Crys Odenkirk

Spiral Knotwork Part 6

Progressing nicely into the next row down of individual threads.

Spiral Knotwork Part 5

Moving on into drawing the individual threads. I decided to go for a double thread this time to add some complexity, except perhaps in the innermost spiral where I might leave it a single thread. You can see how the framework relates to the threads here.

Spiral Knotwork Part 4

I’ve finished the rough outlines for the threads in the knot. Normally at this point I would trace them to be sure that it was one thread (or that specific decorative threads are evenly woven, if that’s what I’m going for), but since the threads bleed off the edge that didn’t seem necessary — after all, where would I trace it to?

If that seems a little hard to follow in the bottom left corner and near the center of the spiral… that’s because it is. Spots like those are the main reason I do this preliminary sketch in of the threads. It would be too easy to cross or connect in the wrong spot, and when using ink, it’s not like you can undo or erase to fix the misconnect. I suppose I could here, in digital, but it’s a lot faster to figure it out first than to go back and correct later.

Spiral Knotwork Part 3

Now the underlying framework is done. The lines that are currently black act as “complications” in the knot, keeping it from just being a basic boring latticework. The blue lines are edges of the spiral, except inside the innermost blue line, where the green edges are also the edge of the spiral (it’s so small I didn’t want to add additional large blue lines in there and obscure the drawing area.

Note, these screenshots are at half-size. The original is 1200px by 900 px.

Spiral Knotwork Part 2

Spiral’s base framework, all gridded and dotted up.