"Sparky" (Yellow Circle Tangle)

"Sparky" (Yellow Circle Tangle) by Megan O'Madadhain

My Yellow Circle Tangle (nicknamed "Sparky") is part of my "Rainbow Circle Tangle" series. For this series I started by tracing a circle and then used circles to define the regions. I limited myself to 3-4 colors and only used shades of one main color.

The good:

I find the pattern at the top exciting. As far as I know it is a new pattern. Basically restricting myself to a circle meant that I instantly wanted to find ways to escape it, and my "Circlecut" pattern was one way to achieve that.

My "Circlecut" pattern.

Once I added the floral pattern that looks like eyes, this tangle became an "it" to me, so I added the feet and went with it.

Adding a variant of the "Wabi" pattern made the tangle appear to have eyes.

 To me it looks like a steampunk mechanical sidekick. Something about this one makes me happy.

The bad:

I would not have added the area full of triangles if I had intended to create a mechanical creature from the start. I also would have bent the patterns on the circle so that they seemed to be on a sphere rather than a flat object. Color-wise, this is more monochromatic than I wanted; yellow is tough -- add even a tiny bit of red and it looks orange, add even a tiny bit of blue and it looks green.  I will probably do another version of this one at some point, probably with more color variation.

Art in context:

The "Rainbow Circle Tangle" series is one of my earliest attempts to do colored tangles.

The nitty gritty:

The large floral pattern is a variant of the "Wabi" pattern. The pattern of triangles is a "Kathy's Dilemma" pattern variation. Coming out of the top of "Sparky" is my "Circlecut" pattern.

My "Circlecut" pattern

I used Tombow Dual Brush Markers and a Micron black pen, typically size "05" (0.5mm). Original is 4" x 4" ink on paper.