In my Book: a Celtic page and W2

I have a lot of Scots heritage and have always loved Celtic interlacing, so there's now a Celtic page in my Book. I also love my tangle Skye which I did around the edge. :)

Tangles: Crossview, Cruze, Elven, Emingle, Skye, Tipple, Tortuca

I enjoyed teaching a class based on W2 at OgunquiTangle a couple of years ago. You can read about it in my earlier post W2 and then some. I did a page based on W2 but less intricate than the class's Opus tile.

tanglepatterns string #10

This is string idea #10 from tanglepatterns.com. It has a triangle. How could I not try doing another triquetra?!

Tangles: Beadlines, Black Pearlz, Tortuca, Zedbra, Zewm and Rounding

 Here's a simpler tile. I think I prefer it to the one above.

Tangles: Beadlines, Drupe, Fracas

 You can see what I did with strings number 3 and 12 here.

How to draw triquetras

I've had a few inquiries about drawing the Celtic knot triquetras I've been doing lately, so here are a few things that may help if you'd like to try these yourself.

First,
THE TREFOIL
The word trefoil comes from the French "trois feuilles" or "three leaves". It sort of resembles clover.
You can make it interweave by following steps 4 and 5 for the simple triquetra, next.
I find it just as easy to draw the trefoil all in one swoop without the dots and lines. Some people find it easier to begin with a curved-edge triangle. See what works for you.
Step 4 is nice to use as a string just as is, with or without a square border. 
You can see a two-pencil string trefoil here. It's the last picture.

SIMPLE TRIQUETRA
These directions are drawn in pen so you can see them better, but REMEMBER: steps 1-4 are done in pencil. These lines act as your string, although you don't draw on them or up to them.  Read on, you'll see.
Don't be wimpy with the arcs. They need to really swoop towards the third dot. This will give you a nice little triangle in the center.
Step 5 is when you start using ink. The short ink lines are to indicate to yourself what goes over and what goes under. I've drawn them bolder. The lines you draw later to connect everything are in dotted red.
Step 6 shows the triquetra with the pencil string in the middle of the lines. Now you can start embellishing!
You can see my simple triquetra posts here and here.

SINGLE LOOP TRIQUETRA
Again, these directions are in pen so you can see them better, but REMEMBER: steps 1-5 are done in pencil. These lines act as your string.
Step 4 shows the looped line in red, just so it's clear.
Step 5 shows the entire pencil string.
Step 6 is when you start using ink. The short ink lines  indicate what goes over and under. I've drawn them bolder. The connecting lines that you draw later are dotted.
You can see a single loop triquetra in my post here, as well as two more simple ones.
(I think step 2 looks like an unhappy cyclops.)

LOOPED TRIQUETRA
Here's a nice picture of a looped triquetra.

This one takes quite some concentration, but it's essentially the same curvy line drawn three times. The first picture below is the basic line. It's actually rather simple; it's when they all start overlapping that it becomes confusing! In the next picture you can see the three lines, meeting at the corner dots. I've done them in solid black, dotted red, and dotted dark blue so you can see how they intertwine.

Once you have those three lines drawn in pencil you can do the short ink lines to guide you in the over and under business. Then complete the ink lines to show the interlacing.

CLOVERLEAF TRIQUETRA
This one is easier than the looped triquetra, and it's the most recent one I've tried. I think it's my favorite. Here's a picture of a lovely, carved wood, cloverleaf triquetra I found on Etsy here. You can see my cloverleaf triquetra zentangle tiles here.

As with the looped version, this, too, is the same line drawn three times.

Don't be discouraged. Smile. Breathe. Relax. Have fun!

Cloverleaf triquetras

Here is a fairly simple triquetra and perhaps my favorite. It's easy to construct (well, more or less!) and looks impressive. Stay tuned, on Monday I'll post some drawing instructions for anyone who would like to try doing some of these triangular Celtic knots.

I began my first cloverleaf triquetra and it went so haywire I abandonned it and moved on to number two! There are still a few glitches here, but I think I disguised them fairly well.

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Tortuca, stripes and Rounding

Third try went a lot better. I actually got all the overing and undering where it was supposed to go!

Tangles: Chebucto, Knightsbridge, Pearlz

But I kept thinking about that first attempt, and that there are no mistakes that you can't do something with. So I got that botched tile out again and went to play. Have you seen those photos of webs made by spiders on drugs?

