Musings...

Hey there 2012. I realise you've been here for a while, now – but I've been on holidays. (Well, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.) And hey there, froggy blends (ahem)... bloggy friends. Welcome back (to you, and to me). You probably wondered if I'd disappeared last year? Good news! However it's come about, I seem to be back at the keyboard. Blogging my art.

In one way, I knew I would be. You see... it's an imperative: the art; the writing about the art; and, hence, these blog posts you've come to know and love. (Hush now, and take a seat.) Hang on just a jiffy. I'll put some music on for you —

Gregory Alan Isakov - 3 am (Lyrics)

Okay. Let's begin.

This is about a feeling. I don't know if you're familiar with this one, but if you are, you'll know what I'm talking about. Sometimes I realise there's something that I Simply Must Do. The judge's decision is final. No correspondence will be entered into. DO NOT PASS GO. Do not collect two hundred dollars (shame about the money). "Resistance is futile."

If any of you have had a great creative idea attack without warning at three in the morning (and if you're anything like me), you probably know that you need to at least jot it down – since getting back to sleep, without doing that, is a lost cause. Fighting against these imperatives consumes more energy than allowing the creative flow to happen when it will. And, anyway, if you fight your own creative Muse, she'll just be an obstreperous pain in the butt until you surrender to her demands. Humble acquiescence is a much wiser path. So, these days, I choose not to swim against the tide when I experience those, "I need to draw/write – now!" moments.

The Kiss of the Muse — Paul Cezanne (c. 1860)

Do you recognise this feeling?
Thought you might.

Okay, then. The next bit...

Apparently, it's over 10,000 miles from here to Providence, Rhode Island, USA. More, when you don't fly crow–wise (which I didn't). So why did I undertake this journey of Ulyssean proportions? The answer is simple...

I had to.

I knew that I was going to study Zentangle® teacher training with Rick and Maria in the USA. So I surrendered to the will of my personal Muse. Here I am. Surrendering. (I look pretty happy about it, too!)

Kit, with Rick and Maria — Providence, Rhode Island

It was one of those, "Okay! I'll do it! (Now, may I have some sleep?)" moments. Should I have waited until a more 'sensible' time... delayed until the 'time was right'... waited to be 'practical' and 'rational' about it? Sure... sometimes that's the answer... but not always. And not this time.

So, at the end of September, I packed up (the night before), and spent 25+ hours flying from Australia to the East Coast of America. And now (well since last October) I'm a CZT. A Certified Zentangle® Teacher. (If you tangle, and you know it, clap your hands. And then stop clapping, and get yourself off to CZT training. I guarantee you'll have fun!)

Sometimes you just need to grab life
with both hands,

take the dream, 

and make it real.

Risk it! Create it! Live it!

So there you have it. Life, or our creative muse, or fate occasionally taps us on the shoulder and simply tells us what's happening next. And this part of my life, this journey of faith, if you will – it was just like that – I knew... utterly, completely, surely, and certainly, that this was where I was going.

Do I know what life has in store for me tomorrow... the day after... next year? Nope! Don't need to. I've learned not to question or over-analyse the future too much. My friend, Michelle, said that attending this seminar was like life giving us "serendipity on a stick." Well, who am I to question that?

So, I'm living it out. Swimming with the current. I'm claiming my artistic, working art studio dream. I'm grabbing it by the throat, and making it mine. I'm starting by tangling every day. (I'm posting my progress on Facebook to motivate me to add at least something more each day.) And right now? Well, I'm sitting at the beginning of Day Three. About to pick up my pen....

At the end of Day One (click image to embiggen) 

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"Many of us spend our whole lives running from feeling, with the mistaken belief

that you cannot bear the pain. But you have already borne the pain. 

What you have not done is feel all you are beyond the pain." — Saint Bartholomew

What a world, what a life... I’m in love!

Tonight, I’ve been catching up with my friends’ Flickr uploads. I particularly enjoyed reading the narrative a friend wrote for one of her photographs. It goes something almost exactly like this:

She said, “Oh, I fall in love at least twenty-eight times a day!”
He said, “No you don’t.”
She said, “Don’t you ever catch a stranger’s eye and your heart skips a beat, or hear someone laugh and it’s the most beautiful sound you’ve ever heard?”
He said, “That’s not love.”
... and then, “I’m making sure I never fall in love again.”

She had a feeling things weren’t going to go the way she’d hoped.

Click here to see the dramatically beautiful image that goes with those words.  Thank you, dear heart, dear friend, Tracie. Your words made me smile today.

♪♫ “I've got the world on a string...” ♪♫

Yes, of course things don’t always go the way we might hope, or imagine... but that doesn’t mean we won’t keep falling in love. I won’t. I’m not sure about “twenty-eight times a day,” but I certainly fall in love on a regular basis.

