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.