Today's Discovery in Creativity

This is today's tile.  I tried several new patterns such as "purk", "paradox" and "facets".  I'm not doing so great with designs that are heavy on the squares and triangles.  That doesn't come naturally for me.  Not sure why.  So, I decided to practice some geometric designs. 

This is what I got.  I tried doing the lines differently so that it created varied shading.  I wasn't crazy about the end result.  So, I tried to do just one square at a time.  This practice was done with a Platinum Preppy inked with R&K Verdigris.   

This was the result.  Do you remember Spirograph?  I reminds me of that.  I just took a square and then made arcs from corner to corner, turning the page to draw each arc.  It's not facets.  It's different.  There is probably a real name for this tangle pattern, but for now, it's my breakthrough in perseverance and giving myself some grace.

Happy with my "outside the box" thinking with the squares and arcs, I decided to try a tile that focused on square or triangle patterns.  The square/arcs experiment can be seen in the middle/upper right.  I purposely chose an odd shape with four sides for that particular exercise.  Then, to the left of that, I tried to do half of facets, but in my own way.  I drew lines from the center to the corners.  It's definitely not "facets", but it was more fun for me.   I realize that the result does look borderline "swirly", but really it's triangles with lines drawn from corner to corner.   I used an Esterbrook with 9461 nib (dry pen) and Diamine Eclipse (wet ink) for this exercise.

And so, that's sort of where the transformation took place today.  I couldn't get the hang of "facets".  So, I attempted my own interpretation.  So, then I decided to try some other new things.  I combined "feathers", "fescu" and "sez" and made this.  You can see my humble beginning in the upper left corner.  I didn't care for the end result, so I tried again.  and I liked it.  So, I did some more.   I really like peacock feathers, and that's what this reminds me of.  This was very pleasant and made me feel as though I had a breakthrough today.  I almost actually drew something.  By myself.  I can't remember the last time that I drew something that I liked, or drew something without "copying".  If that makes sense at all.  

I was so happy that I had a little fun with Instagram to memorialize the occasion.

Discovering My Creativity

This beautiful image is not artwork that I've created, nor a quote that I've personally made. But, it's a keeper. (In fact, I think I may have found this on Pinterest. I'm still searching for the link so that I can appropriately attribute it.)

This is one of my mantras right now. Recently, I began to explore my more creative side. It started when I decided that I wanted to try to improve my handwriting. Which evolved into the beginnings of extremely amateur calligraphy. (Although, I've not been very consistent with it.) That opened the door to becoming willing to try Zentangle(R).

If I were to sum it up in my own words, I think Zentangle is a way of discovering your creativity by adopting the belief that what you draw is not ugly, bad, wrong, or lacking creativity or talent. The Zentangle method teaches people how to create "art" by using doodle patterns that the student can learn and then apply spontaneously as the program goes along. The doodles are drawn on small squares, called "tiles". The tiles are small, making the project manageable.

I have always loved to doodle, and I am thinking that I could really benefit from this since whatever I do really can't be ugly, per se. It's just a doodle. On a little square.

My hope is that this will give me a comfort level with drawing, and that I can expand beyond this, because I enjoy creativity and have not really accessed my creativity in this way for many years. I think, if nothing else, it will be a great way to relax.

I have not started Zentangle, yet. But, I believe that I will in the very near future. I am thinking that in future weeks, maybe I will share a few of my Zentangle creations here. Maybe.

The introductory Zentangle kit can be purchased here.

Anyone interested in jumping on board and doing this right along with me? ;-)