Monday, October 15, 2018

#Inktober Zentangles With Grids

Quite a few of the "official" tangles are based on grids. You can work with something with straight lines like a tic tack toe grid or you can curve the lines to produce either a pincushion or barrel distortion. Filling these distorted squares can lead to some interesting effects. You can also make the lines in the grid curve off at odd angles or keep them nice and symmetrical.

On the 13th I wanted to use a tangle that in the past has worked well in these odd shaped grids. Ack! I did not look closely enough at my step-out and filled in the triangles formed by the extra lines (called a star grid) wrong. I left too much space between the grid line and my fill shape plus did not round it off at the point. I went over it several times to try to rectify this but it just didn't look good to me. What's in the lower right corner is very pleasing to my eye, nice and neat and organized.

On the 14th, I gave that problem tangle another try, using a slightly different curve to the line defining the edge of the grid. Ahh, much better. This is what it's supposed to look like.

On the 15th, I wanted to cover the tile area with a single grid with the center lines straight and the lines on either side curving outward, then find different tangles that would fit in the grid working from the center out. Except for how I finished the last row of grid top and bottom, I'm rather pleased with this one. I'm wishing now I'd filled those leftover squares top and bottom with leaves or circles.

4 comments:

Sherrie Spangler said...

Interesting with the curving lines.

Michele Matucheski said...

It kind of reminds me how how tabgles can be adapted to free-motion quilting. I use a grid as a standard all-over quilting pattern. Not the detail you put into the tanlges, but there are most definitely cousins!

The Idaho Beauty said...

Some of the curving line tangles make me think of op art, and some of the very modern looking antique quilts that utilized patterns creating optical illusions. I seldom quite anticipate how they will skew but I love that effect.

The Idaho Beauty said...

So true, Michele. And I recently bought a book on grid designs at the recommendation of my machine quilting mentor Diane Gaudynski. So many of her recommended continuous machine quilting designs are based on drawing out a grid first. I bet she would approve of starting with wavy or curved line grids.