Hi all!
I’ve been drawing some celtic knots recently and I thought I’d share my method of drawing these awesome bits of art
I know we’ve got some people on the forum who like technical drawing and some who like intricate colouring, so this is great
- 1 - First, you need to start with a sheet of squared paper.
If you don't have squared paper or graph paper, you need to draw your own squares. It's not difficult on lined paper, just measure the distance between the lines then draw lines vertically with that spacing
- 2 - Mark out an area on your squared paper.
The sides NEED to be an even number of squares. In the example below my area is 12 by 8.
- 3 - You will be now working on the squares around the inside edges of your area. In each square around the edge, mark the mid-point on its edge. The picture makes it more clear:
- 4 DO THIS IN PENCIL!! Starting at a corner, you now need to join up the marks you made, like so:
... continue until you've done all the points:
.... then do the same in the opposite direction, to make a diagonal grid:
- 5 - Now you need to make the edges. Start at a corner, You need to shape the corner with a curve like so:
^ Notice how the curve should start after around one-and-a-half squares, where I've made the red marks?
- 6 - The next part of the edges! Make nice smooth curves like so:
^ Very difficult to describe how! Try to look at the previous images to see where these go. The arches should span two whole squares each, and meet up with the guidelines you drew.
It will look like this when you have finished:
- 7 - Now you have your basic shape, you need to make the weave pattern. To do this, erase parts of the diagonal grid to make an "over-under" pattern.
... so it looks like this:
Complete this for the whole pattern. It should look like this:
.. notice how now, there seem to be "ribbons" that are weaving in and out of each other? Double check that each ribbon is going in-out and there aren't any slips!
- 8 - Now you need to make it interesting.
Pick a cross. A cross is an intersection where two "ribbons" cross, like this:
What you're going to do is turn this intersection into two roads that don't meet! Using the line of the squared paper, draw a line through the cross, then curve it off, like so:
You could do this horizontally OR vertically.
- 10 - Repeat what you did in step 9 anywhere you like, with any crossed ribbons. Ideally, the knot should show symmetry, so bear this in mind! However, it can have interesting result to put your breaks in at non-symmetrical points too!
In my example below, I picked 8 crosses, and they were symmetrical:
- 11 - Using an ink pen (I use a fine-liner or a fine-point Sharpie), go over the "correct" lines.
- 12 - Now, use an eraser to rub out all the other marks and construction lines.
---
And you're done!!
Now, you need to find out how many "ribbons" you have. It's difficult to tell until you start to colour it in
Before you dive in with colour, you might like to start to mark out the ribbons first:
... turns out that *this* particular knot had
two ribbons!
Here's another one did recently, which turned out to have 10!
The number of ribbons all depends on where you change your intersections. Experiment!
I'd love to see any of your attempts here too! Please post them if you have a go