Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Pattern and Design 3.5x3.5 pen, ink and graphite on card stock





Every summer for the past several years I have taught summer school to kids ages 8 to 13.  It is a wonderful chance for me to revisit some basic elements.  Long before I did oil and pastel I did ink.  I would sit for hours and draw with my rapidograph pen mindless drawings of lines and repeated lines.  Shapes would evolve out of these lines and lead the pen in another direction and I would fill pages with these designs that seem to appear out of the pulp in the paper.  It was calming and meditative.  I felt revived and full of creative thought after these sessions.
It had been a number of years since I had the time to sit and do these drawings, when I came across a company that actually sells this concept of drawings and does workshops on learning designs to incorporate into these drawings.  The company is called Zentangles.  This sparked my interest once more and I decided to teach my students to do them too.  It's much like flow of consciousness journaling without words.  My students and I over a 20 day period would fill in time while waiting for projects to dry doing Zentangles on 3.5x3.5 inch cards.  We accumulated a number of them and created a book to take home.  
I share these because it is important for me to have creative freedom to expand and nurture my creative process.  It has taught me to go with the flow and not get so hung up on the end result.  You have got to love the process! 

8 comments:

Connie Kleinjans said...

This resonates. I sometimes find myself working up close, doodling. I'll start with, oh, cross hatching, then snake borders around it, or take a splatter painting and embellish it. I don't end up with anything sellable (is that what makes us artists?), but I can really get buried in it and time just flies. There's a lesson there. Wish I knew what it was.

Dana Cooper said...

What fun! These are really beautiful and I would imagine them to be very meditative...may have to try one myself!

Unknown said...

Zentangles! I love it! What a great and fun idea. I especially love the first one and the parrot. Will you show us what a book looks like when it is finished?

Michelle said...

Wow Dori, these are such incredible designs!

Kerri Settle said...

I was never very good at this kind of free form sketch, but I always thought they were neat. I love the idea of just letting the sketch take its own direction into what it wanted to be.

Jala Pfaff said...

Very cool.
I do similar things when I'm "doodling"...

Gwen Bell said...

These are wonderful and what a great post to go with them. I do this kind of thing when doodling but nothing as "finished" looking as these. It feels sort of like Mind Yoga, huh?
Couldn't help thinking that these would make terrific textile patterns.

Kelley Carey MacDonald said...

Right you are - it's about the process - and these ended up very cool indeed! We really have to be gentle with ourselves, and let it flow!