My friend Franki Kohler is a whirling dervish of art techniques. She is always strengthening her creative muscle by learning, playing & dabbling with various art supplies and medium. She recently posted about making art books out of junk mail and mentioned taking an online class from Silly U. I could not find Silly U as art classes when I googled so I emailed her and said…huh? She said she had linked to the site which of course I had missed because I never read every word of anything!
So I followed the bread crumbs to Carla’s site and looked at all the class options and found Zentangle. And thought WTH is Zentangle? I met a woman last year at an art retreat who told me she Zentangles. But I wasn’t sure if it had to do with art or square dancing? So I googled it and it is an actual technique someone has created out of garden variety DOODLING. The concept being the doodle untangles the mind and takes the artist to a Zen place.
And this being America, land of the free, home of the capitalist you can even pay to learn how to doodle! And better yet you can buy a kit which is essentially a pen and some paper.
As I settled in last night with my usual iPad games to multitask while watching TV, I remembered the doodle! So instead I grabbed a drawing pad and a micron pen and while we re-watched The Kings Speech and the replay of Giants game I doodled.
It was awesome until it wasn’t. About 3/4 the way through my hand began to hurt. You see I have not used my dominant hand to draw, write or knit in a very long time. I massaged said achey hand with analgesic cream and this morning it felt better but still a bit cranky. It truly is a muscle I need to strengthen by doing more doodle.
Now I know some wise apple is going to say…you could make a quilt out of that! You know what? I could but I hardly need one more could in my life. All I really need is more doodle time free of attachments or expectations. Ah Zen!
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