How to draw TUFTED

Hello there! Welcome back for another week of fun tangle creativity and inspiration.

Before we get underway, I have a wee sports report just to let you know what else I’ve been up to 🙂 The 2023 La Vuelta a España professional cycling race wrapped up this weekend after three grueling weeks and for the first time in 10 years an American has won a Grand Tour title.

The very sweet and likeable Sepp Kuss from Boulder, Colorado, on the Dutch Jumbo-Visma team took first place and his two fellow cycling superstar teammates took second and third, an amazing team accomplishment to sweep La Vuelta’s final podium. Sepp’s victory completes another major team accomplishment in 2023: the three teammates also swept the three Grand Tours in a single season. And that is a first in pro cycling history.

Aside from the intriguing daily tactical moves, it was a fabulous trip around the beautiful country of Spain starting in Barcelona and finishing up in Madrid. I had no idea the home country of so many of our wonderful CZTs and tanglers has such an amazing and often breathtaking variety of topography. (And churches, LOTS of ancient churches.) Truly an eye opener and a lovely way for Robert and I to spend our late summer evenings. Between the Tour de France and La Vuelta, we’ve thoroughly enjoyed our own up close and personal France and Spain Tours over the last two months.

Right, here we go. Today’s Tufted tangle is another fun and very easy one from Canadian tangler Cyndi Knapp with lots of potential for variation.

Tufted shares DNA with the similarly-named Tufton, and as CZT Debbie Raaen pointed out it also shares DNA with the Zentangle®-original Dex (on right). My Tufted example makes it look even moreso!

In this detailed Zendala Cyndi includes Tufted with Fracas (v), Printemps, and Wavlin (v).

Cyndi writes,

Tufted, named for it’s appearance, is a simple grid pattern that works up quickly and is great for backgrounds, borders and ribbons.

This pattern is an elaboration of it’s inspiration – the tufting on my great grandparent’s settee. {Linda’s note: this image size doesn’t do justice to the gorgeousness of this antique settee, click the image for a full size view.}

Why I didn’t notice it as a possible pattern before, I don’t know. It goes to show that sometimes you can be blind to things that are right in front of you.

This Zentangle tile includes a Tufted variation on TanglePatterns String 021 along with Bubbles, Printemps, and Static.

Another and perhaps my final attempt at drawing a gem on a ZIA tile. The difference between colouring on inferior quality tiles and Zentangle tiles is interesting. The more porous paper crackles like paint, sometimes a bit tears off (grrrr) and I wasn’t able to get the same depth. Triral (v) and Velos (v) tangled with Tufted using a Cool Grey Micron. 

To achieve the muted reflection on the turquoise gem, a slightly damp cotton swab was used to lift colour off instead of adding white with a gel pen.

As she usually does, Cyndi shows us several ways to explore her tangle and I added a couple more in my (v) example playing with scale and adding a little graphite.

Cyndi illustrates the step-by-step instructions for drawing Tufted below. In her Zentangle example with the steps she includes Tufted in TanglePatterns String 022 with the tangles Afterglo, Primo (F) (v), River, and Wavlin (v). “Tip: Linda’s ‘dot trick’ would definitely be helpful to align diagonal lines in Steps 3 and 4.”

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 cyndik for more of Cyndi’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?
7. How to submit your pattern deconstruction to TanglePatterns
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