the taste of springtime

I was in my mid-twenties when I first tasted kiwi fruit.  A fussy eater when young, I continued to eye anything green with great caution for many years.  Imagine my pleasant surprise at the indescribably sherberty sweetness of those little furry fruits!  A similar thing happened with water chestnuts.  I tried one a long time ago and didn't enjoy the icy crunch, but accidentally ended up with a slice in my mouth just last year and found that I loved it.

Tastes change, and sometimes we wait a while before we realise what we've been missing.  And so it goes with Zen Buttons.  I first discovered them around this time last year and spent a pleasing Easter weekend tangling Bijou sized ones and then later moved onto larger ones.  But a couple of weeks ago I saw a triangular button, and then a square button, and realised I'd never drawn anything but round ones.  Time to revisit the button scene and rectify that absence.

No particular tangles to name on this pink button - I just made shapes, roughly repeating a sort of fragment and filling bits here and there.  A gem in the middle, a touch of pink watercolour and ink.  That moment where it doesn't look too good, and then the transformation that comes about when you add the graphite and the white chalk.

Things didn't seem to go quite as well with my green button. Sometimes that just happens.  I took longer with it, thought about it more, and perhaps that's the downfall.  I used similar corner tangles to the pink to help them be more of a pair, and the same Knightbridge style edging.  Then I used a LitBee fragment and some Diva Dance.  All okay at that stage, but the shading didn't seem to do the trick this time.  And I didn't know why.  Perhaps I hadn't smoothed the white chalk quite as well, or perhaps the shape didn't work the same, or the tangles didn't lend themselves to that three dimensional look that the Button relies on.  I left the tile overnight, sat dejectedly on my bookcase, and I looked at it now and then.  This morning I gave it a makeover - I softened some of the white, and then darkened the shadows using a black Polychromos.  And while it still doesn't sing to me quite like the pink, I'm happy to call it done!

The long Easter weekend is almost here.  I don't know what I'll be tangling, but I know I'll be reading books, and dozing and gazing out of the windows at the leaves that have suddenly dressed the trees.  There's rumours of sunshine so maybe I'll even go outside among those leaves.  But in case I don't, or in case you don't either, you can get a taste of spring from Annette's latest Mosaik Project results which she just shared today!

It started with a leaf - Sand Swirl, Ginili, Snail

A number of times a year Annette provides a string and asks us to send her tangled tiles which she brings together into incredibly beautiful mosaics.  This time we were each invited to fill our leaf shape with green colour and tangle the rest in black and white.  I sent her this tile in response.  And this is what she did with my tile alone -

As if by magic - one becomes sixteen - becomes something wonderful

But the truly incredible thing is when she brings all of our leaves together.  36 tanglers, 36 green leaves in various shades - a hearty dose of imagination and a young forest unfurls itself and flutters in the breeze!  Please take a deep breath, take a look and enjoy the spectacle.  And think about joining in when the next one begins in July!

listening to echoes

Mostly when I tangle I don't think – my mind pleasantly disconnected from anything other than the flow of ink across paper. But if I do think I think about the tangling, and sometimes I think about what I might say in my next blog post.

This week I thought about repetition. About how I find myself often saying the same things to different people within the tangle community. I don't think this repetition is a bad thing. I often rediscover and repeat the same things to myself on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. This is how they sink in, this is how we learn.

This week I shared the thought that taking part in tangle challenges should never feel like a chore, merely an invitation to inspiration, that we should always feel able to decline without a shadow of guilt. This isn't the first time I've said this, and it won't be the last.

I didn't feel inspired to respond to the invitations that the Diva put out in the first couple of weeks of the year. But this week I did. The opportunity to fill stripes was too good to resist.

Keeko and a Beadlines variation -
ragged in places like a beloved old cardigan

But then a funny thing happened, all of a sudden I felt like doing a tile for the previous week's challenge as well. I explored a new medium by trying out a form of reverse TranZending which I've been watching Anica develop and explore over the last few months.

A rare photo of the works in progress

I used a Posca white pen to lay down a base layer of Baton. The benefit of the Posca pen seems to be that it dries to a permanent finish – which means it doesn't clog your micron when you go over it many times, and it doesn't re-moisten and start to move about. I drew my tile on a Strathmore grey tile - newly recommended to me by tangle friend Jules after I'd admired one of her 'hairy' grey tiles. These come measuring 4x4 but I cut this one down to our more familiar 3.5 x 3.5.  I often tangle on grey toned pastel paper, but these tiles have a smoother surface which seemed better suited to this technique.

Bunzo, Mooka and Tipple - I love how shiny and dark this looks -
like seeing an underwater world trapped beneath ice

Guess what happened then! I fancied doing yet another Diva tile, one for the first challenge of the year. I don't have a spinner machine so I laid down some concentric circles using two shades of grey watercolour brush pen. When I blended these with a water brush a subtle purple started to appear - sometimes an unwelcome side-effect, on this occasion a welcome hint of colour.  Not that I'm missing colour, despite being firmly locked into the blacks and greys of my Winter Inklings project.

CC and a bit of Mintea - and lots of graphite -
ornate cloud banks on a misty day

I politely declined to join the party for the first two weeks of the Diva challenge year, but this week I had a ball doing all three. I feel sure that I wouldn't have created these tiles if I had forced myself last week or the week before. These tiles could only appear when they were ready, when I was ready - I just need to remember over and over again to listen to my instinct.

good enough to eat

Over the long weekend I worked on one thing, and one thing only - Zenbuttons!

These are the creation of Marguerite Samama of Happy Tangling.  They seem to be popping up in various Zentangle places I frequent and so I wanted to give them a go while they were hot!

Done well they have an amazing dimension and shine and seem to pop right off the tile.  See some mesmerising examples by Laurel Storey.  She won't burden you with words like me, just tonnes of great pictures!

I wanted to do them justice, so I bought Marguerite's instructions. (Edit - Marguerite has now generously made her instructions available free for all on Tangle Patterns - have fun!)  I usually wing it when new techniques appear, and often I manage to get to the desired result through trial and error.  But I wanted the foolproof method.  And it worked first time!

My first four Zenbuttons were done by sticking pretty close to the instructions.   I used fragments inside the reticula and shaded as suggested.  I drew them onto tan paper, but I did them Bijou sized - for some reason I like to start small when practicing something new.

My first four buttons - in black in with added brown,
wine, purple and olive ink

They look great to me.  In fact the hardest thing is getting a photo or scan do them justice, they look even more dimensional to the naked eye.

I then tried things a different way, using coloured pastel paper.  And on some of the Zenbuttons I used a single tangle round the entire band as opposed to fragments.  I think the blue ones work well, but the orange less so - and the orange one with Printemps the least - something just doesn't pop!  I've got an instinctual feel that some tangles / fragments work better than others, but it's early days.

Mixed success - but the blue ones I like.  Top right looks almost metallic -
bottom left has extra colour laid down first and in the shading

But imagine the possibilities - this is just the start.  I want to try them on different tonal papers, in different colours, I want to try them larger.  I wonder how I might combine them with other tangling.

If the world is my oyster, it won't contain a pearl but a button!