This mandala was easy to draw this morning because one of the talented artists I'd taken a class with some time ago, Annie Taylor of the Arty Zen website, emailed a private video free to all her former students as a thanks.  It was a how-to of this piece, so I gave it a try.  Very fun. 

You can see the progression above, from the linework through the finished piece.  I like this mandala pattern and can see using it for other things.  Will be trying it again.  Thank you, Annie.  It's always wonderful to get a surprise gift.

And as I'm catching up on my back-to-basics 365 Tangle challenge, here are a few more super-basic tangles from early January.  The wind is howling outdoors; how lovely to stay inside and draw.

This is really back to basics.  There's an art challenge going on that focuses on just one tangle each day in January.  Really basic.  No pressure.  Of course I didn't get started on time but it'll be easy to catch up.  Each tile is only 2" square.  We began with some of the first tangles any beginner learns.  A fun and stress-less project which will continue all year. 

When I look back at my early start with Zentangle®, I remember that there were only about 106 "official" tangles at the time.  Unbelievable.  Of course as soon as Rick & Maria began teaching, all their students were encouraged to come up with their own tangles, and everyone did so with a vengeance.  Now there are thousands of them.  And none, not one, are originals, because humans have been drawing patterns since the Dawn of Time, and so everything we use has been "invented" many times before.  The only difference is that R&M named each tangle and created easy 6-steps-or-less instructions for each one so that anyone anywhere could learn to do this.  And the rest is history.

Meanwhile, this (below) is the reason I've hardly been tangling.  I've been working on this rug (photo is a peep at a corner of it) but ran out of a couple of spot-dyed colors and have to wait about two more weeks to get just a teensy bit more of the fabric or the border will end up not matching.  And I was on a roll!  But not paying attention to my stash.  Live and learn.

There are so many surprises in life.  This was certainly one of them. 

Zentangle® can be counted on for providing surprises on a regular basis.  You never know where you're going to end up once you begin.

After yesterday's post I thought I would try another mandala but this time I would attempt to place the more complicated Punzel tangle in the round.

Success!  However, I ended up with something that reminds me of Brutalist-style architecture, my least favorite style of all time. 

You could say this got the job done, but although I technically succeeded I'm not in love.

Which leads me to wonder:  what would this look like if I ran it through an iPhone app?  Let's see:

In part of Mary Oliver's Poem, "The Turtle," she says:

...Crawling up the high hill,
luminous under the sand that has packed against her skin,
she doesn’t dream
she knows
she is a part of the pond she lives in,
the tall trees are her children,
the birds that swim above her
are tied to her by an unbreakable string.


For the entire lovely poem, see New and Selected Poems: Volume One (Beacon Press) or go here.

I think I like the iPhone variations better than the original in this case.

The temperature was zero Farenheit when I woke up and this afternoon has reached a blazing 11° F (that would be MINUS 11.6°Centigrade, correct?).  I've been basking in the warmth by drawing a blue and black zendala that captures the winter colors. 

Wind outside is howling, and howled all through last night. 

Daylight is fading.  Snow is on the way. 

Hot cocoa, anyone?

White-Eyes
By Mary Oliver

In winter
    all the singing is in
         the tops of the trees
             where the wind-bird

with its white eyes
    shoves and pushes
         among the branches.
             Like any of us

he wants to go to sleep,
    but he's restless--
         he has an idea,
             and slowly it unfolds

from under his beating wings
    as long as he stays awake.
         But his big, round music, after all,
             is too breathy to last.

So, it's over.
    In the pine-crown
         he makes his nest,
             he's done all he can.

I don't know the name of this bird,
    I only imagine his glittering beak
         tucked in a white wing
             while the clouds--

which he has summoned
    from the north--
         which he has taught
             to be mild, and silent--

thicken, and begin to fall
    into the world below
         like stars, or the feathers
               of some unimaginable bird

that loves us,
    that is asleep now, and silent--
         that has turned itself
             into snow.

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

Got up this morning thinking I'd do something on the back of that bookmark from the last post.  I had dropped some watercolor on the back and was not best pleased when I noticed how the paper crinkled and--even after being flattened under some heavy books--wouldn't straighten out. 

So I set to work this morning intending to practice my Punzel tangle some more.  Only--

I got distracted.

Um, really distracted.

