How to draw LOVE HANDLES

Welcome to the first day of winter in our hemisphere, the good news is we should be getting a little more daylight in our days as we head towards Spring. More daylight is always a good thing.

Here’s our last tangle for 2018!

Although we won’t be seeing each other again “here” until next year, I’ll be preparing the 2019 GUIDE over the holidays for you. And I’m always accepting new tangle submissions for the new year. Email never sleeps! 🙂

The last tangle of the year honor goes to our Spanish tangling friend Tomàs Padrós, who shares this fun Christmas present he calls Love Handles.

Tomàs’s tangles generally seem to explore and exploit optical illusions and Love Handles is his latest with several variations to try out including a cool circular one.

When I was doing my example of Love Handles I was reminded of two older tangles on the site, Worms and Ticking. They each share a similar concept behind them.

Tomàs shares several different ways to explore Love Handles as well as his analytical discussion of how it works.

He writes this is “a funny pattern, like its name: Love Handles“.

I hereby yield “the floor” to Tomàs for his explanation of today’s tangle …

“It is an exercise of auras with curved inflections that generate sensations of bulging folds.

The name is due to an obvious association of ideas. I hope that it does not cause any problems to the CZTs when in their classes they ponder the Love Handles of their students 😉

In the first deconstruction I show a more regular arrangement. The “folds” are arranged at regular intervals. Of course you can turn this pattern into a square fragment with a straight line in the center.

The transverse directions that curve when arriving at the fold are those that generate a volumetric effect, even without shading. In my deconstruction I show a symmetrical arrangement of those lines but it is not necessary. The same direction can always be maintained.

I illustrate this pattern well accompanied by Reticulated (Livia Chua), Florz (Zentangle) and Membranart (Me).”

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. For more information, click on the image for a discussion entitled “Artists for Respect” by several prominent artists. “Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.” ~ C.S. Lewis

“In the second deconstruction I show a freer arrangement.

The folds are curved and have an irregular shape in a random layout. If the first example shows a more flat stomach, with the abdominals somewhat marked yet, in this second proposal we can appreciate the effects of an excess of armchair ;D ”

Image copyright the artist and used with permission, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

“Some tips or advice:

1. You can suppress the lines of the first step to get a more subtle optical effect.
2. You can also reverse the direction of the inflections creating sensations of concavity and convexity. Alternate shading helps.
3. Have fun tangling other patterns with this resource or creating new puffy ribbons.
4. If you are going to make a circle, my advice is to use one of these two possibilities.”

(Enlargement of above:)

“Finally I show a complete deconstruction of the circular arrangement to facilitate its understanding.

This composition requires more control but it is easy to master especially if you only draw half a circle or less. In the tile we can also see Croon (Margaret Bremner), Limpitz (Jo Newsham), and Jetties and Sez (Zentangle).

Merry Christmas!!!”

Image copyright the artist and used with permission, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

Until we meet again in the new year my dear tangling friends, my very best wishes to you and yours …

See you next year!

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.
2. What is a Zentangle? — if you are new to the Zentangle Method, start here for the fundamentals.
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?
7. How to submit your pattern deconstruction to TanglePatterns
8. For lots of great FREE tutorials on TanglePatterns, click on the TUTORIALS link in the pink alphabetic menu bar below the tangle images at the top of any page.
9. Strings! Have we got STRINGS! Click on the STRINGS link in the pink alphabetic menu bar below the tangle images at the top of any page for 250 different (free) Zentangle-starters. More than enough for any lifetime!
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11. If you have questions about the TanglePatterns.com TANGLE GUIDE, visit the BOOK REVIEWS tab on the top menu bar of any page on the site for COMPLETE details!

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