8 of Diamonds revisited

On one of the Facebook groups there is a challenge to try out a tangle called 'Fan club' and also 'Fluxecho'. As I played around with those two similar tangles I remembered that my tangle '8 of Diamonds' also starts in the same way. (I came up with that tangle back in February 2011.)  8 of diamonds goes on very differently from the same start so it's not related to these two but it was fun to go back and see what I could do with that tangle today.

I looked at my first stepouts and knew that I could redo them and simplify the process. I hope you like these better.

Then I fooled around with variations. There were so many different ways I could go with it!

CRA CRA tangle pattern

CRA CRA in the background

CRA CRA on a zendala

CRA CRA is a new tangle pattern that I spotted in the background of an ad on TV. I found myself freezing the TV and getting my sketchpad out so I could deconstruct it. It looks pretty complicated but it wasn't too hard to break down. 

In the step outs above I started with a simple stylized V shape. It's important to keep the V shapes close together and I put two pencil dots in the first step to indicate that. Once you've done it a few times you don't need those dots at all. Repeat the V shapes twice below the first. Next start the V shapes but bring them down to meet the V shape below. Repeat so you have 4 lines. Then shade as desired. Look at the bottom of this post for an alternate way to draw this. 

This tangle pattern has some similarities to other tangle patterns - I would say that Y-not is more or less a cousin to this tangle. You may see other tangles that belong to the same family. Please let me know so I can add them.



This is an alternate way to draw the tangle that was drawn by Lynn Shelton Mead. THANKS Lynn! Try it out to see what works best for you. Just be sure to eave yourself enough room for the lines in between.

Icantoo

'Icantoo' is the tangle pattern that was the challenge here. It's a lovely tangle from Hanny Nura. You can find the step outs by going to her blog at https://www.zenjoy.ch/blog-co/stepouts-1/icantoo/

I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with it so I flipped through some of my older tiles looking for inspiration. I came across a zendala I had done using a template from 'the bright owl'.  Erin, who writes the bright owl blog, hasn't been active for a while but her blog is still there and you can still look through the older posts for all sorts of inspiration. This template is from Dare 112.

This is how it looked before I did any shading.

I added shading here and thought I was done but the more I looked at it the more I thought it wasn't quite done. So I added small elements of the 'Icantoo' at the corners.

Blue String pull

Finally got a new string pull tangled. Working on colored paper gave me a chance to tangle with a colored pen and add highlights with my white charcoal pencil. I also added a soft white border around the edges with the white charcoal pencil too.

This is the string pull before I added the tangles.

We are lucky to have an active group of Zentangle artists here in the Northern Illinois area. At the last meeting we did string pulls as a group. This picture is all the pulls as the ink was drying.