How to draw BITONA

Hi again my tangling friends, today we’re exploring a lovely organic tangle that can grow in all directions on a Zentangle® tile. Always useful in your tangle repertoire.

Bitona is from Japanese CZT Yuko Ohashi and it’s her first on the site. Yuko is from Tobakamicho and is one of 122 listed Certified Zentangle Teachers in Japan.

As Yuko notes, Bitona is a tangleation of the very popular Zentangle-original tangle Flux.

Yuko introduces herself and her Bitona tangle:

My parents run a gardening shop. I grew up looking at various plants from long ago. The part that I thought was a flower was a calyx, and the part that I thought was a leaf was a flower.

I tried to think of a pattern by combining simple shapes that everyone is familiar with and that can change in various ways.

The name of the pattern is Bitona, it uses Flux and a + sign, and it is easy for anyone to draw.

A shape that fits perfectly in all gaps. The size can be small, large, or disjointed. The Flux faces up, down, left and right. Only a part may be large or small.

I want the person who draws to grow up to their favorite size. You can put your favorite texture inside and finish it as you like.

I think it’s cool and clever how Yuko turns the Flux “leaves” so the tips point inwards to enable it to grow from the outside edges in any direction. (See Steps 4-5 – and note the clockwise direction of the steps – that had me confused at first.) Yuko’s rounding adds a great touch to the Bitona clusters.

Yuko illustrates the step-by-step instructions for drawing Bitona below and her sweet monotangle shows us a variety of ways to embellish it.

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Check out the tag yukoo for more of Yuko’s tangles on TanglePatterns.com.

Related Links

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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
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