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.

The Evolution of a Tangle

I'm not sure exactly when I first saw the tangle Floatfest, but I remember a beautiful tile on the Zentangle app Mosaic by my co-CZT#22, Anja Schaffeld (the link leads to photos of two tiles on her blog) that featured the tangle--and almost as importantly, it's name, Floatfest, a tangle by Carole Ohl, CZT.  I wanted to give it a try.

And so, here, I'm documenting how I go about learning a new tangle.  For me, this one was particularly challenging, a high-focus tangle.  I found a link to a step-out by Adele Bruno, CZT, on Pinterest; I used that as my starting point.

I first tried it in my regular sketchbook, working fast and trying to get down the pattern.  Bruno's notes were helpful, especially the one that said it didn't matter where the arches started or ended.  And so I practiced.

And practiced.

And practiced, not completely happy with my understanding of the tangle quite yet.

And so I put it on a tile (photographed here with a rainbow from a prism.)

My second tile went through it's own progression; first, with white arches.

But I had liked the play of black and white in my first tile and so colored some arches in, which has the bonus of hiding some "mistakes" in the hollibaugh-like overlap.

But I didn't like that much either and so I colored them all in.  I think I prefer the first one, uncolored. Oh, well.  No mistakes.

Which led me to the next two tiles, with the words "Try" and "Practice," and different heights and widths of arches.

 I combined it with fengle and crescent moon, making a mandala of arches (with prismatic rainbow.)

I tried it with another new tangle I learned this weekend, Rubenesque, and some perfs, an idea from Anja.

Which brings us to this morning and a Zendala (Zentangle Mandala) that I made with geo-flower, Rubenesque, and floatfest.  I'm getting the hang of floatfest now, after several attempts; I'm comfortable enough playing with it but know that I'm still not consistent with it (or with geo-flower and Rubenesque, for both of which I've worked through a similar process as floatfest.)  

And that's okay.  For me, it's about process--all of those tiles above and the relaxation and calm I experienced doing them (okay, not in the first few attempts, which was concentrated learning)--not product.

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