How to draw HEARTGRAM

Hi my tangling friends!

It’s February and that means it’s time for a heart tangle or two. Canadian tangler Cyndi Knapp shares her sweet Heartgram with us today.

Cyndi writes,

With stay-at-home restrictions in place for ON residents…

I started thinking about ideas for Valentines Day cards early this year and while going through my flower photos, I came across one of Bleeding Hearts. Immediately it evoked childhood memories – images of my grandmother’s flower gardens.

Of all the flowers she grew, I particularly remember Lily of the Valley and Peonies for their fragrance and Bleeding Hearts for their intriguing shape.

Gram always had a small vase of flowers on the kitchen table and often when I stayed with her, she sat me down with pencil/paper and got me to (try to) draw them. She’s been gone for decades now but once again I find myself drawing Bleeding Hearts – this time as a Zentangle pattern, not a sketch.

Heartgram is an extremely simple pattern that’s named for the shape of the flower and the short form of what I called my grandmother. It has a nice flow drawn in a continuous line so Steps 2-4 have been laid out to reflect that.

Cyndi shared this link to The Spruce article with complete information about the common bleeding heart (Lamprocapnos spectabilis), a spring-blooming herbaceous perennial plant:

Flowers have traditionally been assigned various meanings, based both on the type of flower and the specific color. With bleeding heart, traditionally the pink-flowered and red-flowered types are said to symbolize romantic love, while white-flowered types signify purity.

Heartgram shares DNA with CZT® Barbara Duel Johnson’s Deesie but Heartgram is more specifically heart-shaped. For my example I went for a very simple ribbon-style version.

Cyndi illustrates the step-by-step instructions for drawing Heartgram below where she features it in a beautiful ZIA Zendala as a ribbon-style tangle framing the radial-style center.

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I am the very lucky recipient of one of Cyndi’s elegant cards featuring Heartgram.  This photo doesn’t do justice to all the lovely glittery bits on Cyndi’s delicate card. As she notes on the image below she used Staedtler Karat Aquarell watercolor pencils to color the image.

Cyndi writes,

It’s another vessel pattern, versatile in both application and fill possibilities both of which are shown in the illustration and photo of the non-Zentangle supplies used to draw it as well as this year’s Valentines Day cards.

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. Thanks!

Check out the tag cyndik for more of Cyndi’s tangles on TanglePatterns.com. AND remember to check out the tag hearts in the TANGLES BY TYPE section for all 60+ heart tangles on the site!

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 ?
   • Un diseño no es siempre un tangle — ¿Qué es un tangle?
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