How to draw CCFERN

Hi there and thanks for joining me for today’s midweek tangle. 🙂

Chinese tangler Sammi Liu shares her CCFern tangle with us and it’s her first on the site.

Sammi introduces herself and her CCFern tangle:

Chinese name: Liu Huiyi, English name: Sammi Liu. After learning Zentangle® in 2024, I fell in love with the peace and emotional feeling that Zentangle can bring when creating. I once created at least 2-3 pieces every day for a month. I like to rearrange the patterns and find new creative fun in it.

One day, while tangling Fescu, originally a plant-themed design, its curved shape reminded me of my interactions with my cats, leading to the creation of the design CCFern (Cat’s Claw Fern).

I have six mischievous cats at home, and we play a daily game of wits. In my eyes, a cat’s pink paw pads represent kindness, while its claws represent evil. Although I occasionally get scratched by their claws while living with them, my kind paw pads always triumph over their evil claws. That’s how CCFern came about.

The Zentangle-original Fescu forms the base for CCFern then Sammi fills the tip with orbs and adds interesting dot-and-dash aura detail around it before finishing with an undulating aura topped with “claws”.

Before we visit Sammi’s steps for CCFern I wanted to give you a quick health update to allay any concerns. After a month of wearing a heart monitor, it turns out I wasn’t experiencing symptoms of Afib as was first thought. It’s a relief to know it isn’t my “ticker”, as my sister Carol so sweetly put it 😉 Instead it appears I’ve been having a blood pressure condition called “delayed orthostatic hypotension” (DOH). This is where my blood pressure drops when standing for a few minutes and in my case causes light headedness, shortness of breath and rapid heartbeat, the symptoms I experienced when first diagnosed with Afib. Hence our initial guess at a diagnosis. We’ve adjusted some medications and doing another follow-up or two, and I’ve been feeling a whole lot better. And relieved. Thanks so much for your prayers and wishes, they are very sincerely appreciated.

Here’s Sammi …

Sammi illustrates the step-by-step instructions for drawing CC Fern below and she desmonstrates it in a simple monotangle tile.

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 this intellectual property and its rights. “We must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy.” ~ Albus Dumbledore

As you enjoy any of the tangles on the site, please leave a comment of thanks and encouragement to show the artists you appreciate them for sharing their creativity to inspire yours. Your thanks helps motivate them to continue to share! And please share a link to your favorite tangles on social media. Any republication or reposting of these images is expressly prohibited. Thank you for respecting this intellectual property and its rights.

Check out the tag sammil for more of Sammi’s tangles on TanglePatterns.com.

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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. 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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