Thursday, June 14, 2018

Zenbuttons (and Spundalaz)

Cute as a button, and a delightful way to go around in circles and create a type of mandala!

I first saw this type of idea from Chris Titus, a CZT in the United States and major organizer of the Square One groups on Facebook. Her idea involved using a paint-spinner gadget to create concentric color streaks that could be developed into tangled mandalas. She calls them spundalaz. More on that in a future post.

Marguerite Samama, a CZT in the Netherlands, has a zenbuttons tutorial on tanglepatterns.com, here. As I don't have a paint-spinner gadget, Marguerite's tutorial inspired me to try the zenbuttons.

Zendala tiles seemed like the right thing to use. Here's my first try:
Tangles: All Boxed Up, Lanie variations, Puff, Tipple, Tripoli, Well 
I'm not very happy with it as the white highlights don't show up well. I think my black ink was still a bit damp and the white pencil smeared it slightly, leaving gray instead of white.

The second try turned out better. There's a little more dimension to the rings but still not enough for my liking.
Tangles: Boucle, Jalousie, Lanie variations
I came across a pre-strung zendala tile I'd begun a long time ago. It hadn't held my interest, but I didn't throw it out. I wondered if I could adapt it into a zenbutton so I divided it into concentric circles and completed the tangling. Here it is the way I'd left it, and with my ink drawing done.
Tangle: Ginili adaptation
I altered the color of the perimeter ring as it was too bright. There's much more satisfactory dimension in this one. I'm improving!

I had a wonderful eco-dyed tile, a gift from Chris Titus some time ago. The rusty circle was so lovely as-is I didn't know what I could add to improve it. Aha! Zenbutton! Here's the tile, with the concentric rings I drew to begin.
And here's the result:
I'm pretty happy with it, although sufficient dimensionality is still an issue I think.

7 comments:

  1. Wow - these are all so beautiful! I love how you have ‘buttoned over’ your existing tiles - great results!

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  2. Lovely to see your first tentative steps into the Zenbutton / Spundalaz scene. All lovely especially the last dark and rusty one which really appeals to me. From my limited experience you can risk putting a lot more graphite or dark coloured pencil into the sunken areas. And white charcoal (I used General's) worked better for the highlights than white coloured pencil which gets muddy!

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    1. Thanks for the advice. I was surprised by how much color (or graphite) I needed to add to the ‘grooves’. The only thing I don’t like about the white charcoal is that it tends to brush off.

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    2. True - charcoal does move about quite a bit, but I've found that the General's brand sticks more than others I've tried. Sort of smoothing it in with a stump helps a bit too. It's a trial and error thing. And of course then taking a decent photo is tricky too - the dimension easily gets lost in the flat image!

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    3. Great! I'll give it a try because I DO like the effect. Thanks.

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  3. All beautiful, but the one from Chris Titus is fanatastic! I don't know if you will ever read this, but I have tried watercolor paper, mixed media paper and even deli paper on a spinnable cake pedestal (can't think what they are called) and dripped acrylic paints (even the cheap ones) in circles, then spin slowly with one hand and drag a paint brush around and around in circles until you have a nice rainbow mandala looking design. They come out great. I have done many, but have not gone beyond that, never heard of zen buttons or spundalaz. Thought designs and/or words around the spirals would be cool. May have used a lightweight double stick tape here and there, can't remember. Seems it stayed in place well as not going too fast.

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    1. Susan, that's a great idea. I'm thinking a lazy susan could work too.

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