Let's face it:  I just don't have the photographic skills to do justice to the spring colors outside right now.  The crystalline sunlight.  The intensely clear blue sky.  And the spring flowers!  Oh my--absolutely no way to capture those colors.  Crocuses everywhere, and squill all around them.  I'm no gardener, alas, but I walk by this lovely garden every day:

It makes my heart smile to see these small flowery gifts rising from the soil after such a very, very grim winter.  Indeed, after this winter, I feel lucky to be alive to see these gifts from the earth coming back to us.

Yesterday I did some wool dyeing in order to finish the rug I've been working on for months.  Because I'm doing a major revision on this rug, I've been pulling out one color and substituting another--a color I hadn't planned on and so I ran out of it.  Thus it was back to the dyepots.  I surprised myself by getting an exact match.  It reminds me of the purple crocuses, even though it needed to be grayed down for the rug.

A VERY grayed-down lavender.  But, it'll work!  Onward to finishing the rug.

                                                        And WELCOME SPRING.

All my time at the moment is devoted to finishing up a rug.

I'm so committed to getting the darned rug done that I haven't allowed myself any time for tangling.  Last night I sneaked an hour of tangling at the Sunday evening hour that Amy Kam CZT offers free.  It felt so good.  I'm quite surprised by how much I miss tangling when I don't indulge it for a while.  Hmmmm.  Addiction?

This fell out of my pen over the last 3-4 days.  But somehow I don't feel that it's quite finished.

Hmmm.  The more I study this, the more I want to add a bit.  I think there is more tinkering to be done.  How does one ever know that it's time to stop?

"When you're ready to stop, stop. If you have presented all the facts and made the point you want to make, look for the nearest exit."  --Wm. K. Zinsser

-Later the same day-

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!  Indeed, I wasn't finished.  Here is the finished version. 

Here's the side-by-side comparison:

The whole process was interesting.  For one thing, I loved the background until I started tangling on it, and then suddenly I started disliking every line I drew.  Too shaky.  Too uneven.  I'm doing it wrong. 

But what the heck...I stayed with it until I thought I was done, and surprised myself by liking it much more than expected.

...which lasted 5 minutes.  Something felt off still. 

So I went back to the drawing board and added just a bit more color in the center and voila, now it feels done, and I've gone from disliking to quite liking it.  There's a big lesson in here for me.  I keep learning this same lesson--but this time I noticed I'm trusting the lesson more.

After SEVEN long years, my Universe Tarot Card rug is finally home.  It was delivered this morning in perfect condition.  I cannot believe that all of those tiny laminated cards I stitched onto the pathways of this Tree haven't fallen off by now; it must have been unpacked, hung up, taken down, and packed up again a zillion times since it left my hands in 2014.  This rug has been more places in the United States and world than I will ever see. 

Twenty-three rugs were designed and hooked for this Project, by a wide variety of well-known AND unknown rug artists.  I was flattered to be asked.  My rug was the only punched rug in the entire exhibit, as I recall.  All the others were traditionally hooked with wool strips, which is the type of hooking I've also tended to do more frequently (but oh how I love rug punching too).  To see the history of the exhibit and view the other rugs, go HERE. 

Most of the rug creators knew next to nothing about tarot.  Some who were invited to contribute turned it down because they believe tarot is the work of the devil.  I was so sorry to hear that.  I simply view tarot--which I've studied for 40+ years--as a way of speaking with our subconscious selves, which cannot use words but can use images.  And I do not fortune-tell, since no one can know the future.  I see it as a lovely psychological tool and a creative spark.  It has been a wise and compassionate assistant in my life for decades.  I use it seldom but when I do, it always helps me to express some inner wisdom or insight I might not otherwise have reached.

“It’s said that the shuffling of the cards is the earth, and the pattering of the cards is the rain, and the beating of the cards is the wind, and the pointing of the cards is the fire. That’s of the four suits. But the Greater Trumps, it’s said, are the meaning of all process and the measure of the everlasting dance.”
― Charles Williams

“When you drop the idea of predicting the future, you start to experience the cards as a mirror of the psyche. That`s when playing with the tarot becomes a path to wisdom.”
― Philippe St Genoux

A real shot in the arm for me.  So grateful.  Second dose later this month.  Phew.

