a july tangle challenge

There are days (most of them) where I will use any excuse to avoid doing art.  All the other responsibilities I have take first place, and by the end of the day I'm just too tired.  But in truth, I know it's nearly always fear that stops me.

Fortunately, Zentangle® never seems to take THAT long to do, and there are always a number of weekly "challenges" being posted by avid tanglers on the internet.

I'm going to work on doing 2 of those challenges a week--the one this one went to, called It's a String Thing Challenge, and The Diva Challenge.  This is one I did for the String Thing; it uses four tangles, one each successive one beginning with J- U-L-Y. It's kind of a flag-waver, which isn't really like me at all (I've nothing against flag-waving, just not my style) but since it appears all our fireworks will be rained out this year due to Hurricane Arthur, I can view it as a "sparkly-boomy" kind of tangle.

The fun thing about doing challenges is that parameters are tightly set; the even more fun thing is to see the wildly different pieces people do within those parameters, and how the individual results look so utterly distinct that it's nearly impossible to see that everyone WAS working with the same constraints.  I can't wait to see what people do with this one, and will try to remember to post a link to the results here. 

The absolute best thing about these challenges, for me, is that they get me drawing.  Creating.  Putting the pen on the paper.  It's the beginning that is tough. 

Once I get going, it's hard to stop.

PS, Once I get going here, it's also hard to stop!  After posting this, I read this fabulous blog post by the wonderful Flora Bowley on why getting stuck is a necessary part of the creative process.  Take a moment to read it, and see if you don't think that getting stuck in LIFE is also sometimes part of what we need to do periodically, in order to move on in the most mindful way.

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