramic dish with a tangled border, a butterfly filled with tangles, a fox, a turtle, etc.

A ZIA is often representational while traditional Zentangle art is almost always non-representational. It was sometimes said that if it had color then it was a ZIA, but in recent years color has become another layer to the complexity that the Zentangle method has to offer.

I feel the Zentangle Method has grown organically as this very simple method continues to bring forth art that is far deeper and more sophisticated than we ever anticipated. And really it is because of all the amazing enthusiastic Zentangle artists all over the world challenging and creating. I am so humbled and thrilled with how awesome it is. The slow addition of color has been delicate and appropriate to what the method stands for. So I realize this doesn't really answer the question.

A basic original Zentangle is a done on a 3.5" square piece of white paper with black ink and shades of gray. It is non-representational. It is created using the Zentangle Method.

That being said we still consider other works Zentangle art as well. Ones that are slightly larger, may include color and so on. We have decided to purposely not get too caught up in this definition and enjoy the grayness in the description ... after all the whole idea is to get people to put pen to paper and enjoy the process.

Tangle on my friends.

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We are blown away by all of your thoughtful and creative responses to our last blog, What do You Call a Group of Tangles? We are still going through all of your suggestions and we will reveal the winner in our next blog. We promise it will be worth the wait!