Amy Kam CZT of The Peaceful Pen on IG and Facebook does a great one hour Zentangle® meditation, free, every Sunday evening at 7 pm EST.  I attended my first one last night and this was the result.  Well, I started last night but shortly after I joined realized I was ill, and as a result completely lost focus on her excellent directions and my entire piece went badly off the rails. 

NOTE TO SELF:  Never tangle right after a dinner that is not agreeing with me!  I was forced to stop and lie down until I improved, but I could watch the computer screen and see the results everyone had (over 100 tanglers).  My own hot mess of a first try has scribbled notes all over it so that I could have a do-over later last night, and I had no trouble with it on a fresh tile after a couple of hours.  Lesson learned.

It's rare that a piece cannot be saved, but that first tile will be relegated to the trash.  I was too ill to function.  It's true there are "no mistakes" in Zentangle, but it's also true that at times in life things need to be faced squarely, evaluated, and then entirely redone.

            "What we call experience is often a dreadful list of ghastly mistakes."
                                                      --J. Chalmers da Costa

This was a fun late-night ZIA attempt.  ZIA stands for "zentangle inspired art," and in this case--in case you don't see it at first--you are looking at a crown.

I took a video class with Midori Furuhashi, CZT.
You can find her on Facebook or @midorifuruhashi on Instagram.
She wowed me by teaching simultaneously in both Japanese and English.  Oh, to have language skills like hers! 
There were a lot of tangles in this piece that I rarely use, and that is what drew me to it.  It's actually too busy for me, but it was terrific practice in both tangling and shading.  It's traditionally done on a gray tile, but I discovered I didn't have one, so went with white which isn't as striking as the gray.  I had to make do.

                      THE MIDWAY POINT
This was the point where I finished the drawing only--pre-coloring, pre-shading.

Makes me stop and think when I look at the contrast between this and the finished tile above.

After all, what is life without shade as well as sun?  And life is better when it isn't just black and white--adding all the colors it comes in, no matter what, is our best chance for a full life and wisdom.

Phew.  I finally got this entire project redone and finished.  It's not my best work, but now at least I know what the trouble was--my helpful teacher pointed out that I need better quality small brushes.  (And lots more practice)  Yes!

Here is the initial stage, the underpainting before I used the smaller (problematic) brushes to add in  the tangle patterns.  Although I preferred the bee I painted yesterday, I had more control in this painting overall.  It's an improvement over yesterday's background wash and hexagons.  I'll take improvement!

When I got to the very end (adding tangles to the underpainting) and switched to small brushes to created detailed tangles, I noticed the points on the brushes were poor and the hairs would collapse--and spread--at the slightest pressure, resulting in sloppy lines.

But it's done (below), and wow did I learn a lot in creating it.  See yesterday's post for my initial problems.  Now that I know what went wrong, I think I'll be able to do better work in future.  I'm glad I experimented, and so glad I stuck with it long enough to try again.

There are two major take-aways: 
1) As usual, anything new takes substantial practice, and
2) Do not use cheapo materials--the right tools are worth every penny.

The start:  And, here we go again.  Another watercolor in a class with Sam Taylor/zenlapse (she has wonderful classes mixing Zentangle® with watercolor). 

Whoa, watercolor is so darned tricky!  Here I have prepped a 6x6" watercolor paper with her bee template, put a wash over the background, and done some coloring of the bee itself. 

Those are Fine-Tec metallic watercolors on the wings (silver) and the pollen baskets (gold) although as usual, they are so hard to show in a photograph.  The overall wash and other colors I just mixed from myregular cheapo Prang watercolors. 

If you really look you can see some hexagons drawn lightly in pencil and scattered randomly throughout the wash; unfortunately, as you'll see below, I did rather too-good a job erasing them so that the outlines wouldn't show in the final painting. 

