How to draw CASELLA

By Linda Farmer, CZT

The tangle Casella comes to us from Conny Holsappel of The Netherlands, and this is her first pattern on TanglePatterns. Conny has taken Zentangle® classes with Mariët Lustenhouwer and Mariët posted Casella on her blog.

Conny introduces herself and explains her inspiration for her Casella tangle pattern:

“I live in IJsselmuiden, not far away from Dronten, where Mariët lives. I’d like to be busy with many sorts of creative things: working with flowers, making beads from clay, calligraphy and illuminating and so on. I’ve never enough time! I met Mariët on a course for illuminating and she asked me if I was interested in following lessons in zentangle. I had never heard about it until that very moment, but I started in November last year and I already have had 10 lessons now. I like it and I wish I had more time for tangling. …

When you are looking around you discover patterns in many things. On our holiday, when I was relaxed, I was surprised by that. We were in Italy and visited Ravenna with the beautiful mosaics. There I saw for example the pattern Coaster on a floor made 6 [or was it eight?] centuries ago! And of course there is a lot you can translate in a pattern. That is what I did with Casella. Sella is the name of a valley in northern Italy where you can make a wandering [mostly through the forest] with artistworks along the whole way. It was wonderful! One of them inspired my pattern [see photo below]. I puzzled a long time about the way it was constructed and I can’t figure it out precisely. Casella isn’t logical either, but maybe that is just charming. Casella is the Italian word for little house along the way and I think my pattern looks like little houses on each other. Even though it has the meaning of ‘Conny At Sella‘.”

Conny took these photos of the sculpture she mentions above that inspired Casella. Her step-by-step instructions for drawing Casella are found on Mariët’s blog, here. Thanks to Conny and Mariët for sharing!