Whew, it's so interesting how after 3 months of not drawing (because I've been obligated to focus on textile projects with deadlines), it takes a while to get back on board.  Between 2 major surgeries (all is well) and the need to focus on textile work, I have hardly drawn or tangled for a year.  I just cannot believe how great it feels to be working this way again.

Beginners Mind, a meditation concept that is vastly useful in all areas of daily life, is helpful here.  Begin again.  Begin again. Begin again.  And above all, practice.

Practice is the best of all instructors.
- Publillius Syrus

Everything is practice.
- Pele

Whenever I'm forced to take a long break from tangling, as has been the case recently, it helps me to get started again by using videos.  Here's one called, "How to Draw Cell" by TangleDream (click on the title if you want to try it yourself).  It's sort of like warming-up for a few days before I launch back into creating my own.

I would call this a high-focus piece; the "string" (the basic form, in Zentangle®) takes concentration but isn't hard if you watch carefully. 

A lack of verbal instruction means anyone with any language can follow along--no English needed.

It's always fascinating to see how one can think one is following carefully, and yet the outcome is so different from the original.  (I love that.  Plus I enjoy adapting things) 

Truly, we are all the same.  And yet, we are all unique.  It shows in so many ways, and art is one.

"...Your handwriting. the way you walk. which china pattern you choose. it's all giving you away. everything you do shows your hand. everything is a self portrait. everything is a diary."  --Chuck Palahniuk

Drawn by me yesterday, and hugely relaxing to do!  I think it's been years since I used my Rainbow Lead Pencil--check out previous posts on the Rainbow Lead by looking in the right-hand column at the Categories section (scroll down and you'll see that category; click there to find the previous posts). 

I have missed using it.  Disorganization meant I couldn't find it for quite a while but I'm getting more organized and located my itty-bitty-stub of the original Rainbow Lead as well as a newer one.

What I love about the Rainbow Lead pencil is that you can try to manage it, but you really can never guarantee 100% what color is going to come out of the tip.  I've learned to figure some of it out, but it still surprises me and I love that.  It forces me to respond more creatively.  In this case, it meant I somehow ended up with less color than usual, and that was fine.  I like the opalescent look of this mandala.

Here are 2 more photos.  In the first I was in the middle of the line work, and in the second I had finished and lined up all my tools (you can see the nearly-used-up stub of my original Rainbow Lead pencil there; I have to use a ""pencil extender to use the last bit of it.

Drawing this led to surprise after surprise with the colors.  I love that!

Just an amazing class from Lynn Mead of The Tangled Mind today--a benefit for children in Ukraine.  I loved every minute of the class.

Lots of discussion about MC Escher (of course), but also excellent teaching and plenty of time to tangle.  Done on gray cardstock with a black Micron 05 and graphite pencil with some white chalk pencil for highlights.  This was very much in the "quick and dirty" mode.  Fun!

First 3 days of Inktober this year.  I make a start but rarely finish.  So far I'm not crazy about any of these tangles and so I changed 2 of them to such an extent that they are barely recognizable.  (Tangles are:  Rain, Delray, ISEA-U).  In fact one of them isn't recognizable at all!

We'll see if I continue through the month this year.  A class I'm teaching and some textile projects might interfere.

When I finished this tile I was really pleased with it--then I photographed it and blew up the photo and once I saw how incredibly shaky all the linework is (it doesn't show so much when it's this size), I was horrified.  Yet another benefit of aging!  But when I consider the alternative, aging is just fine with me.  Being out of practice is also a likely cause.

Certainly not perfect, but good enough.  Perfection is not the goal.

I took a break today from the Lunar Phase Project (see the last few posts) and followed along on a video by Tanglewerks CZT.  She has many videos; the one I watched had no words, just music (and I shut off the music).  She did her mandala on a white tile.  I put it mine a grey tile, made a few changes, and added white chalk to spice things up.  It was a lovely way to spend the first few hours of a day--just quiet practice.  A meditation indeed.

I used to be able to draw any phase of the Moon easily from memory.  This is the Moon in Waning Crescent mode, as I've positioned it above.  (of course I could flip it around 180° so that the white "horns" point left and then it would represent exactly the opposite, but this is how I drew it--waning).  I haven't been watching the Moon as much during the last couple of years, and sure enough, I'm beginning to forget what's what.  Time to check back in with Her!

In fact, I have a series of tiles prepped as the Moon in Her various phases and I noticed confusion as I tried to put them in order this morning.  Could. Not. Do. It.  Had to resort to googling the Moon's Phases (what DID we do before smartphones?) in order to turn things the right way.  Yes, definitely time to check back in with Her daily changes.