Hah!  When it came to painting them, I couldn't see what I was doing.  And I still haven't mastered the trick of avoiding "hard lines" in a watercolor wash.  Watercolor has a big learning curve.  That's ok.  I'm determined.

Mid-stage:  I'm beginning to paint the hexagonal cells.  Because my light is on the left side, you can only see the gold and silver Fine-Tec there.  More hexagons to come.

Having done an over-zealous job of erasing, I'm having issues making my hexagons the right shape because I can't really see my guidelines.  Live and learn!  I'll keep going and post the outcome next.
                                         * * *
Er, um, no, I guess I won't.

The End:  The entire project went off the rails badly just a couple of hours later.  It went so far off that I ended up gently, slowly, and deliberately tearing it into several pieces (yes, I did indeed, a first for me), with the intention of keeping and  repurposing parts of them somehow into another art project.  I bet I can.

What went wrong?  When I began tangling onto the completed background using a watercolor brush, I lost control and completely wrecked the bee.  Oh, I was fond of that bee!  I tried to rescue it using a Micron, but that made it so much worse.

I was stung.  (pun intended)  However, as I mentioned earlier, I am determined.  I will re-do the entire project.  Perhaps I'll improve the next time.  I know I learned several useful things even though this attempt didn't work.  Hope springs eternal.

Dammit.  <g>

What should we do when there appears to be very little energy for "doing?"  Sometimes we have days like that.  I had one today.

Fortunately, I had two small Bijou (2"x2") tiles already prepped with Map Tangled backgrounds, so today I did them as experiments.  I had to make an effort to get going since I had no energy at all. 

The jury is out on whether I like the results all that much.  On this first tile I put the tangle Pepper (with a few orbs added) which I tarted up with Gold Jellyroll pen in between the black Micron PN strokes and also in the negative spaces.  I'm still contemplating this one.  But at least it got me drawing on a day when I felt...blah.  As we sometimes do, for no reason.  Just blah.  Not bad, not good.

How often do we notice these moments of complete neutrality?  I usually don't, unless a lot of them get strung together during a day--unusual, but it does happen once in awhile.  Should neutral always equal "blah?"  Many folks experience an occasional no-energy day.  

Perhaps I just needed a day to do nothing?  Or simply to contemplate neutrality?  There hasn't been much to feel neutral about in a long, long time (locally or globally).  Perhaps neutrality has been snoozing, and is now waking up again.  Is it actually neutrality, then, or could my over-stimulated nervous system from these last few traumatic years not recognize what it means to rest and restore itself?

Experiment #2,is also done on a pre-prepped Map Tangled background on another tiny tile.   Only this time, the prep included putting a silver metallic Fine Tec watercolor glaze over the regular pink-rose watercolor.  I used a purple Micron PN to do the tangle, which is Diva Dance--a tangle I love but always find quite baffling.  I need remedial Diva Dance lessons!

Diva Dance reminds me of neurons in the brain, quivering and firing.  And yet when I'm drawing, I'm usually totally absorbed and just not thinking.  Perhaps my own dancing neurons go into some type of trance when I draw.  A good thing, on days like this one.

A metallic shine is hard to capture on camera, and the deep rose color did not show truly here.  As is the case with the other small experiment above, I am still waiting to decide how I feel about the tile. 

In the end, it doesn't matter.  The practice itself--and "showing up" even on a day when I didn't have much energy--was my intention, not the final outcome. 

Show up.  Sit down.  Whatever comes up  is simply what is arising in this moment. Notice it.  No judgement. 

Exactly like  meditation.

After taking the class with Nancy Domnauer, during which we prepped and completed the tangling on three tiles (I only showed two of those), I spent just a few minutes the following day to produce the two UN-tangled tiles above.  I'm learning as I go.  People get obsessed with MapTangling, and I can absolutely see why.  It's a surprise every time; results are always unexpected and ever-changing.

Just like our day-to-day lives. 

But with MapTangling, results are likely to be beautiful every time, even if tangling on them can turn out to be tricky and challenging.  That's half the fun. 