I fall in love with beauty, animate and inanimate. I fall in love, easily, with a smile. Falling in love with the expression on a stranger’s face, a look that speaks to me of joy. I find myself falling in love, more and more often, with easy, unthinking laughter.

I’m in love, always, with those moments when the comfort of friends wraps me in its effortless solace. And I fall in love, over and over again with the silent beauty, the solitude, the gentle stepping tranquility of meditative drawing.

These are the things that make my heart skip a beat. This is what makes living in this absurd, fabulous, nonsensical, achingly wonderful life so extraordinary.  

This love is what makes me want to sing about my love affair with life...

Without the voice of the divine Lena Horne, I express my love affair with life in the written word, but – best of all – by drawing out what’s captured the attention of my heart. Playing with pen and paper, watching the lines as they appear. Curious to see what form they may take each time.

This week, my pens played to the tune of the weekly Zentangle challenge game (#23) of another Diva, the unutterably sexy Laura Harms. [G’day, girlfriend!] She gave me a string for my pen-song (which I copied by hand, from the screen of my laptop).

And I give her this playful tile in exchange.
A pen-song, this time, that sang of my love affair with the whimsical.

“The Yellow Brick Road”
(Click image to embiggen)

Embrace the uncertain, welcome the unexpected...
but most of all,

Never stop falling in love... with LIFE!

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A shady mug shot!

Yes, I'm milking the 'mug' pun for all it's worth! [grin]  

Here are the final photographs of my ZIA (Zentangle Inspired Art) mug for Laura's Weekly Challenge this week, using the new tangle, Ixorus. 

Another photo collage of the completed mug.

The (now shaded) insert unfurled.

Close up 1 (showing Ixorus) – before shading

Close up 1 (showing Ixorus) – after shading

Thank you everyone, for the lovely comments and compliments about my mug this week... what a supportive, uplifting community to belong to! 

I am sure the friendship, sharing and generosity of spirit in the world of Zentangle® traces directly back to Maria and Rick's wonderful, 'open hearts' philosophies.  (Not being a writer, I can't think of a better way to word the concept... but I'm sure you all know what I mean).

And thank you to Laura Harms, in particular, for knitting us all together with a myriad of interwebbed (pun intended) threads linking us across the globe.  Even beyond the world of tangles, the wellspring of support for Artoo this week has been Really Very Special.  And some of that magical 'knitting together' will be happening for him inside those spiffy casts he's wearing too, I'm sure. There's certainly a lot of good karma coming back your way from all those bonds of tangly friendship you've been instrumental in creating.

For those of you who asked where to buy 'photograph insert' coffee mugs, I have included a number of USA ('State side') links in the comments section below yesterdays posting. For other areas, a Google search on 'photo insert coffee mug' will lead you in the right direction.

Close up 2 – before shading

Close up 2 – after shading

Yes... suddenly Tasmania, Australia ('isolated, not isolating') doesn't seem quite so far away from all the rest of you.  Down under 'Downunder' is only a keyboard and screen away from each of you. I'm feeling positively girl next doorish. [smile]

I know we've all discovered new tangle buddies, friends, blogs, inspiration, and Community beyond expectation.  (If we could map the connections visually... wow, that would be fun.  Anyone else out there with too much time on their hands who'd like to give it a go?!)

Okay... before I get too carried away...

This 'Wanted' poster is just for Fun (and perhaps because I have too much time on my hands?).  If you enjoy the effect, you can easily create your own, by uploading your photographs at Photofunia (free and fun).  (I did further edit mine in Photoshop slightly, to change the text.)

"Anything is possible, one stroke at a time."™ – It's a LIFE sentence!

Just time for one last photo before I log off (blog off?) for the week.

This is my 'Starry Eyed Surprise' tile (unposted previously, from the challenge in Week 4).  I wasn't happy with it for the longest time.  It still doesn't look particularly Zen to me.  Perhaps even the opposite? I don't know.

So, although it was drawn on an original Zentangle® tile, I'm going to think of it as ZIA (Zentangle Inspired Art).  It seems to be the week for ZIA this week. [smiles]

Starry Eyed Surprise, ZIA
(on 3.5" square tile using black & red Pigma Microns)

Namaste!

It's a mug's game!

A very quick blog entry tonight (for the origin of this post's title, read here).  For Laura's Weekly Challenge, both Mel (Lone Creature) and I drew (tangled) coffee mugs. (Travel coffee mugs: a sheet of paper - shown unrolled below - is inserted inside the outer, clear plastic mug cover.)  So, for a change, I did ZIA (Zentangle Inspired Art) for this Challenge, instead of a traditional Zentangle.

My new coffee mug - every side (finished, shaded pics tomorrow).

