How to draw SHIRLEY

Yep, he’s baaaack …

Today’s Shirley is another cool tangle from Spanish tangler Tomàs Padrós who most recently shared his extruded mesh Fontana tangle with us.

He also shares two beautiful Zentangle tiles featuring his tangle.

Shirley, he explains,

“has the appearance of a double helix that reminds me of two linked confetti ribbons or also ringlets, like those of Shirley Temple, the child actress of the 30s. That’s why I’ve named it Shirley. I love the classic movies.

By Charles Lamont – Glad Rags to Riches, Public Domain.

Tomàs gives some tips:

“In the first step it is important to draw the two directions of strokes symmetrically, opposite each other.

We join the two series of segments diagonally.

I like to decorate Shirley with a linear motif because it reinforces its depth and rhythm but I do not consider it necessary if we want a more minimalist look.

In the first example, I show Shirley dancing with Sea Wave and Sez.”

Shirley is like an advanced version of CZT Sue Jacobs’s Coil. If you’re a member of the Zentangle® Mosaic app, last week Rick and Maria posted a KTT video inspired by a photograph they had taken in the Egyptian section of the Metropolitan Museum. In the video Rick tangles a somewhat similar concept to Shirley where he combines “Hollibaugh & Auraknot”. In the case of the video, the “cross bar” over-and-unders are paired, if you get my drift. Coincidental timing.

Tomàs illustrates the step-by-step instructions for drawing Shirley below, noting “In this example we see Sez, and Sea Wave once again and Afterglo, Jonqal, Fleavy and Strircles also invited to the party.”

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. “Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.” ~ C.S. Lewis

I was confused by an optical illusion

When I first attempted my example of Shirley, I compared Tomàs’s Steps 1 and 2 above and could not see how it followed his own instruction: “In the first step it is important to draw the two directions of strokes symmetrically, opposite each other.”

I emailed Tomàs to ask him about this and he kindly took the time to create this diagram:

However, before I received his reply I thought I could explain my confusion better if I used his original steps to demonstrate what I meant. So I got out my ruler and a pen with blue ink. And to my utter astonishment, the strokes in Steps 1 and 2 do align exactly the way he instructs. It was just an optical illusion of his example on a diagonal that had my eyes/brain completely confused.

Net result: I used a straight line version for my example to avoid further illusion-confusion. 🙂

FWIW, I offer two suggestions for creating Shirley. The first is that using dots to determine spacing/placement for the paired strokes in Step 1 – à la Coil – can be useful. The second is that the “take off and land” technique really helps join up these segments a little more smoothly than simply stopping where the strokes meet.

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!

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

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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.
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