Recent Tiles

I try to do a tile-a-day, in the morning, after the kids leave for school.  It clears my mind of the morning chaos, grounds and centers me for the day ahead.  As I mentioned in an earlier post I've been working on line weight and rounding.  Here are some of my recent tiles, in rather dark photos because it's been so rainy here the last week or so.

#covfefe

A new tangle I found on Pinterest called Salo

Tangles: spoken, huggy bear, w2, and Zen Gem

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.