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How to draw U-NICO

Zentangle pattern: U-nico. Image © Linda Farmer and TanglePatterns.com. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. You may use this image for your personal non-commercial reference only. The unauthorized pinning, reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal.Hello there friends and welcome to another week of fun Zentangle® tangles to explore!

Today’s easy U-nico tangle is from Japanese CZT Emiko Adachi and it’s her first on the site.

U-nico shares DNA with several tangles on the site, the ones immediately popping to mind include the Zentangle-original Scena, and JJ LaBarbera’s Verve which are both free-form tangles where Emiko’s is an “orderly” grid-based version for those of us (including me!!) who appreciate some structure. 🙂

Emiko is from Yokohama, Japan. Here she tells us about her tangle,

I have always liked S-curves. So I have enjoyed drawing this pattern using S-curves … One day I was having lunch with my CZT friends, when one of them said, looking at my cellphone on the table, “I’ve never seen this before.”  That afternoon, we drew it together and enjoyed the mosaic. We had a great time chatting and tangling.

As for its tangle name, I named it U-nico (pronouncing “You Nico”) because Nico is an onomatopoeia, or a mimetic word, for smile in Japanese. I want to make everyone smile with this tangle pattern.

U-nico is a repetition of S-curves in grids. By shading (and highlighting), it becomes three dimensional and looks dynamic.

Emiko illustrates the step-by-step instructions for drawing U-nico below where she features it in a simple monotangle where she rotates the fragment, noting “You can enjoy different meta patterns by changing the direction of the first S’s in adjacent grids.

How to draw the Zentangle pattern U-nico, tangle and deconstruction by Emiko Adachi. Image copyright the artist and used with permission, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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. (Small side note: if you look at the legalese in Pinterest, you are legally responsible for obtaining permission to post every photo that gets ‘Pinned’. Giving credit or sharing the source link doesn’t count.) 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

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Check out the tag emikoa for more of Emiko’s tangles on TanglePatterns.com.

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.
  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.
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