My new afternoon guilty pleasure: YouTangle.Art cards
I told you a couple of weeks ago about the organic way in which contacts happen on Instagram. This is another example: I am an avid buyer of Hahnemühle square sketchbooks. I love their 15x15 cm format, especially for sketches that I want to post on Instagram (square, that's the thing). It happened to me once that they had run out of them in my art supplies shop: since then I buy two or three of them every time I go to that shop. Just in case. So, I have a drawer in my studio full of them at any time. One day back in August I was excited about starting a new sketchbook and I posted about it on Instagram. I tagged Hahnemühle, of course. And they started following my work and reposting, also in Facebook, some of my daily sketches. Nice, I thought.
Then a mail came offering me to test for them some new product they were about to launch: the tangling cards YouTangle.Art.
I love to tangle since before I knew there was a word for what I was doing filling in with patterns the wild doodles of a child, remember? I have even transformed in the past some of that kind of repeating but evolving art in fashion sketches and motifs for products.
You can imagine my answer to Hahnemühle was a big yes. I was delighted to tangle on those little cards. They had sent me some twenty of them and first I thought I would use only a couple of them. But the thing is: it is an addictive activity. You start, the drawing develops sort of by itself and while you are focused on the little surface of the card you get ideas of how to do the next one, new approaches, new colours... even new uses. I did one of them as a gift tag.
I tried very different sorts of pens and markers. From Faber-Castell PITT artist, over Staedtler pigment liner and Lumocolor, to edding 1800 profipen, even plain ballpoint pens. Perfect with all of them: they run easy over the soft but solid paper, they don't smear and dry very quickly.
I am sure there are a lot of theories about tangling out there. I don't know any of them. But for me it works relaxing and close to meditation. I tell you: coffee time after lunch, one tangling card and your favourite podcast. It is fantastic. I did my today's daily doodle for the #365doodleswithjohannafritz like that. What? I haven't told you about it? I will. Oh! And tangling and Inktober are such a good match: we still have 11 days of Inktober left, it's not too late!
I will also tell you, if you want, what are the "methods" you can use when you don't know how to start a tangle (going on is never a problem). And of course you can tangle on every piece of paper, you don't need any special kind of equipment. But I have to say these cards are really nice: as I said the paper quality is perfect, the size allows you to focus on it and not to exceed the time like you would do on a big paper sheet, then they come in their beautiful metallic box where you can keep your art and they make a perfect present. I know they are on the market since a couple of days ago and I have checked myself: you can buy them for example on Kunstpark.
And I will tell here for sure about the nice new sketchbooks I received from Hahnemühle as thank you for my collaboration. I might have found my new favourite sketchbook.