ORGANIZING MY DRAWINGS

I have often heard questions about the best way to organize drawings. To be more specific, the topic is how to file Zentangle paper tiles. In this post, I am sharing the tile filing method that works well for me at this point.

One of my big projects for this year was to find a way to sort through the stashes of paper tiles, organize my drawings and systematize them in a way that was logical and possibly also inspiring.

A great thing about the Zentangle method is that we use small paper tiles, so even though I’ve been creating a lot, my drawings don’t take too much space. This task is not as daunting as it would be if I have been using bigger canvases.

What I started with

Even before I started working on this particular organization project, I had several things already established.

In November of 2018, I went to the CZT seminar in Providence and that is when I created my first album. It showcased some of the drawings created during the three years since I discovered the Zentangle method. I decided not to change that album because I like looking at it. It is a nice testament to that phase of my journey.

So, this time I focused on the drawings created after 2018. Some were stashed in a plastic box, and others were kept in plastic sleeves in different binders.

Using binders to organize drawings

One of my binders was a designated Tangle Lab binder, where I keep the drawings that I created in my monthly Tangle Lab live online classes. In addition to that, it kept some samples that inspired me for the class, or drawings that I have created for the bonus or follow-up videos.

 

There was another binder that hosted the drawings created for the video-on-demand classes that I published throughout the years, for other events where I was teaching, or as a part of some personal projects.

 

However, even those two binders have been neglected for at least a year or so, but at least most tiles that should have been filed in them were kept in separate boxes.

Which left me with all of those tiles that didn’t belong in either of those two categories. Perhaps you know how much I draw, or maybe you saw my social media profiles with more than two thousand drawings. It’s a lot!

The filing method I used

I decided to apply one filter to whatever passed through my hands. It was the Marie Condo-inspired filter, which meant that I was asking myself one key question when I took each drawing in my hands: does it spark joy?

Those drawings that didn’t spark joy were stashed in a box , where I can revisit them if I want, but they are not wasting any of the precious space in my filing system.

The drawings that sparked joy were filed in the third binder. Many of them have at least one segment (tangle, other detail, supply, technique…) that might inspire me to draw more or maybe even prepare a class that revolves around whatever it is that I love about them. Keeping those joy-sparking tiles in the binder allows me to easily flip through them and add notes.

 

Finally, I have four categories of my drawings:

  1. buried in the depths of my boxes 🙂
  2. filed in my “sparks joy” binder
  3. filed in my “Tangle Lab” binder
  4. filed in my “other projects” binder.

My plan for the future is to use a plastic box again to stash all my drawings for a couple of months. After that, I will go through the same filing system again but now I will have the designated boxes and binders which will make everything easier and more logical. Finally, this filing system should even enable me to be more productive.

I hope that this post will inspire some of you to find your own optimal filing system. 

March, 2025

Written by Anica Gabrovec CZT

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