How to draw THEREFORE

My personal recollection of this embellishment is from American artist Mary Engelbreit‘s colorful, whimsical art.

Mary herself was inspired by the illustrations in children’s storybooks from the early 1900’s. She writes:

“I taught myself by copying old illustrations from my mother’s storybooks, and if you do that long enough, you start developing your own style, which for me happened slowly but surely.”

For those who may not be familiar with Mary, one of her first greeting cards and later a book “Life Is Just a Chair of Bowlies” is probably her most iconic piece. Once you’ve seen Mary’s work, her style is instantly recognizable. Colorful patterns of all sorts fill every piece of her art.

Suffice it to say this pattern of three solid dots or hollow orbs arranged like the math symbol Therefore, has been around for many years. When I first began TanglePatterns in 2010 I used the Mary-inspired three dots background in my example of Ahh.

On January 12, 2018, Zentangle co-founder Maria posted a tile in the Zentangle Mosaic app using this embellishment and gave it a Zentangle name – Therefore.

For my Therefore example I decided to give it some order, rather than it being a free-form, random type of fill. Therefore, I placed it in a grid pattern 🙂

UPDATE March 4, 2020 – Project Pack #8. As part of the Dancing in the Moonlight project pack, with Rick keeping her company, at 18:21 Maria tangles Therefore on one of several different black prestrung Zendala tiles during this video:

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UPDATE December 22, 2020 – Project Pack #12. As part of the 12 Days of Zentangle, 2020 Zentangle Renaissance project pack, Maria tangles Mi2, Mooka and Therefore on a regular square Renaissance tan tile.

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Check out the tag zentangle for more Zentangle-original (aka “official”) tangles on TanglePatterns.com.

For a complete list of Zentangle’s Project Packs click the PROJECT PACKS link in the pink alphabetic tangle menu bar.

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