How to draw BIRDY

Hello my friends and welcome back for our Friday tangle – last one for the month of June.

As those of you who’ve been with me for a while will remember, every summer Robert and I eagerly look forward to watching the gorgeous 3-week spectacle of the Tour de France from the comfort of our living room arm chairs (and our DVD recordings). From your emails and comments I know some of you join us in this fabulous summer custom of a trip to France, and this year Italy, without actually going there and in time segments that work best for us. And tomorrow our favorite 21-day spectacle of breathtaking scenery and incredible racing with the world’s toughest professional athletes begins!

This year’s 2024 edition of the Tour de France, the Crown Jewel of events for the elite of men’s professional road racing cyclists, is a 3,498 km (2,174 mi) 21-day course. The Grand Départ on Saturday takes place in Florence, Italy, with the 21-team field traversing the Italian Alps before crossing the border into France during Stage 4.

In a very unusual twist “for the first time in race history” this year the Tour’s Grand Finale does not take place on the Champs-Élysées in Paris. Because of security concerns and logistics around the Summer Olympics, organizers changed the 2024 route to end in Nice.

For an excellent recap of some highlights to watch for check out the Velo article, 5 Narratives That Will Light Up the Tour de France. The article sums up, “Between Florence and Nice, this year’s Tour delivers some unique wrinkles that will make the race deliver plenty of surprises.”

A Google search will show you where you can watch this year’s Tour. In the USA “Each stage of the 2024 Tour de France will be streamed on Peacock, and a few select stages will be broadcast on NBC.” Break out the lattés and croissants, it’s that time!

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Now for your weekend tangle explorations!

Birdy comes to us from Japanese-living-in-California CZT Yoko Kageyama and it’s her fifth super tangle on the site.

Yoko shares how she came up with Birdy and its name:

I tried to deconstruct this timeless iconic pattern that most of us are familiar with.

It originated from Scotland, and it has been loved also in Japan for a long time. In Japan, where I grew up, it is called ‘Chidori Goshi’, literally meaning ‘plovers lattice’. The kind of bird, ‘plover‘ in Chinese characters is written as ‘Thousand birds’, and it has been considered a lucky pattern.

The French, on the other hand, called it ‘pied de poule’ (foot of the chicken) due to its resemblance to a chicken’s footprint.

People in western countries call this pattern ‘Houndstooth‘ or ‘Dogtooth’ since they thought the pattern appeared to be dog’s teeth.

Personally I like the interpretation of ‘birds (plovers) flying’, so I name this pattern ‘Birdy’.

I think this will be a great drama tangle to add to your tile. I hope everyone enjoys drawing ‘Birdy’. Happy tangling!

Wikipedia explains the origins of houndstooth and I was amazed to learn this:

The oldest Bronze Age houndstooth textiles found so far are from the Hallstatt Celtic Salt Mine, Austria, 1500-1200 BC. One of the best known early occurrence of houndstooth is the Gerum Cloak, a garment uncovered in a Swedish peat bog, dated to between 360 and 100 BC.

As I wrote in my correspondence with Yoko,

We have a couple of patterns on the site inspired by houndstooth, Carol Ohl’s Bitten was the first and indeed even the Zentangle-original Cadent’s name was inspired by it: “We call it ‘cadent’ because a hound is a CAnine and a tooth is DENTal, thus ‘ca-dent!’.”

Birdy requires a little more focus than some, but it’s a meditative and pleasurable one to tangle with a striking texture when completed. Plus Yoko has given us very helpful tips to guide us.

Yoko illustrates the step-by-step instructions for drawing Birdy below. “On my tile, I drew the tangle Birdy with Printemps and Ravel.

I came up with different ways to deconstruct this pattern, yet the one presented here is the easiest and makes these Houndstooth patterns appear the best. My tip is to draw the “V” shape with a drawing behind technique. Also, try drawing the tiny line of the small “V” first, and continue drawing the large “V”, again using the drawing behind technique”

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 yokok for more of Yoko’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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