How to draw TURTRA

Hello there my tangling friends!

Fantastic wins in the opening matches for the two host nations (AU & NZ) of the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, many more great matches to come. The USA national team’s first challenge happens tonight!

Belgian CZT Ria Matheussen is back with us today, sharing her sweet Turtra tangle. Ria has over three dozen great tangles on the site, be sure to check them out and maybe create a Ria tile or two!

Ria tells us about her Turtra inspiration and gives us pointers for tangling it:

I called this Turkey tradition. Turkey has a very old tradition of ceramics, made and painted by hand. Their art is mostly colorful and you can find there real beauties. On the included picture of such a ceramic plate, when you look closely you’ll discover where I have found my inspiration. It’s wonderful that there are so many influences of different countries and different arts in our Zentangle Method™.

Turtra has a lot in common with Pokeleaf, Toodles, Icantoo, Javik … but it is definitely not the same.

In the steps, I have drawn Turtra as a border and used the technique of “rounding”. That is not necessary but I like it very much.

Sometimes I like open spaces and use only black/white. I have drawn especially in the round because it is my favorite way of drawing but also to show that Turtra can be used in all directions. It is possible to use as a border, a ribbon or to combine/ mix with many others…

Usually I say “it looks easier than you think at first sight.” For this tangle I would say it is a bit more difficult than you think at first sight: you have to focus well on the form and use the right direction of the “second leaf”.

I agree with Ria that Turtra looks easier than I first thought and it took a few practice runs to get an example that did it enough justice to share 😉 With this practical experience, I learned that for me, the best way to tackle it was to focus on making the C-curve shape first before adding the accompanying curled stroke. I am always challenged by proportions and I found this helped me keep things a bit consistent.

Ria illustrates the step-by-step instructions for drawing Turtra below, “On my Zendala I have made a mix of Hollis and Turtra. Zinger and FF (frozen falling) make my tile complete.”

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. “We must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy.” ~ Albus Dumbledore

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Check out the tag riam for more of Ria’s tangles on TanglePatterns.com.

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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.
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