How to draw TENTOCULUS

Greetings, my friends. Welcome to another week of fun tangles and creative explorations.

It’s our first long weekend of this brand new year and a Federal holiday today in the USA in observance of the birthday of the trailblazing activist and brilliant orator Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “one of the most influential and inspirational African-American leaders in history“.

The Reverend Dr. King left us with many thought-provoking and profound words of wisdom in his unfortunately short life and while I’ve used this before, this quote couldn’t be more appropriate in these particular times.

Today’s so-simple tangle …

Tentoculus is from Spanish CZT Tomàs Padrós and just wait until you see all the fun things you can do with Tentoculus which Tomàs describes as, “a minimalist and organic tangle, with an optical character.”

Tomàs’s tangles are always very popular but Tentoculus knocks it out of the park for me. SO easy! and SO many options to get creative. It could be considered a “kissing cousin” (thanks Jody) of the Zentangle®-original Rain.

Tomàs writes,

The name combines the Spanish word Tentáculo (Tentacle) with the Latin word Oculus (Eye) by obvious associations.

The basic design consists of a central line flanked by semi-curves and a point or half point between the curves.

The original design has no sharp outlines. These are suggested as a simple optical effect, which can be emphasized with a little shading.

Tentoculus is a lot of fun and allows many variations and tangleations. Its optical character, normally without outlines (but you can added them if you want), allows all kinds of plays with shading, ambiguity between shape and background, positive and negative shapes, mega patterns when lines meet, or connect with lines or filaments, etc.

Tomàs illustrates the step-by-step instructions for drawing Tentoculus below and features it in a graceful minimalist monotangle. [Here’s how to find tangles by artist or type.]

Image copyright the artist and used with permission, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. These images are for your personal offline reference only. Please feel free to refer to the images to recreate this tangle in your personal Zentangles and ZIAs. However the artist and TanglePatterns.com reserve all rights to the images and they must not be publicly pinned, altered, reproduced or republished. Thank you for respecting these rights. Click the image for an article explaining what copyright means in plain English. “Always let your conscience be your guide.” ~ Jiminy Cricket

Here he shares some tips and demonstrates a variety of ways to explore and have fun with Tentoculus:

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

In case you missed it ...

Zentangle is "not just the latest buzzword for ‘that thing I was already doing years ago in the margins of notebooks’."

So if that's what you've been thinking, you don't know Zentangle yet.

For enlightenment on this subject please read CZT Sandy Hunter's eloquent article On Understanding Zentangle.

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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