Now, if I could only learn to be as calm in daily life when presented with a challenge as I am while doing this.

Here's a tiny tile I did just before bed last night.  It took about ten minutes.  This was done on a Bijou tile (2"x2") which I'd prepped a background on earlier in the day.  This is simply more linework from one of Jo Quincy's lovely soothing videos, just what I needed before trying to sleep after a wild couple of days in my life.  Once again I combined a video from Jo with my own "take" on it, by using MapTangling.  Ahhhhhhhhh.

To finish up, here's an iPhone-app "distressed" version.  I can never resist those iPhone apps.

I noticed my British friend and teacher extraordinaire,  Jo, has a YouTube channel (why didn't I know this before?) and I took a look today.  She did a lovely job demo-ing one of my old favorite tangles, Betweed.  I've loved this tangle forever and used to use it all the time.  Why did I stop?  Like a lot of things, it just passed out of my consciousness at some point and I haven't done it in years.  What a welcome reminder.

I had time to experiment this afternoon and decided to use her video to do this monotangle version of it.  Soooooooo relaxing.  But rather than do it plain, as she did, I used a tile I had previously prepped for MapTangling, and used that as a technique.  Well then I couldn't leave well-enough alone so I did some shadow work in a couple of the negative space surrounding the motif.  This was totally fun.  I liked the depth and subtlety.

Ah, but I thought I might run it through an app on my iPhone to see how it would look.  Holy crow!  It went from subtle to glaring.  You had better wear your darkest sunglasses for this version below (altered by the iPhone app).

Once I start playing with the iPhone to alter a photo, it turns into a project all on its own.  Using another iPhone app, I came up with all of these:

There is something to be said for each of them.  Besides, it's so much fun being able to play with alternatives.  It's even more fun greeting an old friend--this tangle--one I haven't seen for awhile. 

I imagine we will all feel that way once the pandemic is over and we are able to see each other in person again.  We can Zoom, and that's helpful, but to be able to spend time with old friends and hug each other again...priceless.

Truly, I am a lucky gal.

I did this tangle last night for a friend whom I think of as a  real gem.
 
  This woman has been my mentor for the last two years in a meditation teacher training program.  She has been unbelievably kind, sensitive, helpful, and has drawn liberally from and shared her own deep practice and her decades of experience teaching meditation to others.  In the process she has been a powerful example to me, as well as to the other four people in my small peer group for the last couple of years.  We have been fortunate to know her.

In Buddhism there are many lists, one of which is known as "The Three Jewels:  The Buddha, the Dharma, and and Sangha."  I mailed off this little Zentangle® Gem Portrait today with that in mind, to say thank you to her.  She has managed to embody the Buddha's teachings, transmitting the Dharma clearly and faithfully, and with patience and kindness has helped us to form a peer supervision group (the Sangha) that will continue long after the program ends.

Thank you, Adi.

"...You should understand that you are one of the Three Jewels. You shouldn't put the Three Jewels outside of yourselves; you should always think of yourselves as being one of the Three Jewels—and that includes your body, your speech, and your mind.”
― Dhomang Yangthang, The Union of Dzogchen and Mahamudra

Yes, it really looks this way. 

This exquisite photograph of the Grand Canyon at Sunset was taken on the Martin Luther King Holiday, 2021, by Michael Quinn, a fabulous National Park Service photographer who has lived at the Canyon forever. 

I think it speaks to his heart.

It certainly speaks to mine.

This is the result of a truly wonderful class with Stefanie vanLeeuwen this afternoon <@tanglestudiostefanie>.  There were students from Canada, the USA, Holland, Germany, the Carribean, and Spain.  We had such a good time and I certainly learned a lot.  I'll be trying this method again with other forms and colors. 

Every person in the class produced something very beautiful--the sign of an excellent teacher.  Stefanie had everything extremely organized well in advance. 

I chuckle when I contrast the sense of control I have with colored pencils to the lack of control I have with watercolor; see yesterday's post for more on that.

