X is a tangle pattern from Lila Popcheff from “Shellharbour, a sunny seaside place on the southcoast of New South Wales, Australia … population of just over 3300″, and it’s her first on the site.
According to Wikipedia, the Shellharbour area “was inhabited by indigenous Australians for thousands of years. European habitation began from about 1817 onwards.” I always find it fascinating to learn about other parts of the world and Shellharbour seems like a beautiful little spot in a faraway corner of the planet.
As for Lila, she has plans to move to the US soon and “would dearly love to be a CZT”.
“I discovered Zentangle around Christmas time in 2011 – just a little over a year ago and have been hooked ever since. Like most people I’ve always doodled and love patterns. I do love to draw but have never been good at it and prefer abstract art – so Zentangle® was perfect for me! …
I tangle every day and even do some during my lunchbreaks at work. I’ve shown so many people and they are amazed because it looks so complicated to them. They ask how long did it take you to do it? – I say not very long really, some could take hours but I tell them I love it, time doesn’t matter.
My pattern ‘X’ came to me unexpectedly when I was doing one of my many cardstock stars for Christmas. In my original, I used ‘dotles’ and when I finished it I thought it would make quite a lovely Zentangle pattern by modifying it with circles instead of ‘paint dots’. I think it has a lot of scope for variations, and all would look just as unique.“
X is deceptively easy to draw and has a surprising number of variations. Start out with a circle or orb in the center of a section and add five orbs spaced around it. Connect the orbs up with X’s then add more orbs and connect them in the same fashion. The X’s can then be filled in various ways and the orbs embellished too if you fancy. This tangle can grow organically as large as the section you wish to fill.
Lila, or Poppie_60 as she’s known on flickr, illustrates the steps for drawing X here and shows several variations of the pattern. I used Lila’s first variation for my example and added a dot in the center of the orbs. Thanks for sharing, Lila!
Update: Lila also worked out a straight-line version and shows the steps for this alternate way of drawing X here.
Check out the tag lilap for more of Lila’s patterns on TanglePatterns.com.
Looks like fun!
I like this one. Thanks for sharing. I have started a note book and have drawn a-n so far before I ran out of room in my book… I look forward to drawing this one too!
Thank you Linda!!
I am so excited and honoured you have included me on your wonderful site.
Blessings xx