"Made in the Shade a Zentangle Workbook" book review

As promised (teased) last night, here is the review on the book Made in the Shade a Zentangle Workbook by Cris Letourneau.

I received this as a birthday gift last week, my friend M asked me what I wanted for my birthday and I quickly jumped on this book, I had been wanting it for a while now.

This is a fairly new book, it's 124 pages long so it's no lightweight when it comes to content. As the title suggests, this is all about shading your tangles and doodles. This book is both for the newby and the seasoned doodler, there is something for everyone in here.

Cris is a CZT, certified Zentangle Teacher which means attended a seminar given by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas. She has been tangling since October 2010.


This book is chock full of demonstrations on the various ways you can shade, you can take one doodle and shade it in multiple different ways and come out with completly different works of art.

Shading takes an ordinary doodle and makes it pop off of the page, creates depth and complexity that wasn't there before. I have been tangling and doodling for a while now and wanted to take my work to the next level, this book showed me the way to do that.

There are many exercises in this book, and room on the pages to practice what she teaches, though she and I recommend that you photocopy the work pages and work from those instead of working directly in your book, that gives you the opportunity to practice more than once on a particular thing, you can also see yourself growing as you learn.

You can take an ordinary tangle or doodle and shade it in different ways and end up with different looks, I like to create a tangle then photocopy multiple copies of it so that I can play around with different ways of shading and coloring it.

There are lots of full page tangles that allow you to see details that you wouldn't see if it were small. This gave me a lot of ideas and inspiration, it will for you too :)

 This is one of my favorite pictures in the book, she teaches how she shades a seahorse tangle. The following page is a full page illustration of the unshaded seahorse tangle for you to practice on.

This is the page that sold me on this book, you can clearly see the difference between the unshaded tangle and the shaded one. It really does add depth to your work, making it pop off of the page!

• This book shows you step by step instructions for shading artistically.
• Tips and notes to help you develop your own style
• 60 exercises to learn new techniques
• 50 ideas for shading 20 official tangles
• 4 complete projects to teach you to analyze a tile and use shading to create a focal point, improve contrast, add dimension and enhance the overall design
• 12 new tangles
• 36 tiles, 6 ATCs, 3 Zendalas,and 4 ZIAs from artists around the world

Cris' website is:
http://www.TangledUpInArt.com

Made in the Shade: a Zentangle Workbook








I also reviewed this book on Bubblews
http://www.bubblews.com/news/1000012-quotmade-in-the-shade-a-zentangle-workbookquot-book-review