How to draw CROSCRO

Croscro is an elegant tangle pattern from Taiwan’s Hsin-Ya Hsu, and it’s her first on the site. I believe this is also a first on the site for a mother-daughter combo of back-to-back tangles.

Hsin-Ya is Damy’s (Damy Teng) daughter, and both are coming to the US in the fall to attend the CZT seminar. I just looked at the CZT list and there are now 19 CZTs in Taiwan! And more in the wings …

Hsin-Ya’s inspiration for this tangle was the “famous silver jewelry” by Chrome Hearts, as shown in this photo she sent along.

I’d never heard of Chrome Hearts so I went looking and learned why from Wikipedia: it’s “an American luxury brand, founded in 1988 by Hollywood carpentry craftsman Richard Stark, that specializes in high-end .925 silver, 22k yellow gold and 18k white gold jewelry, leather, cashmere clothing and ebony wood furniture with gothic and punk rock motifs. It is known for its jewelry items which feature fleur-de-lys, dagger and floral cross designs. … Most of the Chrome Hearts products are handmade in Hollywood, USA.”

Croscro is a very “neat and tidy” tangle. It can be drawn on a grid as Hsin-Ya demonstrates below, or the motif can be worked in a Zendala-type mandala circle or as a stand-alone design. When I first drew it for my example I used a small scale grid and it ended up being very cluttered to my eye. Also at this scale it was difficult to get enough space where the little “hooks” of Step 4 meet up. I’m showing these earlier examples anyway so you can see how Croscro can take on very different looks with different fills and shading.

Hsin-Ya deconstructed the steps for Croscro and also included two of her beautiful drawings featuring her tangle for you to enjoy. Here are her step-by-step instructions for drawing Croscro.

Image copyright the artist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please feel free to refer to the step outs to recreate the tangles from this site in your Zentangles and ZIAs, or link back to any page. However the artists and TanglePatterns.com reserve all rights to these images and they should not be publicly pinned, reproduced or republished. Thank you for respecting these rights.

This is her monotangle Zentangle® of Croscro. Just barely visible on this scan you can see where she’s highlighted the central stroke of each “spear” with a glitter pen.

And a lovely Zendala-style ZIA version which appears to be done on a coaster.

Check out the tag hsinyah for more of Hsin-Ya’s patterns on TanglePatterns.com.

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