I think this looks like a cloverleaf triquetra on... something!

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Florez, Tripoli, stripes, dots and zigzags

So, you're wondering where those glitches are? I'll show you.

Trickier triquetra

This, apparently, is known as a looped triquetra. Each arm has a loop, different from the single loop version at the end of this post.

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Dansk, Printemps, Striping, Verve, Zedbra

I've always loved the intricate precision of Celtic knot work, but I find I'm quite enjoying the unevenness of doing these freehand. Certainly no perfect triangles happening here.

What I think of as 'Celtic colors' - red, blue, maybe green, and the brown metals (gold, copper, bronze, brass) - kept coming to mind so I decided I'd better try one in color. I used a lot of different pens in this ZIA, including Sakura's Glaze pens. Originally I didn't like them much, but I've been won over. In this case, the dark brown glaze helps mask a colossal booboo I made near the beginning. If you look closely you'll probably see it, in the upper left, where I went over instead of under, or maybe the other way. Ultimately, I don't really like this one much. The Glaze ink seems to overpower the regular brown ink and the colored circles are too random.

Tangles: "Black" Pearlz, Tipple, Zewm

More triquetra strings

Last week I showed some Zentangle tiles using a simple Celtic knot triquetra as a string in this post. At the end I said I'd try some more intricate knots, so here goes!

The triquetra is often done with an added circle, so I tried one of those.

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Beadlines, Fleurette,
Knightsbridge Aura, Ragz (with Rounding)

I also did one without doing 'bands', just the triquetra to divide the space.

Tangles: Flux, Providence, Purslane (a Flux variation),
Tipple, Tripoli (3 versions)

Here is the basic triquetra with an added loop in the middle.

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Camelia, Cruffle, Pearlz, Tortuca

Celtic triquetra as a string

Tangles: Betweed, Black Pearlz, elements of Tripoli,
and Auras resembling Auraknot or Hibred

TRIQUETRA comes from the Latin for "three-cornered" and originally referred to a variety of three-cornered shapes. Nowadays, it refers exclusively to a more intricate shape that is often found in Celtic artwork. It is formed from three vesicae piscis, interlaced. It's not unusual to see it with an added circle.

While Christians often use it as a symbol of the trinity, the triquetra has been used - long before Christianity - as a symbol of things that are threefold: infancy/adulthood/old age, mother/father/child, earth/sea/sky, the virgin/mother/crone of the Celtic goddess, etc.. It has been found on old Germanic coins and on northern European runestones. Here is a slightly different triquetra design on one of the Funbo runestones.

I've been learning a bit about how to draw Celtic knots recently. The triquetra is the simplest knot and makes a simple, interesting string to begin a Zentangle. I was quite pleased with the results. The biggest challenge for me was to place an equilateral triangle in a square! At the top of this post is the first one I did. I was intending to use Sue Clark's tri-shape string, thus the square in the background, but the circle didn't make it! I found the triquetra a bit small in that one, and in my next effort I filled the entire tile with it.

Tangles: Chebucto, Keenees, Mi2, Tipple

The trefoil is a related image; simply round the three outer points of the triquetra. You can see a tile I did with a trefoil, and a two-pencil string, at the end of this post. I will attempt other, more intricate knots. Stay tuned!

Fun! Two-pencil strings!

Now here's a fun idea! 
I used an elastic band to hold two pencils together and drew strings with a double pencil. I found that - with curving, and changing angles - often one or the other pencil would skip, so I'd have to add that bit of the string once I'd finished the main part.

In the two tiles below you can see that I also did the initial border with the double pencil. The double pencil gives a really interesting ribbon effect to work with. The tile on the left has a 'loop' string; at the center is my Lotus Pods tangle. The one on the right uses the familiar 'Z' or 'N' string -  much of it is filled with Tipple - and the center has my Ninja Stars tangle.

Here are a tile and an ATC I did using a two-pencil string. On the tile I used two '8's for the string, overlapping at right angles. It's an interesting string, although it can make the center a bit crowded. You can't see a lot of the ribbon effect of the double pencil, except that there's a lot more string than there might normally be!









On this tile I used the double pencil twice. I drew a two-pencil trefoil string. Then I placed pencil-tip-A where pencil-tip-B was on the first go-'round, and drew the same string again, following the first string's pattern. Clear as mud?