So what you see here isn't even close to Punzel.  Oops.  When I realized how I'd messed it up, I thought about throwing out the entire thing.  But I like the other side, so in the spirit of Zentangle®, ("There are no mistakes"), I kept going.

Result:  Looks like a cobra laying eggs in a flowerpatch, right?  Or might it be peas ripening in some type of excessively weird peapod?

Whatever.  I like it anyway.  (How many times do I find myself writing, "I like it anyway" on here?  But it's always true.

Time to go get this bookmark laminated, now that both sides are done.

I think this is the start of a bookmark.  I'll see where it takes me.

Perhaps it will go no farther.  I'll let it sit a bit.

But then I realized that it's my neighbor's birthday tomorrow, and since she is one of my favorite people in the world, I quickly made her a narrower version of the above bookmark and will bring it over with a card for her.

Nope, I haven't abandoned the blog, even though it must look like it.  It's a temporary lapse caused by necessary work on an external project, as well as the fact that I've been working hard on a hand-hooked rug.  Then add in a dash of generalized holiday madness.  Even though I don't celebrate the holidays, everyone around me does and it certainly causes madness!

Result:  I haven't put my pen on paper to draw in a month.  And wow, have I missed it.

So here you have me starting over.  This is a piece-in-progress, one that I began last night.  It's not even half-done yet.  We'll see where it goes.

I treated myself to a new t-shirt and I love it.

Last, here is a sneak preview of an upcoming rug I'm working on.  This is what has really been taking up most of my time.  This and doing a lot of reading (see the t-shirt above), along with some teaching.

All in all a very busy end to this year.  Wonderful.  And now, I hope to get back to drawing in 2022.

Well shame on me--it took me weeks to get around to just putting a hem on this but I got it done today and it was extremely easy and quick.  I don't know what took me so long.  Nice to have this done at last.  9" x 20" hemmed.

After watching my friend Jo Quincy, CZT, create a Mooka-Tipple combination tile, I thought I'd have a go.  I've done this tile before but not for ages.  Jo has damaged a finger on her dominant hand very badly and has been tangling with her non-dominant hand and producing work as gorgeous as if she was using the dominant one--she is really amazing.  (NOTE:  I used my dominant hand to do this one and it's not half as good as hers, done with her "wrong" hand.)

I tangled with a blue Micron 05 over a pre-prepped watercolored Zendala--on the left.  And then tarted up the piece with some watercolor pencils and gold gellyroll, on the right above.  Which one do I prefer?  Don't know.  My tile is totally inspired by Jo's piece, but of course it came out differently as tangling is like handwriting.  Hers is much more subtle.  To see hers, go HERE.  And as you watch, be aware she's using her "wrong hand."  Amazing!

Imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery.

Finally, I had to play with them on my iPhone apps and producted these 2 versions:

Playing with "special effects" is always fascinating, especially any shift in color.  Knowing that we don't always see color the same way makes this even more intriguing.  Which version(s) do you prefer?

Continuing with zenAgain21:  Here's a Dali-inspired tile.  Mine looked quite different from those done by others (they were better at listening to the directions).

I know, scary stuff, huh?

"When we are asleep in this world, we are awake in another."  - Dali

He's not one of my favorite artists, but this was a fun idea to experiment with.

This was done with brown and black microns, graphite, watercolor pencils and white chalk pencil with a touch of white gellyroll on a 3.5" white tile.

Somewhere during the four days, we worked on an Opus tile (10 inches square).  I have plans to re-do this one, since I liked the idea but felt a bit too rushed during the execution.  It was fun though.

I have a few other things to finish or re-do, so that's it for now.  What an opportunity.  To be tangling for four days straight was just wonderful.  And exhausting.  As Molly Hollibaugh says, "Drawing is a physical act."  True!

On the second day of zenAgain21, we discussed William Morris's fabulous designs.  (A good friend who hadn't heard of him until about 2 years ago called him "The Wallpaper Guy," a name I found very funny and which always sticks in my mind, with affection).  He's been a design hero of mine since I first saw his designs in my adolescence.

Most unfortunately, this first tile that we did--inspired by his work--did not inspire me.  In fact, this may be one of the first tiles I ever produced that I truly dislike.

