Today's Tangle - X's and O's

"X's and O's" is by Donna Stanchfield. Donna's original version of the pattern is posted HERE at Pattern-Collections but I drew today's tile by following her updated step-out. The new version is much easier to follow but it is only posted HERE in the Anything Goes - Tangled Art For Everyone Facebook group, which is a private group. Click HERE to join the group.

UPDATE: Donna let me know that you can also download the pattern from her personal Facebook page HERE.

I decided to fill the background with black for more contrast. I also highlighted the orbs with a white charcoal pencil. If you compare my tile to the pattern, you'll see that I only drew one orb between the motifs instead of two.

ZENTANGLE PROJECT PACK 11

Last Friday, the folks at Zentangle announced that Project Pack No.11 will begin on September 20, 2020. You can buy the project pack HERE. In their description of the project pack, they mention that there will be something new included in the pack. After reading about the theme for the project, I'm wondering if there will be a new tile shape. My guess is that they will be either hexagon or octagon shaped tiles but I will just have to wait and see.

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Today's Tangle - Rota Mirrored

"Rota Mirrored" is by Verena Bossert and her pattern is posted HERE at Pattern-Collections. Ellen Wolters has a video tutorial HERE.

UPDATE: The Pattern-Collections website has shut down. Click HERE to view this pattern.

Today's Tangles - Skye

Today's tile features "Skye" by Margaret Bremner. You'll find her step-out HERE on her blog. I drew the design using the method that I learned from David Nicholls. Read about it HERE in my previous post where you will also find a step-out that shows how to draw "Skye" on a grid.

Today's Tangles - A Sampler of Celtic Knots

Today's tile features my experiments with three Celtic knot designs. After watching several YouTube videos by David Nicholls, I tried some of his designs on graph paper the other night. The one in the lower left on my tile is David's "Celtic Design 5" and the one to the right of it is his "Celtic Design 7".

Click HERE to see David's entire Celtic knot playlist. Click HERE to watch the Celtic Design 5 video and HERE to watch his Celtic Design 7 video.

The knot design across the top of my tile is "Skye" by Margaret Bremner. You'll find her step-out HERE on her blog. I had attempted to draw her tangle a couple of times before but always gave up in frustration. I find it very difficult to draw "S" shapes freehand as shown on her step-out. You have to get the size and spacing perfect or nothing will work right. While watching David's videos, in particular the ones where he shows how to add "breaks", I got to wondering if it would be possible to draw "Skye" using his method for drawing Celtic knots. As you can see, it worked! It was so much easier than using Margaret's method because I could draw it on a grid for more control over size and placement.

Below you can see how I drew "Skye" using David's method. I purposely drew it big and chunky so that you can see what's going on. The grid and circles were drawn in pencil. The dark pencil lines that you see in the first step are "breaks" and they serve to create the gaps in the design. David explains how to use them in his Celtic Design 7 video. I drew the design roughly in pencil in the second step and finally in pen in the last step. This is two motifs or segments of Skye. To make it wider, just repeat the same thing as many times are you like.

Today's Tangle - Jenny's Celtic Knots (Celtic Design 3)

Just for fun I drew one more Celtic knot border tile, this time with a Delft blue look. It was a challenge to come up with four filler designs that would work going around corners. It's a little busy but I like it.

"Jenny's Celtic Knots" pattern is by Jenny Guest. You will have to join the Pattern-Collections Facebook group to see Jenny's step-out which is posted HERE. Click HERE to become a member of the group.

Jenny recommends a series of videos by David Nicholls. Click HERE to watch his "Celtic Design 3" video where he shows how to draw the border that is featured on today's tile. Click HERE to access his entire Celtic knots playlist.

Today's Tangle - Jenny's Celtic Knots (Celtic Design 3)

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I wanted to try drawing a colorful version of this design and here is the result. There are four strands in the design so I used four different colors.

"Jenny's Celtic Knots" (aka Celtic Design 3) pattern is by Jenny Guest. You will have to join the Pattern-Collections Facebook group to see Jenny's step-out which is posted HERE. Click HERE to become a member of the group.

Jenny mentioned that she learned how to draw Celtic knots by watching a series of videos by David Nicholls. Click HERE to watch his "Celtic Design 3" video where he shows how to draw the border that is on today's tile. Click HERE to access his entire Celtic knots playlist. His method makes it easy and fun to draw Celtic knots.
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Today's Tangle - Jenny's Celtic Knots

"Jenny's Celtic Knots" pattern is by Jenny Guest. You will have to join the Pattern-Collections Facebook group to see Jenny's step-out which is posted HERE. Click HERE to become a member of the group.

Jenny breaks down this complicated-looking design into very simple steps. Something that isn't explained on her step-out is that you must draw the little circles in pencil so that they can be erased later. I drew this on a 16x16 pencil grid on a 3.5x3.5" kraft paper tile. I think it might be fun to color the knots in four different colors so I'll probably try that next. 

UPDATE: HERE is a YouTube video that is very helpful.

 

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Today's Tangle - Nayu

"Nayu" is by Emiko Kaneko CZT and she posted her step-out HERE on Facebook. She features this pattern in THIS YouTube video along with "Sistar" and "I Can Too". I want to try following her video soon and I thought it would be a good idea to practice drawing "Nayu" first.

