Hello my friends! Lovely to see you again and welcome to March!
We’ve arrived at that time of year when Florida’s prolific amounts of spring pollen wreak havoc with my eyes. Yes, it’s allergy eyes time again – swollen itchiness and not-so-great vision which makes tangling a real challenge. But this too shall pass in a few weeks, thank goodness! [It’s not a good look 😉 ] The cycles of life.
The sweet and fun Ailux tangle is from another Spanish CZT named Carmen, this one’s from Carmen Varela Trigo and it’s her seventh on the site and a great one to start off our Springtime month.
Ailux is Carmen’s seventh tangle on the site and while in the past she’s usually been inspired by woven-style patterns, this one is a little different. As she explains:
This time the inspiration came from a sweater I saw while watching an Instagram live. Seeing the sweater and its drawing, my head could not stop seeing it reflected in a tessera.
It’s a fun pattern to make and keeps your attention.
Carmen illustrates the step-by-step instructions for drawing Ailux below and she uses it as a focal tangle in her duotangle tile with a frame made with a straight-line version of the usually curvy/swirly Zentangle®-original Marasu.

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 carmenvt for more of Carmen’s tangles on TanglePatterns.com.
Related Links
- 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.
- What is a Zentangle? — if you are new to the Zentangle Method, start here for the fundamentals.
- Zentangle terminology — a glossary of terms used in this art form.
- 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.
- 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.
- "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?
- How to submit your pattern deconstruction to TanglePatterns
- For lots of great FREE tutorials on TanglePatterns, click on the TUTORIALS link in the pink alphabetic menu bar below the tangle images at the top of any page.
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I’m loving this one! I can see how many times I’m going to draw it. Thanks for sharing!