How to draw 7 KEYS

Happy Labor Day Monday, I hope you’ve been enjoying a lovely long weekend.

We sports fans are pleased that the college football season is finally underway and there’s been no shortage of entertainment this weekend, even into this evening. Makes for some fine tangling time too!

Today my CZT7 classmate Teresa Clerc shares her 7 Keys tangle with us. Be sure to check out her fun Boomerangs and M-Anning tangles.

When Teresa came up with 7 Keys she was feeling affected by the deadly wildfires in Greece at the end of July that claimed many lives. This tragedy didn’t receive as much media coverage in the U.S. as California’s devastating wildfires, but both were powerful and deadly.

A classic Greek Key (or fret) pattern, 7 Keys belongs in the same family as the Zentangle®-originals Emingle and Ambler. A dictionary definition of Greek Key is “a pattern of interlocking right-angled spirals”.

In an interesting article on The Washington Post about the Greek Key, decorating expert and author Elizabeth Mayhew writes,

Greek key, also referred to as meander, is in its most basic form a linear pattern. The design is made up of a long, continuous line that repeatedly folds back on itself, mimicking the ancient Maeander River of Asia Minor with its many twists and turns.

… What is most astonishing about the meander motif is that it is found in the architecture, sculpture and decorative arts of many early civilizations — civilizations that could not possibly have known or seen one another’s artifacts. It seems that those cultures, independent of one another, created their own version of the motif.

But it’s the Greeks who used the motif with abandon, hence the reason we most commonly refer to it as the Greek key. The Romans then copied it, and by the 18th century, all of Europe had adapted it into their design vocabulary.

You can learn more about the Greek Key on Wikipedia as well.

As for 7 Keys. It took a bit of practice for me to get the spacing figured out so that everything connects up correctly in Step 4, but otherwise 7 Keys is very easy and makes a striking ribbon-style tangle in your tiles whether left as a simple decorative line or inked in for a more dramatic presence.

Teresa illustrates the step-by-step instructions for drawing 7 Keys below and she features it with several Zentangle-original tangles in her lovely tiles.

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Check out the tag teresac for more of Teresa’s tangles on TanglePatterns.com.

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5. Linda's List of Zentangle-Original Patterns — here is the complete list of original tangles (aka "official tangles") created and introduced by founders Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas, including those not published online. If you are new to the Zentangle Method I highly recommend learning a few of the published Zentangle classics first.
6. "A Zentangle has no up or down and is not a picture of something, so you have no worries about whether you can draw a hand, or a duck. You always succeed in creating a Zentangle." Thus patterns that are drawings of a recognizable naturalistic or actual object, figure, or scene, are not tangles. A pattern is not always a tangle — here's what makes a tangle. TIP: tangles never start with pencil planning.
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