pen & ink | Subalpine Design

April 23, 2020April 23, 2020

Pardon Me, I Arted

I’m sure you’ve noticed. The boundaries of the world have changed.

Yesterday, the watercolor workshop I signed up for before the pandemic that was supposed to start in May, officially cancelled. So I’ve decided I’ll still set aside the time I would have spent in class, practicing and learning more about the medium on my own because I haven’t picked up my brush since that last post. My work in progress is exactly as I left it.

It’s not necessarily for the reasons you might think. Fortunately our lives and routines haven’t changed that much in the wake of a pandemic and this economic downturn; yet I can list the postponements, cancellations and the things that don’t meet what we used to call normal expectations. I’m not trying to gloss over the loss of life or pain. I’m looking for ways to express those feelings. I’m learning how to see obstacles as opportunity.

Choosing not to dwell on negativity or fear, I don’t want to talk about how uncertain everything is because nothing is really ever certain. I believe the control we think we have over our lives is mostly an illusion. We should always expect the unexpected and be willing to learn. Always be prepared. And even when you think you have it all figured out, then something will surprise you.

I want to know what I can do for the highest good right in this moment. Looking forward, I want to start taking the baby steps towards whatever our new normal might be with caution and wisdom. Observe. Orientate. Decide. Act. I’d like to share some of what Lights up my days.

If we want to talk hoarding, I reacted by adding to my yarn stash and ordered official Zentangle® supplies:

I finished up these socks I started for my mom back in December.

And made this infant set in anticipation of welcoming my niece.

I’ve made progress on the poncho and started a whole new sweater!

I’ve started cataloging my projects on Ravelry…

The garden is starting out great with a bunch of volunteers of lettuce and the reliable return of old friends like rhubarb and strawberries. The daffodils have just started blooming since Easter.

Lou’s been making stew.

There’s even been some time for mandolin practice. With the new year, I started occasionally recording my practices. Pretending to have an audience helps me play through hiccups and critique my technique. I’d like to share some of the better ones on youtube but I don’t know enough about music licensing issues when practicing popular songs. So I’ll spare you the audio for now…

When I shared a difficult time with one of my teachers a few years ago, she suggested:

“…it is good to find a book such as Pema Chodron’s, When Things Fall Apart to read during times like this.

When the mind obsesses about what we ultimately can do nothing about, but care so much for a good outcome, it helps to replace the overwhelming thoughts with thoughts of what is, and what we must do to remain balanced in times like this. It also helps to set the mind in a place to meditate and refuel our energy to carry on.”—Kat Katsos

I’ve picked it up to read again.

March 2, 2020February 27, 2020

Tangled Up In Blue

Back in January I shared some of my artistic goals for the new year. If you’ve read this blog for long, you’ll know I’ve talked about a daily sketch practice for a while. One technique I tried initially was drawing the first object that came to mind and adding it to a single page. I didn’t sustain that practice for very long.

Then I tried to focus on creating single pieces of artwork, but found difficulty getting motivated and making the time and space.

Fast forward a few years to the end of 2019. I was researching what supplies I should get to start into watercolor and trying to learn more about techniques when I stumbled across fiona-clarke.com She has a post about the best pens to use with watercolour. She also has a post about Zentangle® Patterns. I’d seen ads in our local paper this Fall about Zentangle classes, so I was intrigued. Fiona’s artwork also reminded me of one of my favorite Colorado artists, Phil Lewis. All the signs pointed to learning more about Zentangle.

The Zentangle® Method is an easy-to-learn, relaxing, and fun way to create beautiful images by drawing structured patterns. It was created by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas. “Zentangle” is a registered trademark of Zentangle, Inc. Learn more at zentangle.com.

And that’s exactly what I did. I googled out Zentangle and started clicking through the links laid out in orderly steps on the Zentangle website. The first deviation I made to the method was creating my own tiles to draw on. I’m one of those people these days who almost never follows a recipe as its written, even if it’s the first time I’m trying it out. I always feel compelled to tweak something. I knew I had a pack of scrapbooking paper that I’ve been sitting on for years. I also knew how much I like trimming and cutting paper. For me, I get a zen moment when I’m concentrating on how scissors move along a cut-line. In no time, I had a good collection of square and circular ’tiles’ ready for tangling.