Art is truly endless learning. 

"Regard everything as an experiment," said artist Corita Kent.  Words of wisdom.

Or should that be, Rusty AND Tricky?  I did some watercolor yesterday and today and wow, was the it ever hard to handle.  What a mess!  The result is fun but not particularly good--I say that not to put myself down, only to say I can definitely get better with practice.  It's been about 3 years since I've done any watercolor practice, and it shows.  Did this one in a class by Sam Taylor (@Zenlapse on IG).

I'd gotten a new set of "tropical" colors and couldn't wait to try them out, so I tried them out on this warty fish:

It's just amazing how that darned water can get away from me.  Or I would assume something was dry, only to discover it wasn't...so then I'd have one color running into the other.  Or I put my hand down to draw something and would feel that sickening wet feeling under my hand--I'd forgotten that part was still sopping wet and now I'd smeared it.  Yikes!  Hilarious, however.

Watercolor requires patience and plenty of mindfulness.  Looks like it's time for me to cultivate both. 

I think I'll try doing another fish.

After I posted yesterday I found this Bijou (2.2") tile.  Truth be told, this was the very first Map Tangling tile I did at the workshop yesterday.  I had tossed it aside because 1) I did it "wrong," (normally a black Micron is used for the tangling; I used red) and 2) I thought it looked terrible

But a big Zentangle® guideline is, "There are no mistakes in Zentangle."  And I had ignored that.

When I found the tile while cleaning up and putting materials away, I took a second look. I added a few black center dots and a tiny bit of chalk pencil shading, and voila.  Suddenly I liked it a lot better.

Many lessons here. 

The first is about the randomness of Map Tangling results--just like the randomness of what happens to us in life. 

Then there's the typical immediate adverse reaction to something that didn't meet expectations, with a later softening of that reaction, and then a final change of mind.  Just like life.
 
Also, there's the experience of allowing myself to experiment and put a little more effort into something to see if can be salvaged--and it can.  Just like life. 

Finally, even if I still disliked this tiny tile, still felt disappointed with it (although I quite like it now), I know I would still be happy to have made it because it was an important first try, an important learning, an important session of practice.

Yup, just like life.

For years I've heard about Map Tangling and while I had some idea what it was (see below), and had really admired it, I didn't have time to figure out how to create it.  Today I took a class with Nancy Domnauer.  Great fun!  She's an excellent teacher.

Here you can see my first attempts.  We spent time preparing the tiles with watercolor (that's where the Map Tangling technique really applies) and then completing two monotangle tiles. 

There appear to be at least two ways to prep a tile by Map Tangling.  Nancy's class focuses on one.  I think there is at least one other.  I will be playing with this technique for sure--I know I can get better at it with practice.

a
As shown here and above, "Map Tangling" is when a watercolor wash is applied to a tile in such a way that the colored portion is left with ragged edges., and could be interspersed with lots of white space or just have white space surrounding it.  Only the colored space is then tangled.  The watercolor background frequently resembles the map of a continent or country--hence the name.

The process reminded me of gelli-printing.  There was lots of pressing going on before the tiles were done, and all results were inevitably surprises.

"Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing."
— Werner von Braun

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

I mean. 
Right?

I spotted this bumper sticker on the back of a car a couple of blocks away from my house as I was out on a walk this afternoon.  At first I walked past it, but I was laughing so loud I had to circle back to take the photograph.  There were a few other things on the car that suggested to me that the owner might be an amateur or even a pro astronomer.  Some type of scientist.

I want this on a t-shirt.  They do make them, of course.  I found them on amazon.

What a year.

This was the scene as I took a walk this morning.  I do not live on a mountain, but this reminded me of one of my favorite instrumentals, Foggy Mountain Breakdown.

Such a lovely morning, and then in the afternoon, there was the sun and relative warmth.

Meanwhile, a good friend send me a greeting card I well remember from buying some of these myself in the 1980s.  I haven't seen them in years and loved getting this.  There was a whole series of these cards, based on flowers and vegetables.  Here is the lovely Eggplant Deva, painted by Azra Simonetti circa 1986.