While trying to determine exactly how long those tiles have been sitting around waiting for me to finish them, I re-discovered this (below).  If you asked me, "Have you ever drawn an elephant?"  I would have said with 100% confidence, "Nope."  But here it is.  And I drew it.  Memory is notoriously unreliable!

I based the coloring and the stars on an amazing photo I saw of a man in India riding an elephant for a spiritual celebration of some sort (to Ganesh, perhaps?).  His elephant had been covered with light blue blue dust and he or someone had painted stars all over it.  It pretty much looked like this.  I completely changed the blanket, though, and left off the man, and used a template for the outline of the elephant from Ben Kwok of Ornation Creation (he has tons of animal templates).  So this is not a copy of the photograph, not even close. I rarely tangle anything representational but my friend Julie adores elephants so I framed and gave it to her.  And I drew it exactly 7 years ago today.  A lot has happened in that time--she got married and now has a lovely little boy.  I'm betting the elephant picture is somewhere in her house, maybe even in his room.

Finally, since I've been on a Moon kick, yesterday I had fun with a Zendala I'd prepped with a watercolor wash a long time ago.  Just playing with the tangle Ibex.  I started off like the photo on the left and then somehow ended up like the photo on the right.  Not my best work but oh boy did I have fun playing.

Really, it is the same tile, just taken on 2 different backgrounds under different light conditions and clearly I'd done more drawing in the version on the right.  Still, when you look at the color differences, it's hard to believe it is the same tile.  I think I prefer the one on the left, before I overdid the work on it.  Live and learn.

Ah--I just heard that Queen Elizabeth has died. I know she was still working as recently as the day before yesterday, when she greeted the new PM.  Talk about taking to a role in life with utter dedication--how serious she was about it!  She wasn't perfect, but she was wonderful anyway.  She was born to become an archetype, and perfectly lived the role.  Go in peace, Lady.

This is part of a project I began years ago in a workshop with Martha Huggins and Molly Hollibaugh.  And I do mean years ago.

It always surprises me how much better I feel on a day when I draw.  Whether the piece turns out well or not, the process is mindful and meditative.

Here's a short article on why drawing--bad or good--is loved by so many. (Many of these same points could be describing the practice of meditation.)  Count me in. 

Practice will never make perfect, but it can certainly make things better--both visually and also with my internal weather system.  If I don't practice, I can tell the difference the next time I try to draw.  This is one reason I take classes frequently.  And if I don't practice I start to feel a build-up emotionally too.  Drawing repetitive lines is incredibly soothing, calming and meditative.

Speaking of which, meditation  is the same for me.  If I don't practice, I begin to see the effects almost immediately in daily life. 

I'm just better when I practice, whether with drawing or with meditation.

Here is another version of work I did in a class with Shie Naritomi, CZT.  What a wonderful teacher.  See my comments from yesterday on the background of this work.

Holy cow, this was a hard photo to take!  Two of the mandalas would look great, the third would almost disappear; I'd try again, another two would look great and the other third would disappear.  I was gnashing my teeth.  This is the best I could do.

This is part of a series of moon phase pieces.  I have moon phases on the brain right now.  I am hooking moons into my latest rug, and also working on these drawings which I began in late 2020.

My heart is like the autumn moon
perfectly bright in the deep green pool
nothing can compare with it
you tell me how it can be explained
--Han-Shan

Sometimes tired old things just need to be dressed up a bit to shine. 

Cue the comments on whether that's true for all of us!  I'm talking about things.  Ha.

This morning I found a gray tile that I'd tossed some lavender-ish watercolor on long ago, in an early attempt to map-tangle.  The color had spread out over most of the tile, with absolutely no interesting shape, and was incredibly plain.  BO-ring. 

Out came more watercolors today and I tarted it up, used my heat gun to dry it, and went to town with some of the Inktober tangles.  Better.  Every tangle except one was brand new for me.  Some of them turned out more successfully than others, so I'll re-do the ones that really didn't have enough room to show themselves off.  Perhaps that'll be the task for tomorrow.

This is what happens when I run out of black Micron 01s and still want to tangle.  Spynes, which I tried for the first time yesterday, is a really fun tangle for experimentation--I couldn't resist this second try.

The Stone House Runner is nearly done; just the usual finishing steps left.  Here it is:

A meditation on the preponderance of spirals in the cosmos.

