How to draw CHARLOTTE

Wow, it’s “a November to remember” in the weather department for everyone who lives around the Great Lakes, particularly the Buffalo area. Five feet of snow within hours!!! Holy moly. And more is on the way. The images on The Weather Channel on TV and online are mind boggling.”A year’s worth of snow in three days.” For the tanglers and everyone affected by Mother Nature’s November surprise, keep warm and stay safe! If you can stand another look, check these photos out from Canada’s Global News.

Canadian CZT Margaret Bremner has shared many lovely tangles with the Zentangle® community and today we are featuring her Charlotte pattern.

I believe this is Margaret’s 30th!! tangle pattern on the site and you can find them all in the TANGLES BY ARTIST section in the left sidebar by clicking on the tag margaretb.

About her inspiration for Charlotte she writes, “Back in April I had a flight layover in Charlotte, North Carolina, where I noticed this simple pattern on a wall beside a highway near the airport. I have since noticed it here in Saskatoon.”

Charlotte begins with parallel lines across a section of your Zentangle. Then the fun begins! By that I mean my brain found the zigzag lines of Margaret’s second step a bit confusing, it wanted my pen to go left when it should have gone right and vice versa. Eventually I came up with another way of drawing this tangle.

Example of the “blocky” letter I-shape

I noticed this blocky letter I-shape on each line (or a shallow H if you turn it 90°), and that pairs of these were connected on the line below by the same I-shape. You can see this in the shaded parts of my example above.

As a result of this deep philosophical analysis 🙂 I created rows of offset I-shapes and ended up with the desired result. Once I began thinking of I-shapes I was able to get my cerebellum working correctly for Margaret’s Step 2.

Margaret illustrates the step-by-step instructions for drawing Charlotte here on her blog and she shows three lovely Zentangles in her distinctive style featuring Charlotte with some cool variations to try.

Check out the tag margaretb for more of Margaret’s tangles on TanglePatterns.com.

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