Today's Tangle - Batumber

I wouldn't normally copy someone else's tile but I wasn't happy with the results that I was getting with the pattern called "Batumber" by Kelley Kelly CZT. Mine always came out a little too wonky for my taste. When I saw Windspiel's example HERE on Instagram, I thought the layout she used would be a good way to practice drawing this tangle. Windspiel (Christina Wenzel) used String #209 from the TanglePatterns.com site. You'll find the template HERE. The step-out for "Batumber" is posted HERE. I found a YouTube tutorial for this pattern HERE.

I figured out that the easiest way to draw String #209 was to draw a square grid first like this:

I then drew the various boxes for the template like this:

I kept my pen lines just inside the pencil grid lines so that there would be a little space between the boxes. Practicing on this template worked quite well and also showed me that "Batumber" really is intended to look a little wonky and that's part of its charm. When you look at the composition as a whole, you just see a pretty design. Something that puzzles me though is how Windspiel was able to draw "Batumber" inside those boxes and still have so much space around the petals. It was really a struggle for me to draw everything tiny enough to leave space for adding the little dots between some of the petals, especially in the boxes that have the smallest versions of the pattern. I'm pretty sure that I drew my template at least as big as Windspiel's, judging by the width of the empty space around the outer margins of our tiles. In any case, I'm happy with the way my two examples turned out and I won't hesitate to draw "Batumber" again.

I drew the tile below first. While I'm happy with how it turned out, I actually drew some of it with my eyes closed! I kept dozing off while filling in the black bits and would wake up to find that I had filled in the dots between the petals in some places. Does anyone else tangle in their sleep??? It's the strangest thing to suddenly wake up and discover that I had been drawing with my eyes closed. Even more amazing is that I didn't really mess it up too badly. It reminds me of an exercise that we did once in art class in high school. We had to draw a model who was sitting in front of us without looking at our paper. Of course that didn't go so well but I could tell that it was a person.

I decided to give Windspiel's template one more try being even more careful to squeeze every tiny detail into the small boxes this time. It was still quite a challenge but this tile did come out a little neater, probably because I was awake the whole time this time around. It also gave me the opportunity to use a different color tile and to do the shading with a blue colored pencil instead of graphite. I love how it looks with a touch of color. Here is my second tile: