This week’s focus tangle for the Facebook page Square One: Purely Zentangle is Narwal by CZT Sam Taylor. The Step-outs can be found here.
I tried Narwal when the step-outs first came out but never explored it very much and I didn’t feel like I really knew the tangle yet so I did some drawing in my sketchbook to try and get to know it better.
After I felt I was getting the rhythm of the tangle I started a tile. The S curve used to draw Narwal is the same as is used to draw Cadent, so I decided to explore this in my tile. I started with a 3 sided cadent figure drawn in the round and then began adding Narwal.
I continued around adding Narwal coming off the points of the Cadent figure.
When I’d finished outlining the Narwal I began to add some detail.
I added some shading to the tangles but felt it needed more so I began to add an aura around the perimeter. When I got to the tip of the first Narwal arm it seemed like that was enough and I liked the way it looked so I repeated the effect on each of the arms.
This was much better but it felt like it was detached from the background so I added some shading to one side of the aura to ground the drawing.
I liked the sketches I made using Narwal and Dragonair together. Again there was the common element of the S curve and it just seemed right that two such magical tangles should be used together so I drew a second tile.
I am happy with both tiles and in the end really enjoyed drawing Narwal.
As always if you see something in this post that you would like to explore in you own work, please feel free to do so.
Blessings,
Lynn