How to draw OCTOS

Hi there!

It’s June, and that means the beginning of the hurricane season in this part of the world. Watchful eyes and ears for the next six months and fingers crossed it will be a quiet 2023 storm season.

As we speak, the second tropical depression of the year is in the Gulf of Mexico – and oddly, it appears to be heading south, towards Cuba. Although it’s not expected to develop into anything more than a Tropical Storm, it does mean a pretty wet weekend for us here in South Florida but after our unusually dry winter, it’s very welcome precipitation.

Our Friday tangle, Octos, is another cool deconstruction from Belgian CZT Ria Matheussen.

If I’m not mistaken, Octos is her 36th (three dozenth?) tangle on the site!

Ria tells us about her latest and shares some tips for tangling it:

To be honest, I prefer mostly the organic tangles but this time I have deconstructed one, based on a mirror formed by an octagon. We have already triangles, squares, circles, hexagons… but I haven’t found an octagon yet.

It seems difficult at first sight but the only thing you need to know is how to draw a nice octagon with equal sizes, the next steps are very simple.

I exercised a bit and found out that the easiest way is to start is: drawing just three equal lines. you can see then very good where the other lines have to come (step 1 and 2). In step 3 and 4 you have to decide how thick the “surroundings” are gonna be. I draw the lines in step 4 just a tiny bit longer than the ones in step 3. In step 5, you can already see how the tangle is going to look (I made this step special to make it easier to become a nice final result in step 6).

It is a “big” tangle like for example Dreamcatcher, Ico, Rumpus, Waybop, Auraknot … and has many options to use.

On my Zendala I have used the second and the fourth variation (shown below) with tangling inside and outside Octos.

Octos does require focus but as Ria says, it is not as difficult as it appears at first glance.

Ria illustrates the step-by-step instructions for drawing Octos below where she also demonstrates some ways to explore and embellish it: “In the variations you can achieve a different result by adding a few strokes and make the octagon a bit rounder. In the second example you can see that you can fill it with other tangles. In the third variation you see that you can draw inside the borders with several different tangles. In the fourth variation I have drawn nothing inside but outside to show you can make a composition with other tangles and variation 5 shows a third row surrounding the octagon.”

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. 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

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Check out the tag riam for more of Ria’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.
   • 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?
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