Zen Buttons ….

Posted on April 15, 2019 by Tangles by the Sea

My Sunday afternoon class at the Bernardo Winery saw five of us trying our hands at Zen Buttons – a technique started by Marguerite Samama, CZT. This is a fun way to create your own “string”, and include squares, circles and triangles. This technique is also a good way to implement “fragments” of patterns. (See – “A Zentangle Collection of Reticula & Fragments)

For this class, we used an original Zendala for one of our buttons and then a Strathmore Toned Blue mixed media tile for our other. Zen Buttons use a white chalk pencil for a special effect and it works nicely on the toned paper. It’s takes a little more work for the highlight to show through on the white tiles.

Attempting two tiles in two hours, which included drawing out one of our strings and using a funky little “compass”, took a little more time than thought. We almost finished our second tiles, which I had already drawn to save time, but they still needed the shading and white highlighting.

I found that planning ahead for this class took a little more time. I felt that once you got your circles, squares and triangles down on the tile and start with a pattern in the middle, you should just let the next pattern come to you – rather than force another planned pattern. The ladies did a great job, had a few oops, but the work turned out lovely. Everyone still wonders at how we can all get the same directions, but the work turn out so different.