Zentangle... My tangles, then and now

So there's really nothing new here today. If you've followed my blog for a while, you've probably seen most of these before. Some of you may know (or maybe you don't) but I'm an admin over on the Zentangle® facebook group. Feel free to come join us if you haven't yet! Anyway, we get a lot of people that question their work or are really hard on themselves.  I totally UNDERSTAND it, I just wish I could make them confident right away. :) But anyway, my point is we all start somewhere right?

I had a request to share some of my older work both there and here, so I'm going to blog about some of it and share it with you and also post it over there so people can see. As my friend (and gifted artist)  Cherryl Moote says, "Don't compare your chapter 1 to someone else's chapter 20."

This is the first piece I ever put together all on my own

So today, I want to share some of my early tangles as well as some of my recent ones, kind of a now and then to show growth.
It's been quite the journey!

I still don't like diamonds. I struggle with them. I find that I avoid patterns that contain them  actually. 

This is one of my "nemesis" tangles. I think because I had such a hard time with Amler, and never really was happy with the results I achieved. This one left me thinking "Can I do this?"

So, I actually GAVE UP on cubine here, I was like.. yeah... NOPE. That was the ONLY paradox I was successful at for the first 6 months and my purk is kinda.... lacking. But, this was the tile that made me realize I was hooked. 

I loved Betweed instantly. LOVED it. Had no idea where I'd ever use it other than Halloween, yet I find it's a mac and cheese tangle for me and I use it all the time!

So those were some of my earliest tangles. They don't look too bad, but I was so hard on myself. I see looking at them how much I've grown and I've decided that over the next week I'm going to redo each of these patterns and showcase them side by side to see how my style has changed as well. :) That'll be fun!

In the meantime, some recent work.

They're posted with their flaws and their uniqueness and the parts I love and the parts I can't "unsee" no matter how hard I try... but they are very straightforward in showing how much I've grown in my skills.

People ask how to improve. :) It's all practice and love and zen.

Deep breath, pick up the pen.
And go...