At first I didn’t pay much attention to the patterns. I focused on The Eight Steps of the Zentangle Method, and I seemed to see the lines that wanted to be drawn ‘appearing’ on the page before me. So I followed them. Only recently, have I been looking at a published list of patterns and sometimes purposefully exploring them.

I’ve picked a few of my favorites to share. Some of the things I have loved with this practice is how amazed I am at what appears. It has challenged my ideas of positive and negative space. It’s very freeing to create abstractly where you’re not trying to make it look like anything in particular. I also like how it can be accomplished quickly—usually in one sitting; and there’s no excuse if it’s dark out. I often talk myself out of doing anything with realism and color after the sun goes down as I know I don’t have adequate light sources and perceive the colors differently ‘in the dark.’

Unfortunately, my old iphone doesn’t do the artwork justice. These photos lose a little bit of the subtle shading when photographed. I haven’t gotten out the digital SLR to see if that makes a difference.

Since the new year there have been a few daily lapses. Most of the time if I haven’t sat down to tangle that day, it was because I filled it with something else creative: watercolor, colored pencils, jewelry-making, knitting or picking the mandolin. Now that I’m about 2 months and 38 tiles in, it’s almost time to make more tiles, and I’m considering buying an official kit. Maybe I’ll even take a class, if the timing’s right. In the meantime, I have signed up for a watercolor class. More on that in my next post…

March 21, 2019March 19, 2019

Earth Ninjas, Throwback Thursday

Here’s another sketch from high school. This one’s of my friends Liz (left), Dayna (center), and myself (right). I’m not sure why I’ve got us holding skateboards. We weren’t skaters, although we did run with the ‘alternative’ crowd, the freaks and geeks who didn’t fit in anywhere else. I don’t remember why we were wearing Earth Ninja t’s either, probably that we felt we could take on and protect the world. Today, when I volunteer with Audubon Rockies at the Four Mile Ranch we talk to the students about being Earth Ninjas, leaving behind little to no trace of our presence on the planet.

January 31, 2019January 22, 2019

Brooding, Throwback Thursday

“…But I turned sulky and wouldn’t. (Yes, sulkiness, that’s the right word for it!) I sat in my room like a spider. You’ve been in my den, you’ve seen it.… And do you know, Sonia, that low ceilings and tiny rooms cramp the soul and the mind? Ah, how I hated that garret! And yet I wouldn’t go out of it! I wouldn’t on purpose! I didn’t go out for days together, and I wouldn’t work, I wouldn’t even eat, I just lay there doing nothing. If Nastasya brought me anything, I ate it, if she didn’t, I went all day without; I wouldn’t ask, on purpose, from sulkiness! At night I had no light, I lay in the dark and I wouldn’t earn money for candles. I ought to have studied, but I sold my books; and the dust lies an inch thick on the notebooks on my table. I preferred lying still and thinking. And I kept thinking … And I had dreams all the time, strange dreams of all sorts, no need to describe! Only then I began to fancy that.… No, that’s not it! Again I am telling you wrong! You see I kept asking myself then: why am I so stupid, that if others are stupid—and I know they are—yet I won’t be wiser? Then I saw, Sonia, that if one waits for every one to get wiser it will take too long.… Afterwards I understood that that would never come to pass, that men won’t change and that nobody can alter it and that it’s not worth wasting effort over it. Yes, that’s so. That’s the law of their nature, Sonia, … that’s so!… And I know now, Sonia, that whoever is strong in mind and spirit will have power over them. Anyone who is greatly daring is right in their eyes. He who despises most things will be a law-giver among them and he who dares most of all will be most in the right! So it has been till now and so it will always be. A man must be blind not to see it!”

This illustration, Brooding, is from High School, sometime between ’95–’97 in my junior or senior year. We were reading Dostoyevsky’s Crime & Punishment, a book I remember having a hard time reading. I had to look up the passage that inspired my moody, teenage self.