Hump Day Zentangle® Challenge #10 – Stuff Happens & Tangle Your “Chop” Edition

Stuff Happens

It’s still Wednesday (Hump Day) in my neck of the global woods, but I apologize for the fact that this week’s challenge will be published later than intended. I wish I could be as focused as Mr. Excitement and finish projects before they’re actually due, but after 37 years of being married to the guy, I think it’s safe to say that the 2 chances of that happening in my case are exactly slim and none.

We are all admonished to finish assignments ahead of time because, as Woody Allen said:

If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.

In other words, s*it happens. Count on it. Be pleasantly surprised if everything runs smoothly. I keep telling myself this so I won’t be unhinged if/when anything goes wrong with the 11 flights we have planned over 5 weeks this fall. For some reason the Russians Facebook algorithm  has decided it should show me posts about derailed travel plans like: 6 hours on the tarmac, canceled flights, passengers acting badly, the crew (pilots included) having one too many before boarding, ad nauseum.

Today, it was a blessedly minor crisis with my 94 year old mother. It was minor in that it didn’t end in an ambulance or worse, but time consuming nonetheless. If you have a very elderly loved one, it’s difficult not to feel the Sword of Damocles hovering above one’s head. However, sometimes the Sword of Damocles just stays there suspended by a hair, while an unexpected ton of bricks falls right next to it. But, as usual, I digress. And none of this musing gets me closer to hitting “publish” for this week’s Hump Day Zentangle challenge. So, without further procrastination, this week’s challenge is to:

Hump Day Zentangle® Challenge #10: Tangle Your Chop

What, pray tell, is a “chop” you might be asking. It’s actually part of the 7th step in the official, straight from the Mother Ship, Zentangle® method. Since I’ve mentioned it and some Hump Day Challenge followers are Zentangle newbies, here are the 8 steps of the Zentangle method as posited by Maria Thomas and Rick Roberts, the couple who originated the trademarked Zentangle method. 

1. Step  1 – Gratitude and Appreciation- Look at your blank 3.5 inch square “tile”. Be thankful for this time and place.
2. Step 2 – Corner Dots- With your pencil, place a dot in each corner of your tile.
3. Step 3 – Border- Connect the dots to form a border.
4. Step 4 – String- Use your pencil to draw a free form shape or shapes on your tile.
5. Step 5 – Tangle- Use the “string” you’ve drawn on your tile to help you decide where to place your tangles (patterns) in black ink.
6. Step 6 – Shade- Use your pencil  and tortillion to enhance your tangles, often adding more depth to your tile.
7. Step 7 – Initial and Sign.  This is the step where a “chop” comes in.
8. Step 8 – Appreciate.

Since time immemorial, artists have signed their work and/or made some other mark as their personal identifier. Artists who create using the Zentangle method are meant to sign their work on the back of their tile. However, they are also encouraged to “initial” their work on the front of the tile. In China, artists would design a small stamp with their logo to identify their work. This was known as their “chop”. This article describes the history and evolution of artists’ chops.

Now, even modern artists outside China often place their sign or initials on their work. This is commonly referred to as the artist’s chop. Practitioners of the Zentangle method are encouraged to design their own chop. It can be as simple as one’s readily identifiable initials or a stylized version or some other symbol meaningful to the artist. Given my prior life’s work as an attorney, as you can imagine, my chop is somewhat “concrete”. It doesn’t take much of a leap to see an “S” and an “F” in my chop.

The chop on the left is the most wild and crazy I might get with my chop. I most often use the one in the middle. I haven’t really used the one on the far right. I’m saving it for some day when I’m not feeling curvy.

Since this week’s Hump Day Zentangle Challenge is to tangle one’s chop, I did this:

And then, because I needed to distract myself while watching cable news (definitely a very unZentangle method thing to do), I did two. The first one is pretty straightforward:

Here I suspended my initials on a Florz net, and then surrounded it with Phirst (my phirst tangle on TanglePatterns dot com), then a ring of Paradox, and finally a ring of Shattuck.  Note: All the tangles I used in today’s challenge can be found on Linda Farmer’s very helpful website,  Tangle Patterns dot Com

For my last chop tile, I added my chop in several orientations, then did auras around them, and then filled in the interstitial areas with tangles. I tried to add some movement to the tile with not the most skilled shading, using a tortillion (affiliate link*).

I used some old favorite tangles: Cadent, Crescent Moon, Printemps and that one with the boxes cut on the diagonal that I don’t know the name for.

So, if you don’t already have a personal chop, invent one. Then, let’s see how you decide to incorporate it into a tangled tile.  Don’t be shy. You’ll find that the Zentangle community is very supportive and nonjudgmental.

Please Share Your Hump Day Zentangle® Challenge Creations!

Please share your responses to this week’s challenge with us in the Hump Day Challenge Facebook Group and/or on your Instagram, Twitter  or Flickr feeds. Use the hashtag #hdchallenge10.

Note: The Hump Day Zentangle Challenge Facebook group is a “closed” group to discourage axe murderers and other unsavory types. I can’t invite you to join unless we’re already FB friends, but if you request to join, I can add you to the group. Other group members can also admit you to the group.

There are other ways to share your work: We also have a Pinterest group board to share our Hump Day Challenge responses. Email me at suzanne@boomeresque.com if you’d like me to add you as a contributor to the Pinterest board or you can mention that in a comment with your Pinterest name below.

If you have your own blog and are posting your challenge responses there, leave the URL to your blog in a comment below so people can paste it into their browser and find your post. (PS: The first 2 times you comment, I will have to moderate the comment. After your first two comments on Boomeresque, your comments will appear without moderation.)

Consistent with my own struggles with procrastination, feel free to share your work for this or any challenge at any time—even next week, next month, next year, ad infinitum.

A note about Zentangle supplies: I am an Amazon affiliate which means I may earn a few cents if you do your Amazon shopping via affiliate links on this website. A few people have asked me for links to Zentangle supplies. At the end of this post there are links to supplies you may be interested in, including books, pens and colored pencils.

Are you like me or Mr. Excitement when it comes to procrastination?

Tagged as: hump day zentangle challenge, Zentangle