SWIMMING TO THE SURFACE, SLOWLY...

Whoa.  This has been quite the long period away--away from everything, due to a long retreat and then getting sick as soon as I got home.  There were times when I wondered whether I would ever have energy for art again--or even for getting dressed.  LOL. 

I feel today as though I am slowly resurfacing and may soon rejoin the Land of the Living.

Since I will be teaching again next week I thought I'd celebrate by seeing if I could still get my hands to work.  Recently I had acquired a Sketch-and-Scratch stack of artist's tiles.  The package came with a cover that advertised, "10 gold underlay tiles; 10 silver underlay tiles, and 10 multicolor underlay tiles."  Plus it contained a rather dull wooden stylus to scratch with.  (The process is rather like scratching away on a lottery ticket to reveal the numbers underneath, only in this case you scratch a drawing on the top of the thick black coating with the stylus, and suddenly what is underneath is revealed.)

I was all excited to try this so I carefully looked at the stack of tiles and selected what I thought would be the gold underlay.  I was so sure this would result in an elegant, dramatic tile.  Once I was certain I had a gold tile out, I picked up the stylus and started to scratch my tangle on the surface.  Well.

THE DUNKIN DONUTS MANDALA

Obviously, as they say in the comics, "I wuz wrong."

It was the multicolor underlay.  I was disappointed!  And oh brother, was the included stylus ever dull and clunky.

Still, what the heck...I traced around the bottom of my Dunkin Donuts cup (yes, I did) for the circle for my mandala, and added the 4 outside areas to it first.  Then I added the middle spiral, arbitrarily selecting the "center," and went from there.  All in all, it's garish but I'm actually fine with my Dunkin Donuts mandala.  I wonder if I'll ever find the gold tiles in this package, or the silver ones?

Okey dokey...I am way behind on creating pages in my journal based on the "tangled journal project" I'm a part of, so I then grabbed a standard white Zentangle® tile and followed the prompt for creating a layered stack and then tangling the layers.  I thought it would be fun to create the layers by using a tangle to do so, so I tried out "Betweed" and then tangled in between.  If you look hard (and assuming you are familiar with Betweed), you'll see Betweed in there as the source of the stack.  Since I didn't have my journal with me, I did this on the tile and then glued the tile into the journal.  I also didn't have a list of tangles with me so I went with some standard ones and then ad-libbed a bit.  After I finished, I shaded the piece with graphite and then added colored pencil.  Not sure what I think about this piece.  At least I am back doing some art again! 

I needed a nap after all this.  Feel free to comment; I always appreciate reading what you write.

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