I found it helpful to divide each grid square diagonally from corner to corner and then again horizontally and vertically lightly with a pencil. Doing so helped me position the elements correctly.

Today's Tangle - Virya

"Virya" is by Priya Sabhlok and you'll find her step-out HERE at TanglePatterns. I drew mine on a spiral string.

Today's Tangles - Flowerleaf Duo & Flowerleaf Multi

"Flowerleaf Duo" and "Flowerleaf Multi" are by Sylvia Heijenrath. You will find her patterns HERE and HERE at Pattern-Collections. 

UPDATE: The Pattern-Collections website has shut down. Click HERE and HERE to view these patterns.

I didn't realize when I drew my tiles that I was actually drawing a combination of two slightly different patterns. Both are based on the same motif. The "duo" version features two connected motifs and the "multi" version is based on four motifs combined like a flower.

I drew the tile below first but wasn't keen on the yellow parts so I drew the tile above and left the design open and airy.

Today's Tangle - Namiel

"Namiel" is by Shie Naritomi and her step-out is posted HERE on Instagram.

Yesterday I finished updating the index of blog post links for all of the tangles that I have blogged about. When you click the link on the right where it says "LINKS TO ALL PATTERNS ON THIS BLOG - Patterns from A-Z", it will take you to my website server space where the list is stored. The index is so huge that it spans nine HTML pages but they are linked through an alphabetical navigation bar at the top and bottom of each page. There is also a link back to my blog at the top of each page. Note that the blog post with the old index of links is still online but I won't be updating it anymore due to issues with the new Blogger interface.

If you want to take a quick look at the new tangle index, click HERE.

Today's Tangle - Roman Well

"Roman Well" is by Marguerite Samama and her step-out is posted HERE on Instagram. My tile was inspired by one of her example tiles.

Today's Tangle - Munchin

"Munchin" is an official Zentangle pattern created by Molly Hollibaugh. Click HERE for more information about this tangle. It doesn't show up well here but I added a metallic silver glitter dot at the tip of each Munchin.

Today's Tangle - Squoven

"Squoven" is by Mandy Needham and you'll find her step-out HERE at Pattern-Collections. Ellen Wolters has a video HERE.

UPDATE: The Pattern-Collections website has shut down. Click HERE to view this pattern.

Today's Tangle - Twisted

"Twisted" is by Hennie Brouwer and her pattern is posted HERE at Pattern-Collections. Ellen Wolters has a video tutorial for this pattern HERE and she shows how to draw it using a different method. Instead of a dot grid, she uses a box grid. 

UPDATE: The Pattern-Collections website has shut down. Click HERE to view this pattern.

I haven't tried Ellen's method but I did start with a box grid because I couldn't think of any way to draw a dot grid without any special tools. However, I found the lines of the grid very distracting when following the step-out so, for my second attempt, I erased all of the grid lines except where the grid lines intersect. Instead of a dots, mine looked more like little crosses. This did make it a little easier to draw the pattern without losing my place.

Below you can see my first attempt which has a little mistake in the bottom left corner.

Today's Tangle - Boterbloem

"Boterbloem" is by Ellen Wolters and her pattern is found HERE at Pattern-Collections. Ellen has a video tutorial HERE on YouTube. I colored my tile with colored pencil blended with odorless mineral spirits and added some metallic gold accents.

UPDATE: The Pattern-Collections website has shut down. Click HERE to view this pattern.

Something a little different...

I haven't had time to do any drawing in a few days but I wanted to post something so that I can test out the new Blogger editor. I thought I would show you some things that I drew many years ago. You see, I've been interested in drawing and art for most of my life but only for my own enjoyment and never professionally. I took art classes in school but never really studied ART. When I got interested in tangling and Zentangle about three years ago, I hadn't done any drawing to speak of since I was in college way back in the late 1970's. That was almost 40 years ago!

My first memory of drawing anything was when I was somewhere between eight and twelve years old in the 1960's. Back then they often posted ads in magazines such as the ones below.

I surprised my parents one day by drawing one of those test pictures. I don't remember which one I drew first but I still have three of them. Below are my drawings:

When I was a bit older, I got interested in drawing fashion designs. I loved coming up with my own designs and colored them with colored pencils and markers. I never actually made the clothes. I only drew pictures of them and compiled them into "catalogs". Below are a few examples of my later designs which I chose so that you can see that my love of drawing patterns began a very long time ago.

In high school, I liked to doodle in class and I still have the doodles below:

I also did some drawing while I was in college. Below you can see a drawing of my own legs and feet and also one of a good friend in her dorm room.

Below are three more drawings that I did in college which I entered in an art exhibit. I remember that I won $100!

Hopefully I will have some time for tangling again soon but I do have a big project that I need to tackle. THIS blog post, where I keep a running list of every tangle that I have blogged about, will have to be moved to another website. I am no longer unable to open that post for editing in the new Blogger editor. Instead of adding to that post on my blog, I will have to manually write an HTML page and upload it to my own web space. First I need to come up with a format that will be easy to update every time I need to add more tangles and blog post links to the list. Once I have the web page created, I will replace the link on the right side of my blog so that it will take you to the new page.