"In a spiral galaxy, the ratio of dark-to-light matter is about a factor of ten. That's probably a good number for the ratio of our ignorance to knowledge. We're out of kindergarten, but only in about third grade."
--Vera Rubin

I enjoyed every moment of this one.  Enough said.

How many ways can a drawing go wrong?

Just watch.

I haven't laughed this hard in a long time.  Oh gosh, I started off drawing the tangle Dewd, which I have never quite grasped.  (an understatement if there ever was one)

The first thing to go wrong was that I discovered that my beloved Micron 01 was dying.  I searched for a new one, which was when I found out I did not have another 01.  What to do?  I picked up an 05 instead.  Oh dear.

That's one of the things that gives this very funny tile a look of having been drawn by Edvard Munch (the painter who created The Scream).  But wait, there's more!

Dewd is the tangle around the edges of this Zendala.  I kind-of-almost had it at first, and then totally lost it as I moved in toward the center.  At several points I thought, "Oh for Pete's sake--this is rubbish, I can't go on."  But hey, it's Zentangle®.  We always keep going and see what happens.  One line at a time.

So instead I started to laugh and plowed on.  I added another tangle in the center.  Oh my, a nice one but it didn't help.  Edvard Munch lives on.

Well hey, in for a penny in for a pound, right?  Will it help if we tart this up with color?  (no)  Out came the Silver Shadow Gellyroll pens.  These are always tricky to use as you never quite know how they will look when dry.  I followed that up with a liberal application of General's Colored Pencils in two colors.  Thus proving the saying by Oscar Wilde, "Nothing succeeds like excess."

Because despite it all, I kinda like it.  And I laughed my way all the way through, which is always fun.

It felt great today to just sit and tangle awhile.  Quiet and relaxing.  I'm rusty but the annual 'Inktober" Challenge adapted for tanglers got me going and I couldn't be happier, even though we're already nine days into the month.  I plan to do what I can and thoroughly enjoy doing it.  It's good to be back.

A repeat of yesterday's tile.  This is version 2.0 since I gave away the tile I did yesterday as a thank-you gift to a neighbor.  I realized I still wanted a version for myself and redid it, enjoying every line.

In today's version I added substantial green coloring as well as the blue, and experimented a bit with placement of patterns.  This was just as much fun as the first one.

Another "learning tile" done very quickly from an Artifex video.  This was done fast as a thank-you gift for a friend who made me a lovely dinner.  I cannot cook so cannot reciprocate, thus I wanted to draw her something as a way of expressing gratitude.

However, I needed gray-toned paper to work with, and didn't have any.  What to do?  I grabbed a white tile and threw a gray wash on it.  Et voilà--it actually worked!  I'll give it to her this evening.

Whew.  When it doubt, improvise.  Always a big life lesson for me.

Today more than a hundred CZTs from around the globe gathered online with CZTs in Singapore to do an hour-long meditative tile on behalf of those who have suffered from Covid-19. 

These were the same CZTs who last year donated $10K US and this year donated $12K US to Covid relief efforts as a result of their two very successful and well-run schools for tanglers.

What I loved about doing it, though, was that 3 or 4 different CZTs from the other side of the globe led us all through an hour-long meditation in which, as we drew, we focused our compassionate attention on anyone who has suffered from Covid.  They did a superb job leading the meditation.  I so admire the structure they've created to support humanitarian efforts.  Thanks!

And now for the tiny treasure.  Yesterday I went to my local bead-and-jewelry-repair shop to get my watch battery replaced.  While waiting, I spotted this wooden box, which is no more than about 1 1/2" square.  With what appears to be a tangled Turtle on top.

In fact the box is so small I had to take a picture and enlarge the photo in order to see the fine detail on the turtle, which just blew me away.  The top of the box slides off so smoothly it's just a marvel of craftsmanship.  It's so small that I cannot imagine what to put inside. 

This continent was originally called Turtle Island by the First Nations People, and I still call it that.  I am very fond of turtles and simply couldn't resist this tiny masterpiece.

And this leads us right back to the meditative nature of the turtle:

I love the life lessons I constantly learn from Zentangle®.  This was another big one.  I set out to draw one thing, ended up getting hopelessly lost, and by the time I finished the preliminary linework last night and forced myself to stop and go to bed, I was looking at a hot mess.  I didn't think it could be salvaged.

But this morning I just had to keep going to see what would happen, and ended up with this--which I quite like.  [Although it does bear a resemblance to "St Patrick's Day on Steroids," don't you think?  But that's ok, I like it anyway.]