I started mine Tuesday (yesterday)... and have only – so far – taken photographs of it *prior* to shading.  But I wanted to share it with you all straight away. I'm really pleased with how it's turned out!  Today I finished all the shading, and I'll post that tomorrow, if I can find some spare blogging time.  

Section of my tangled mug showing Ixorus and an Ixorus tangleation.

Thanks, Laura, for yet another fun challenge.  

The entire tangled insert unrolled.

And I love Ixorus. Betweed may be finally going to take a back seat to this new love affair. You will see that I've used both basic Ixorus and also one of the tangleations* based on the structure of Ixorus - also seen on the Zentangle newsletter.

* "tan-gle-a-tion  (tan-gəl-ā-shən)  noun 1. A noticeable variation of an existing tangle" ← from Zentangle newsletter

Some close-ups of each section of the mug (you can click on any of the photographs below to see larger versions):

 

 

  

Very much looking forward to using my mug out and about.  I suspect it will become a great conversation starter!

Kit's new favourite mug.

Happy Tangling!

Two-pencil-string technique

For those of you who have been following, I am The Diva's Weekly Zentangle Challenges, it is Week #2* and this week's challenge is to 'create a Zentangle® tile or inspired piece using the two-pencil-string technique'.

This technique was written about recently by Canadian tangler extraordinaire, Margaret Bremner. I was excited to try out this technique for the first time. Particularly after seeing the beautiful effects Margaret had achieved.

* If you haven't seen the extraordinary and inspiring contributions to the Zentangle Challenge from Week #1 – Simplicity, you will find the relevant page here.

In my sewing box, I discovered some seam tracer pencils – just perfect for creating two-pencil-strings. These pencils are readily available and come in two sizes (1/4 inch and 5/8 inch). I am using the 1/4 inch (6 mm) size. This is the first string I created. As usual, I didn't plan ahead at all. I just put pencils to paper and the string flowed easily from body to tile.

The extra stability and balance of double pencil tips does seem to lend itself to lovely smooth and elegant curves. Also, the width of the double pencils felt similar to using a broad edge calligraphy nib – so my 'calligrapher mind' discovered that the flow of the lines was both familiar and comfortable.

My first impression of this string was that it seemed quite musical (which has inspired me dig out my five line automatic 'music calligraphy pen' – and have a tangle with that.) With this notion of music in mind, I started with Casey Poirer's Muzic tangle. Immediately, a branch of Mimi Lempart's Cat-Kin sprang out of the end of the piano keys. I love how 'organically' tangles tend to grow across a tile!

Here is the finished tile (click on the image for a larger view):

In the centre, Sandra Strait's Stubs appeared, which seemed appropriate for the two-pencil theme. Also, even though I only occasionally use colour with traditional Zentangles, those red lines seemed quite determined to emerge from three pencil 'pairs'. That may seem an odd way to phrase it but, in much the same way that authors have commented that their characters 'tell' them what they're going to do next, my tangles often seem to tell me where they will be placed (and not the other way around).

You may also notice that the checker-board ribbon coming from the other end of Muzic has five lines. Although this was unplanned, it seems to me to echo the idea of a five line music stave. You will also see that the final orientation of the tile changed since drawing the initial string (as it frequently does, of course).

I had so much fun creating this first tile, that I couldn't stop there, and so I began straight away on a second. In this photograph, I've already started with the official Zentangle® tangle, Zander, right across the middle of the tile, but you can still see most of the original pencil string. This time I left a border around the outside of my string design. I loved the little double loops that formed, and was quite curious to see what would happen with them!

In similar fashion to this week's Zentangle created by my friend and tangle buddy, 'Lone Creature', I decided to keep my tangles inside the pencil lines for this tile.
Once I started, the tangles emerged quickly. After Zander, Crescent Moon appeared across the bottom of the tile. Hibred grew up the right hand side. And Sue Jacob's Coil curved itself around the top left corner. The double loops were still a challenge, and were eventually filled with various spiral, grid, and petal like patterns. Here is a photograph of the second tile just before shading.

I have included the pre-shaded photograph here because, like so many Zentangles, the shading made a rather dramatic difference... and also because I added a little extra to the finished tile, which you can see in the final photograph.

A final note: In Zen-typical-tangle serendipity, after taking some time to stop, breathe, and appreciate the finished tile, I realised that my rather spiky addition in the middle of Coil reminded me of one of Jennifer Maestre's beautiful 'pencil urchins' (which I first saw on Molossus' blog, Life Imitates Doodles). Clearly I've had pencils on the brain today!

Click on the image for a larger view.

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Many thanks, Laura, once again for another fun challenge this week. The Zentangles I've seen so far on this theme are all beautiful, lively, and fun!