Rounding the Bend

As an art historian, I spent a lot of time studying and contemplating the concept of style, particularly comparing "isms" and learning the hallmarks of an artist's own hand and how it changed.  You know, Impressionism vs. Post-Impressionism, early Monet vs. late Monet.

I hadn't given much thought to Zentangle styles until recently--some CZTs prefer a lot of three dimensionality, some like a lot of shading, some are very precise, while some are more organic.  What did I like?  I like organic tangles more than precise, grid-like ones.  I don't like too much shading and only some 3-D (I don't need them to look "real.")  So where does that leave me?

After watching a recent Kitchen Table Tangles video from Maria and Rick, Zentangle founders--and I highly recommend it--I started giving more thought to my style.  I liked Maria's broken, imprecise lines (and how she creates little decorative "dingbatz.") She utilizes rounding, which is one of the official Zentangle "Tanglenhancers." See above, even in the thumbnail, where she rounds (darkens) the corners of the rectangular dingbatz and the corners of the mooka tangle? I like the effect.

I started paying more attention to my lines and came across Eni Oken's tutorial on line weight and rounding.  She's an artist and CZT with an array of useful and beautiful ebooks and video tutorials on shading, Zen Gems, and other technqiues.  I won't rehash the video here--you can purchase her tutorial for a small fee--but I really liked her discussions of adding substance to lines and forms.

Here are some of my efforts (with mediocre photos taken inside on a rainy day):

And to make it really clearly, a single progression from beginning to end.  I still need to work on my technique (some of the rounding and thickening is a little too jagged), but it's an intriguing exercise.

Plain tangles

Wtih rounding and weighted lines a la Eni Oken

Finished tile with shading

Something about this change of style seems to add weightiness to my tiles, literally and figuratively.  The tiles seem more "serious," not quite as whimsical.  Perhaps a little dark.  I'm going to try to balance it a little bit.  But I do like the possibilities.

 

Quick Zen Gems

I've been playing with a technique for making Zen Gems that I learned at a recent workshop with Beth Malley, CZT.  I'm enjoying adding a little bit of color to my black and white tiles.  I'm not aiming for verisimilitude here, just stylized color.

My Zen Gem mandala from Malley's workshop.

A rainbow of Zen Gems, with bezels surrounding the colors.

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I'll demonstrate the techniqe using a Zendala I'd already drawn.  It's easiest to start with a large space, between the size of a nickel and quarter.  This tile was just begging for some color in the center.

Step 1:  Choose three shades of the same color.  Here, I've gone with pink--the lightest color is actually peach.  I use Prismacolors, though any map colors (how I grew up referring to colored pencils!) would do as long as there are three shades of the same color.

Step 2:  Draw a small "window" with the darkest or lightest color.  Leave the interior blank.  I used the darkest here.  The workshop actually had us using a pencil, but we found that it smeared, so I've switched to using one of the shades.

Step 3:  Using your darkest shade, color around the edges of the shape.

Step 4:  Using your middle shade, color around the edges of the first color, overlapping and blending.

Step 5:  Using your lightest shade, color around the rest of the space--except the "window"--and blend the entire Zen Gem.  Blend with colors until the gem is shiny and there are no clear distinctions between colors.

Step 6:  Using a white gel pen, fill in the blank "window."

Step 7:  With the same white gel pen, make a "smile" opposite the window

Step 8:  Using 01 micron, lightly draw "cracks" in the surface.  Do not color over the ink--it will smear.

The finished product.

For more on Zen Gems, I highly recommend Eni Oken's comprehensive ebook 3DTangle: Shading Smooth Gems.