How to draw DIABOLO

Greetings and welcome back for another week of Zentangle® tangle inspiration.

As always it’s lovely to have your company 🙂

Today’s Diabolo is a fun and simple deconstruction by Welsh CZT Alan Quincey and it’s his second on the site. Be sure to check out Riggle for another easy tangle and Alan’s inspiring Zentangle story.

Alan didn’t explain how he named his tangle so it got me wondering if Diabolo had some kind of meaning. And it does. Another new vocabulary word! I learned that Diabolo is both a game and a toy.

From Wikipedia:

The Diabolo is derived from the Chinese yo-yo encountered by Europeans during the colonial era. However, the origin of the Chinese yo-yo is unknown. The earliest mention of the Chinese yo-yo is in the late Ming dynasty Wanli period (1572–1620).

The diabolo is a juggling or circus prop consisting of an axle (British English: bobbin) and two cups (hourglass/egg timer shaped) or discs derived from the Chinese yo-yo. This object is spun using a string attached to two hand sticks (“batons” or “wands”). A large variety of tricks are possible with the diabolo, including tosses, and various types of interaction with the sticks, string, and various parts of the user’s body. Multiple diabolos can be spun on a single string.

Naturally I had to look for a video 🙂 — check out “A Day with a Diabolo World Champion” — amazing, magical, beautiful, this Diabolo Master is a MUST SEE …

All righty then, let’s get to Diabolo the tangle. Clearly aptly named. And while it shares DNA with CZT Damy Teng’s Turn and more closely to Lynne Wohleber’s Cinch, it’s an interesting tangle of its own right. Although I went pretty minimalist for my rendering, Diabolo has loads of creative possibilities for fills and enhancements.

Alan writes,

The motif in box 1 (of Alan’s Steps illustration) is taken from a 19th century Japanese book of Mons, which I own, printed in 1882.

The book features ‘MONS’, which I believe are the equivalent of European heraldic devices to identify families.

I have applied it to a square grid.

To avoid confusion, it is wise to place dots in the squares, as in boxes 2 & 4, before drawing the Diabolo shapes.

After that, fill the shapes to your own taste. The possibilities and meta patterns are endless.

For a book that’s 141 years old it looks to be in remarkable condition, even the binding is hanging in. Here’s a closeup showing the detail in the borders surrounding the pages shown above:

In his Zentangle tile and ZIA monotangles Alan demonstrates a few of the “endless” ways to fill and embellish the Diabolo shapes:

Alan illustrates the step-by-step instructions for drawing Diabolo below and gives tips for its construction.

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Check out the tag alanq for more of Alan’s tangles on TanglePatterns.com.

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