How to draw TEKTONIK

Tektonik is the second tangle today from Spanish tangler Tomàs Padrós. It is a more complex form related in concept to his earlier Broadway tangle.

Tektonik has SO many variations which Tomàs illustrates with several tiles of his own explorations with different forms.

For starters, lets take a look at his lively Zentangle® tile featuring Tektonik with the Zentangle-original Jetties, and CZT Margaret Bremner’s Krli-Q.

In this second tile Tomàs demonstrates Tektonik as a simple geometric form, a pentagon, enhanced with auras and shading.

This tile uses the same concept as above with much more complexity from using string lines as the basis for Tektonik‘s shapes. (With 250 Strings in our TanglePatterns Strings resource, Tektonik might be taken on some interesting adventures.) Again enhanced with shading and auras.

In this tile Tektonik is featured in an interesting “aperture”-like fashion with curved starting strokes.

And finally, in this last tile Tomàs illustrates Tektonik in combinations with curves and triangles added to Tektonik‘s rectangles and he shows how to get around corners with these shapes.

Tomàs writes,

In Tektonik, a basically rectangular zigzag line (although it can also present curves or triangles) intersects a linear direction. This procedure defines rectangles, triangles or semicircles on each side of the line.

There are two basic ways to propose this entanglement: the zigzag line can follow a closed or semi-closed path or can be organized in successive rows. The result changes considerably, but always has a constructive, solid and stepped aspect that can suggest stratified geological formations, but also walls or enclosures. Tekton is a Greek word meaning master builder. Tektonik therefore refers to the construction, but also to geology. So it seems to me an appropriate name.

An alternate Tektonik Basic deconstruction shows an ideal alternative deconstruction for the application of this resource in successive rows. In this deconstruction, cross addresses can be added to the guidelines that will define the width of the “steps”. These lines can also be cut and displayed in a more random arrangement. It’s a matter of having fun and trying.

Tomàs illustrates his first set of step-by-step instructions for drawing Tektonik below, showing how the rectangular zigzag line is formed on the base line, and also how to deal with the corners when using Tektonik with geometric shapes.

Image copyright the artist and used with permission, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please feel free to refer to the steps images to recreate this tangle in your personal Zentangles and ZIAs, or to link back to this page. However the artist and TanglePatterns.com reserve all rights to these images and they must not be publicly pinned, altered, reproduced or republished. They are for your personal offline reference only. Thank you for respecting these rights. For more information, click on the image for a discussion entitled “Artists for Respect” by several prominent artists.

In this second set of steps Tomàs includes many potential variations of Tektonik in both rows and with different geometric shapes. I used the top center version of Tektonik on the tile for my example above, the shading added gives such interesting looks to this tangle, making columns and dimension appear from the basic form.

Image copyright the artist and used with permission, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please feel free to refer to the steps images to recreate this tangle in your personal Zentangles and ZIAs, or to link back to this page. However the artist and TanglePatterns.com reserve all rights to these images and they must not be publicly pinned, altered, reproduced or republished. They are for your personal offline reference only. Thank you for respecting these rights. For more information, click on the image for a discussion entitled “Artists for Respect” by several prominent artists.

Check out the tag tomasp for more of Tomàs’s tangles on TanglePatterns.com.

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 comment helps motivate them to continue to share!

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. "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 ?
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7. How to submit your pattern deconstruction to TanglePatterns
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