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Here are the details for you tanglers out there (no need to read this part if you don't tangle--it could be boring for you):  I fell in love with an Emiko Kaneko CZT video (HERE)* and thought I'd give it a try.  But I misunderstood what it was:  She clearly labeled the video "A Tangleation of Tissooh," but all I saw was "Tissoooh," which is a high-focus tangle by Tomas Padros CZT that I've always wanted to attempt.

Emiko made it look so easy that I was sure I could do it and learn. 

Well.  I did indeed learn, but not as she intended! 

Mine has some resemblance to hers, but I ended up with a lot of weird space in the background, and things are not in the same places as on her tile.  So did I learn a lot?  You bet.  But now I need to go back and find a simple stepout for ONLY Tissooh and have a go at that one tangle--this tile combines Tissooh with something like Bales, Tripoli, and Orbs.  However, I do love my outcome.

For years I've heard that it's lways good to learn by copying the masters, and Eri is certainly a master of this art.

For me, the biggest learning is that no matter how bad something looks, it's highly likely that it's worth it to try and save the thing.  Or as the I Ching would say: "Perseverance furthers."

*Thank you to Susie Ngamsuwan for catching the fact that I'd attributed this tile and video to the wrong CZT.  Wow, much appreciated.

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Note:  I've been doing a LOT of copying lately, along with watching videos and going along with them.  I always credit people as I'm copying.  I'm on a mission to learn from a wide variety of tanglers whose skills I admire, and if that means I am copying for awhile, that's ok.  It's a powerful way to practice.

Here are three quotes about copying as an effective tool in learning art:

It would have been the equivalent of Jackson Pollock's attempts to copy the Sistine Chapel. (Malcolm Cowley)

But Shakespeare's magic could not copied be;
Within that circle none durst walk but he. (John Dryden)

If my students seem to copy me when they are learning, that is good. It shows they are listening and trying to do what I tell them. They will develop their own style soon enough. (William Draper)

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Finally, I took these two photos only one minute apart.  The first one, on the left, was taking on a white background in indirect daylight.  The second one--using the same camera with no setting changed--was taken a minute later on the blue background and in direct sunlight.  WOW--look at the difference!  It might as well be two different pieces, but it isn't.  Isn't that incredible!  It never fails to amaze me how light and a different color in the background can make the same thing look totally different.

PS:  The one on the left is the actual coloring of the tile.

Yes, spring definitely continues.  I can tell by my constantly running nose.

It's totally worth a runny nose to have such a gorgeous spring.

Today I did this in celebration.

Before I added and activated the watercolor pencils--which I am quite enjoying--the linework looked more or less like what is below.  I must have prepped that Zendala with watercolor years ago because it's just barely visible there.

"Every spring is the only spring, a perpetual astonishment."
--Ellis Peters

I'm in a liminal place:  In between rug hooking projects, in between books I'm reading, in between tangling projects, and just "in between" on a lotta things.  The mind doesn't like being so in between, but that's just how it is right now.

Here's a map-tangled tile I prepped a while back and finally got around to tangling last night.  I'm not sure I enhanced it.  I kind of liked the prepped version before I added anything.  But I'll see if it grows on me:

I prepped that tile above** (wet on the left, after drying on the right) after midnight last night, waiting for sleep that really never came.  Such intense color.  I woke up after far too little sleep, thinking about the tile and how I might tangle on it.  An idea floated by--oooo, more experimentation!  And now, back to rug hooking.  I gotta get this rug done.

**Thanks to Annie Taylor, CZT (of ArtyZen) for terrific how-to-prep the tile instructions!

Every year at this time I find myself looking backwards.  And forwards.  Today I was doing some cleaning in my art room, and I found these 12-month-old-tiles below.  Bittersweet, indeed.

In mid-December 2019, I was just back from a wonderful weekend with a good friend at Kripalu, drawing tangles with Martha Huggins (on the left) and Molly Hollibaugh (right) of the Zentangle® family.  If this year had been normal, I'm sure I'd have done the same.  But we all know it was not a normal year. 

So here is a short review of some of the work we did in December 2019, with the fond hope that we will be able to do something similar in 2021.  Looking at these tiles brought back so many good memories for me.

And although I'm not a Christmas celebrator, I just happened to get some non-Christmas presents this year (the timing just worked out that they arrived at Christmastime).  Here are two that I'm thrilled by but haven't had time to try out yet. 

A friend is a gift you give yourself.
Robert Louis Stevenson