I've been so busy attending to another major commitment that I completely forgot  this follow-up to my last post.  Here I've added another three tiles and put them together into a hexagon.  (I'm actually writing this on December 11th, having completely forgotten that the draft was sitting here since the 5th, waiting to be posted.) That's the way life is going at the moment.  Scattered.

It makes me aware of the fact that we can only really attend to one thing at a time, while everything else fades into the background.

Out my back window, immensely tall trees are swaying in a wind passing through the back yard.  I'm thinking about the way the light makes the sky at this moment--just before sunset--look like stainless steel.  Exactly the color of stainless steel.  Clouds have blocked the setting sun and as I watch, the tone of the clouds shifts slightly more towards blue.

I never tire of watching the changing sky, or the way the gray and brown tree branches dance across it, finding their own rhythm in the evening wind.  This light is moving us gradually from day to night.  It subtly alters the cloud colors in each passing moment. 

Just like thoughts change, and just the way life changes from moment to moment. 
I want to be fully present for this moment.  Just this moment.

When I finished typing and looked up, I could see a horizontal band of luscious rose-tinted light crossing the sky below the stainless steel and blue clouds.  And below that, a band of gold-white from the last rays of the sun. 

Exquisite, this moment.

The three watchwords of this year must be explore,  adapt, and, learn.  Because we have had to explore, adapt/find alternative ways to do things  that we were forced into altering, and learn quickly, all because of the pandemic.

Here in the USA, Thanksgiving Day is an occasion that requires all three words this year.  I've never been a celebrator myself--I prefer to stay home and keep a quiet day, often dining with friends later in the week.

All those friends would be simply astounded to know I actually have a turkey in my oven this year.In fact, they'd never believe it.  Everyone knows I do not cook--I don't know how.  Never learned.  So here are 2 important facts:  First, I am NOT dining with or having anyone in my house this year.  Second, I didn't cook this turkey.  I am merely warming it up as a favor to another friend who has two and can't get them both in her oven.  Explore, adapt, learn--indeed!

Between the two of us, we are packing up plates and sharing with our neighbors.  The food will go in bags and neighbors who cannot travel this year or who cannot have friends/family over can come pick up a contact-free Thanksgiving Dinner and go home and be safe and eat it.  I wish I could say I thought of this, but I didn't--it was my neighbor's idea and I'm just warming up the bird for her.  A genius of an idea!  And one I am thankful for on this very strange Thanksgiving.

Since I'm working on getting back into the tangling groove, I made her the tangle above as a thank-you gift.  I retraced my steps from the one I posted yesterday but this time I created it without the underlaid outer square of white wax pencil (there is indeed an underlay, but the one you can see above is intentional, whereas the one I did yesterday shows an unintentional white "frame" near the border of the piece).  I used a light frame of graphite instead.  It worked well and I think I've  finally gotten this technique down.  Good to know.

Despite this globally agonizing year, I am aware of much I still have to be thankful for.  I wish that were so for everyone, even as I know of the struggles and losses so many have had.  May we all find something good in our days today.

The poet Rumi has said:
Wear gratitude like a cloak
and it will feed
every corner of your life.

Below is a repeat of today's version next to yesterday's version, for simple comparison.

It never stops, the learning.  Here I'm trying to learn a Zentangle® technique called TranZending--a form of layering one pattern over another.  I've never really gotten the hang of this before, but am happy with how it turned out.  I watched one of ZenLinea's videos and followed along.  What I learned:  for one thing, even tho she suggests some very very faint white colored pencil guidelines to start, and I did make them faint, the wax in the colored pencil still acts as a "resist" and doesn't really get colored over later on.  Which is fine -- even promising -- if it's a design element.  But here it wasn't meant to be a design element.  Now I know.

I may try this one again.  Lots to learn, and I'd like to try the guidelines in graphite and see what happens.  Once I figure this out, I can apply to my own future tangle designs.
Here are the beginning and mid-stages of this piece: