Tis the Season for Zentangle Hearts!!!

Saturday, January 24, 2015

My students have been BEGGING me to try zentangle again since we made the zentangle pumpkins and trees around the holidays. Sooooo, we took a third crack at it! Since Valentine's Day is fast approaching, we tried out this strategy with HEARTS. I literally handed the students a blank piece of paper and told them to draw a heart as big as the page and that it did NOT matter which way the paper was facing. I LOVE using this strategy instead of having the students use a pre drawn template because the heart shapes come out so unique and CUTE!!! Here is a pic of one of their rough drafts.

Zentangle Heart Rough Draft

I have continued to research different zentangle patterns and compiled different examples of designs to show my students. You can download this tool here. It really helped my students to expand their thinking and not just draw simple lines or circles.

Here are a few examples of the beginning stages of patterns and designs that the students chose to use. It is exciting to see students of all abilities get excited and invested into this project. Don't get me wrong though, this is definitely a 4-5 day process! Here is the timeline:

Day#1: 1st Draft-Draw the outline of the heart

Day #2: Begin inserting designs into different sections

(1 design per section!)

Day #3: Finish designs in 1st Draft

Day #4: Students apply sharpie to Positive Space (Usually the black shaded areas)

Day #5: Students use water colors to apply color. If students have watercolor pencils, this can help with shading and adding lightness and darkness which is great for color contrast. BUT, simple watercolors work as well. They can always add shading when dry with chalk or oil pastels.
Here are a few examples of how the zentagle hearts turned out. I LOVE how they look!