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!