Bear in mind that all 300+ participants were doing this same tile at the same time, and everyone's varied, but they all resemble this one.  Some people absolutely did a better job than I, but even in that case, I don't like their tiles either.  There is something about this design that grates on me in a way none of Morris's work ever does.

My reaction to this  design was so unusual I wanted to mention it here.  I notice that I like the individual elements, but I do not like the way they come together.  At all.  !!

So moving along, we did a second tile inspired by Morris that day and I could relate to this one a lot better.  (below)

So.  zenAgain21 happened last week. 
Four days of Zentangle® and so much fun.

This card (drawn by Maria Thomas, Rick Roberts, and who-knows-who-else) was waiting for us in our bags as we got started.

Of course the "swag boxes" were identical and came with these terrific totes to hold all the supplies.

Each participant received the same supplies.  Because I was attending with a friend and we didn't want to get our swag mixed up, I decided to tangle the cover of my journal before the workshop got underway:

This i a beautifully constructed journal that opens completely flat. 
Oh, the possibilities.

Next, we began by warming up with this piece--two newly-introduced tangles:  Pangea and Myrth.

It's not quite on the horizon yet, but it's coming.  Just got my 2022 calendar and did some simple tangling on the cover.

Where did 2021 go?  Only about 6 weeks of it remaining.
Did I use my year well?  Did you?

As for me, I'm not quite sure I am through with this tangling.  I'll have to sit with it another day or two to see what I might add.

I just finished attending zenAgain21, so I have other tangles to post and will try to get to them this week.

A quick trip into letter-land to produce an Embedded Letter for an assignment. 

There's something so soothing about the simple act of drawing lines and patterns.

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.

 And here it is, my current punchneedle embroidery project.  You've seen the progress in the past few posts, from the beginnings to the middle and now it's about 2/3's done.

This is a relatively large project.  It will be 9"x20" when completed.

Slowly but surely I am getting there; punch by punch by punch.  There will be thousands of punches by the time I reach the end.

In meditation, we go breath by breath.  I often think I was well prepared for meditation by the textile pieces I did as a teenager, so many years ago.  Stitch by stitch, breath by breath.  Cultivating an ability to stay with each moment, with each stitch.  With each breath.

...although that isn't always possible in every case, right?  we sometimes don't have a choice to do what we love. 

But.

When it is possible, turning toward what we love really helps.  This tile, which I think is "ok" but certainly not a favorite, reminded me that it's all right to skip classes when I can see that the finished product doesn't particularly appeal to me.  This one didn't, because it's so busy.  But I did it anyway, because it's part of the multi-class package from last spring's Artifex Eruditio, a brilliant philanthropic educational experience run by some hugely talented CZTs in Singapore.  There must be about twenty classes to choose from.  All of them included in the package.

With that number of classes, it's guaranteed I won't be interested in every one.  I've skipped a few already that held minimal interest, but I felt I "should" do this one.  So I did.

What's great about having done it:  it's been weeks since I have drawn anything.  I've been busy with a very large punch needle embroidery project (see the last post) and still have far to go.  So I've put off all drawing.  But today I drew for two hours and enjoyed every moment, even if I'm not particularly attracted to the result.

Which reminds me:  Anything worth doing is worth practicing (I'm preaching to myself here).  That is true with any skill.  I am out of practice with drawing and need to begin again.  It's also true with meditation, which fortunately I have been practicing daily--and every meditation is itself a practice of beginning again in every moment.

Two of the big joys in my artistic life are:  Drawing and textiles.  Oddly, I have trouble doing projects in both media at the same time.  It seems I'm "all in" for one but need to postpone the other.  I am enjoying every stitch in my current embroidery, but wow, am I missing drawing.  And I see the results of being out of practice. 

Although I'm not sure how to resolve this dilemma, I am so very happy I spent time drawing today.

Practice doesn't make perfect. Practice reduces the imperfection.
--Toba Beta

I have more done than this shows, but to make a better photo, I had to cut out some of the parts that are partly-done but mostly-undone.  This is the Stone House Runner in progress (from The Old Tattered Flag, links in my previous post), a punchneedle embroidery pattern using cotton Valdani threads.  I haven't cleaned this up in any way yet so it's still raggy-looking but it's coming along.  It's also the reason I haven't been drawing--I've been obsessed with getting this underway.

It's a pure pleasure to be punching this piece. 

(There are a lotta p's in that last sentence, eh?)