Happy Hanukkah! Merry Christmas!

Welcome (back, if you're a returning reader)! I hope you've had a peaceful, fulfilling week as the holiday season comes to its climax for many.

My week was great since I had my husband at home. The downside was that he had the flu. We have had every possible vaccine they offer, but he still got sick. (Luckily, I seem to have come through it unscathed.) And once the flu had run its course, a sinus infection set in. My week wasn't really great, and his was definitely not fun. But we made it through, grateful that it wasn't worse. He's headed back to work tomorrow.

Because I spent most of my week care-giving, I didn't make any art, apart from food made with love and healthy choices. When yesterday came round, I realized that I still had to make my cards for our Meals on Wheels friends. I'll share my wish for them with all of you:

I wish you

all things happy,

all things bright, all things good for you

in the New Year, 

and through the holidays.

Though I'll be cooking for our Christmas guests all week, I do intend to make time for finishing our 12 Days of Christmas Project Pack 19. I look forward to showing it to you soon!

Life in the interstices

Interstices (in-TER-stih-sees): Intervening spaces, especially small ones.

I first heard this term used in Zentangle to describe those small spaces in patterns between leaves or petals or orbs. I wasn't very comfortable with it, especially with the pronunciation! However, I've gotten more used to it, and actually thought of another application for it during this hectic week.

I woke up one morning thinking of everything I had to do. My "monkey brain" was chattering away with a million items to put on my list. (Monkey brain is what I call my brain when it's swinging from one thing to another, out of control.) I hadn't even had a sip of coffee, and yet I was headed toward that feeling of being behind and overwhelmed. I managed to get a brain dump on paper to at least clear some head space, and then started about my day. Then, the unexpected started happening. My husband was sick and needed some attention. I dropped my list and went to help. My day went back and forth between him and my list, but I soon realized that I was calm. I even took some time to sit on the porch and watch the birds. I went for a walk in the forest. I spent time sky gazing. I started to realize that the interstices of this day, the in-between moments, were as important and fulfilling as the rest. Since they were moments to pause, I had been able to go peacefully and intentionally through the day, crossing off everything on my list. This felt so refreshing and new!

I mention this because I used interstices as a theme for some of my art this week. What lies in between what we focus on? 

A sunset over the mountains behind a screen at the Alhambra?

Actually the back of one drawing (the Alhambra grid) and the front of another (texturing, color).

Project Pack 19 / The 12 Days of Zentangle dropped this week. You can see the videos on YouTube. I didn't purchase the pack of supplies, so I spent Day 1 creating my template.

Then I did the watercolor wash. Today I finally started to draw. I hope to add something every day. I'll show you the results next week. For now, here's what I have:

What do you notice about your in-between moments? What lies behind what you see?

Tangles from the other side

In the Zentangle community, we lovingly refer to patterns as "tangles". This weekend I started thinking about the negative meaning of "tangle": a confused mass of something twisted together, snarl, mass, knot, disorder. I've had some real tangles in the past two years in my relationship with a member of my family. I have felt confused, twisted, uncertain and disordered. Yesterday I received a letter from a dear friend with a prayer to Mary, the Mother who untangles knots. (I had never heard of this particular devotion, but trusted my friend.) As I read, I remembered how I had often untangled knots for my daughter and for kids at school. I also thought back to the frustration of being a kid who hadn't yet acquired the fine motor skills or the patience or perhaps the sense of depth to untangle my knots. Even the Christmas lights last weekend seemed to take forever to untangle. Untangling requires us to see behind, under, through, around.

This led me to try something on a transparent paper. What if I made a design of tangled filaments? I began drawing with a neurographic technique where you place a coin on your paper and, with a pencil, push it across the paper as you try to keep the coin centered on the pencil point. Then you trace over the lines with a pen, thickening some places to form more rounded shapes. (Interestingly, the side I had chosen for the front became the back.)

Here are some other examples of drawing on transparent paper. These all followed the instructions in Project Pack 18.

With a backlight

I'll keep thinking about changing my perspective in order to untangle this relationship.

What might you look at differently in your life?