How to draw B-LEAF

As you might recall from my commentary of years past, Labor Day marks the peak of our hurricane season. It’s a day on the calendar we Floridians keep an eye on as the Atlantic Ocean has been heating up all summer long.

While we escaped a Labor Day storm this year, a hurricane watch is on with Hurricane Florence this week. This worrisome storm is currently headed towards the East Coast, particularly the Carolinas, by the end of this week.

Today is the first “anniversary” of Hurricane Irma, “the costliest storm in the history of the U.S. state of Florida” which made landfall through The Keys and traveled all the way up the middle of the state a year ago.

We have not-so-fond memories of being enclosed in the dark for hours while the wind howled and the rain blew sideways but we were very fortunate and escaped major damage in our neighborhood. It’s easy to move on in our lives but in Irma’s aftermath many thousands of folks are still trying to recover “normal” in their lives, particularly in the very hard-hit Florida Keys. The after-effects linger on for a long time and recovery can be frustratingly slow.

So, prayers and fingers crossed for everyone in the path of Hurricane Florence.

B-Leaf is a fitting thought this week and it’s another lovely tangle to explore from Spanish tangler Tomàs Padrós.

Tomàs writes,

I have enjoyed a vacation time. I have moved away from the noise and stress of the big city to take refuge in the countryside.

In this natural environment, B-Leaf emerged. Reminds me a piece of cloth or a pair of twisted leaves. Hence the name.

The B of B-Leaf is pronounced the same as the Greek prefix Bi which means two or double.

Belief also means faith, trust, and that requires a conversion, a change of orientation, a turn to look in a new direction. I like this concept. Trust is a beautiful and powerful humanizing experience. 

This pattern is quite versatile. It can be used in isolated units but also as a ribbon and as an ogee grid pattern. It also admits many possible variations of decoration that allows adapting it to the taste of each one.

Tomàs’s illustrations of B-Leaf as a single motif, as a ribbon tangle, and as an ogee grid tangle.

Tomàs has provided three separate sets of step-by-step instructions for drawing B-Leaf, each with its own lovely tile. In this first set of a free-form style B-Leaf, I love all the twisty variations Tomàs demonstrates on the “isolated units” in his tile.

Image copyright the artist and used with permission, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please feel free to refer to the steps images to recreate this tangle in your personal Zentangles and ZIAs, or to link back to this page. However the artist and TanglePatterns.com reserve all rights to these images and they must not be publicly pinned, altered, reproduced or republished. They are for your personal offline reference only. Thank you for respecting these rights. Click the image for an article explaining what copyright means in plain English. “Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.” ~ C.S. Lewis

In this second set of steps Tomàs demonstrates how to tangle B-Leaf as a ribbon-style tangle.

Image copyright the artist and used with permission, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please feel free to refer to the steps images to recreate this tangle in your personal Zentangles and ZIAs, or to link back to this page. However the artist and TanglePatterns.com reserve all rights to these images and they must not be publicly pinned, altered, reproduced or republished. They are for your personal offline reference only. Thank you for respecting these rights.

And lastly in this third set of steps Tomàs illustrates how to tangle B-Leaf in an ogee-grid style tangle.

Image copyright the artist and used with permission, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please feel free to refer to the steps images to recreate this tangle in your personal Zentangles and ZIAs, or to link back to this page. However the artist and TanglePatterns.com reserve all rights to these images and they must not be publicly pinned, altered, reproduced or republished. They are for your personal offline reference only. Thank you for respecting these rights.

As you enjoy any of the tangles on the site, please leave a comment of thanks and encouragement to show the artists you appreciate them for sharing their creativity to inspire yours. Your comment helps motivate them to continue to share!

Check out the tag tomasp for more of Tomàs’s tangles on TanglePatterns.com.

For all our Jewish members of the tangling community …

Related Links

1. Looking for tangles by Artist or Type? For details visit the ABOUT > HOW TO FIND TANGLES BY ARTIST OR TYPE page on the top menu bar of any page on the site.
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3. Zentangle terminology — a glossary of terms used in this art form.
4. How to use the site — an excellent free video tutorial showing how to use the site as well as pointing out lots of useful features you might have missed.
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.
   • Un motif n’est pas toujours un tangle — Qu’est-ce qu’un tangle ?
   • Un diseño no es siempre un tangle — ¿Qué es un tangle?
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