How to draw XII

Hi there my tangling friends and a very happy Friday to ya!

Are you as amazed as I am to realize it’s only about three months until Christmas?! Wowzers.

Today’s XII tangle is from Taiwan quilter and CZT Damy Teng who has many fine tangle deconstructions on the site. This one from the archives is not only easier than it looks but it also makes a cool structure to fill with other tangles and embellishments.

Damy often names her tangles for the strokes used in creating them, thus XII comes from the X shape we begin with and the subsequent I shape connectors. Makes it easy to remember both the tangle name and how to tangle it. As Ranger Ink’s signature designer Dyan Reaveley is fond of saying, “It’s easy once you know how!”

Damy writes,

This pattern design was inspired by these window grilles.

Taiwanese protect themselves from thieves by installing windows grilles on buildings. So many types of grilles.

Here Damy features XII as a string in a striking tile with the Zentangle®-originals Printemps, Schway, Static and Emingle/Ambler.

It took a few practice runs for me to get comfortable with XII. Often I have an issue getting spacing and proportions right until I’ve practiced them a few times until I “get” the dimensions. In the end I found that creating an offset grid of X’s at Step 1 and then adding the connecting I’s (Step 2) produced the spacing I liked. It goes without saying that the wider and larger the X’s, the bigger the spaces in the final shapes. You can see this demonstrated in Damy’s tile below where she created XII flowing down from the top corner.

Damy illustrates the step-by-step instructions for drawing XII below and she demonstrates it stretched out in a cool Zentangle tile with auras and the Zentangle-original Stiritup/Amaze which is similar to a meandering quilting pattern. PS: don’t overlook the tiny connecting stroke in Step 6, makes all the difference …

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Check out the tag damyt for more of Damy’s tangles on TanglePatterns.com.

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Related Links

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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. What Makes a Zentangle tangle? 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. Patterns that are drawings of a recognizable naturalistic or actual object, figure, or scene, are not tangles, and tangles never start with pencil planning.
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7. How to submit your pattern deconstruction to TanglePatterns
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