How to draw SAND SWIRL TREE

Hi my tangling friends and a very happy Friday to you!

Russian tangler Natalia Sitnikova shares her fun Sand Swirl Tree tangle with us today, it’s her second on the site.

Natalia writes,

Sand Swirl Tree is a transformation of the Sand Swirl tangle, and I treated it as a tangleation at first. But the more I drew it, the more I realized that it is completely different in its energy and style, so it deserves to be a separate tangle. I hope you will enjoy it too!

I once heard an idea of growing tangles, like you grow plants. You let the tangle grow as if it is a living plant. I decided to try it with Sand Swirl and I enjoyed the process and the result so much that I used it again and again. The tangle is a real meditation.

It is flexible, variable and you can use it both as a monotangle and in combination with other tangles. I love adding Fescu tangle to the Sand Swirl Tree.

I also combined it with Mooka and Fescu on this tile.

I admit my example is more like a Sand Swirl Vine – in other words not much like Natalia’s Tree at all – but I was having “issues” creating a representative composition in the small space so I went with this version. I found it a little tricky to get the twists looking natural … until after many attempts I figured out it depends on the placement of and direction the new Fescu tendril is facing in Step 3. Its aura strokes should appear to be a continuation of the previous Step. Very meditative once you get the hang of it!

While Sand Swirl Tree is a tangleation of Sand Swirl, it also shares DNA with Livia Chua’s fun Twistee from the early days of tangling. Livia’s tips are helpful too!

Natalia illustrates the step-by-step instructions for drawing Sand Swirl Tree below where she features it in two cool monotangle Zentangle Phi tiles. Her intentional “shaky” strokes in her tiles give it a realistic tree bark vibe. Very cool how it appears to grow like a sinuous vine.

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 sidenote: 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 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

Natalia also shares this video of her tangling the black Zendala shown above … Enjoy!

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Check out the tag natalias for more of Natalia’s tangles on TanglePatterns.com.

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. "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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