How to draw BIRDS ON A WIRE

Usually I have my patterns planned for a while in advance so imagine my delight earlier this week at the serendipity of seeing CZT Laura Harms’ weekly challenge use CZT Mary Kissel’s Birds On a Wire tangle when it was scheduled to appear here today. I love when coincidences happen like that. I have no idea what it means, but I love when it happens.

Mary is located in Gurnee, Illinois and this is her first tangle on the site. “Birds On a Wire came to me one day as I was driving. I saw exactly that, birds sitting on the wires. Rows of them, all sitting there lined up and facing the same direction.” Mary has done a great job of translating the image she observed into a non-representational pattern for Zentangle®.

Birds On a Wire is an interesting and unusual pattern. When I was drawing my example I was having issues spacing the spiral strokes in Step 1 to my satisfaction. It wasn’t until I was adding shading and I turned it upside down that I noticed those strokes are like the number 6 with a bit of an extra inside curl. Thus my quick tip if you too are having spacing problems: turn it upside down and draw “fancy” 6’s 🙂

Mary illustrates the steps for drawing Birds On a Wire here on her blog together with two completed monotangle Zentangle tiles featuring her tangle and some variations.

Check out the tag maryk for more of Mary’s patterns on TanglePatterns.com.

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