On Autumn's Porch

Autumn made us a lovely tea with cookies that afternoon and we had a good visit.  It had been too long!  

I started the pencil work on this sketch while I waited for tea to brew and then took a photo and finished it at home.  This is my
 9 x 12 Strathmore Visual Journal and Lamy pen.  

Autumn is not sure what the flowers are...she got them from her mom.  They are just a flaming orange red...I hope we can figure out what they are.  I could not get my iNaturalist app to work that afternoon.  (Since fixed it.) You then take a photo of a plant and it will find the name for you!  

We talked a lot about my "time" travels through the book I've recently been discussing and we both talked about how we are preparing to face our futures and how we try to live our days.
We updated each other on our families and talked about her alligator on the shore of the river. OH my he is huge! 

(It's funny, with the date stamp I use...I something think as I reset it for the current day, that the particular date I am setting won't ever come around again.  Ever.  Not in my lifetime and not in anyone's life time.  It sort of makes the day seem a bit more important.) 

Maureen and I are finishing up the preparations for the Zentangle reunion to be held January 8.  It's so nice to have someone to share the class with!  

This is the format we plan to use but people are free to change things up both in the design and the tangles as they wish.
I have not watercolored mine yet.  5 x 7.

Remaining intellectually youthful...

So the book is Creating Time: Using Creativity to Reinvent the Clock and Reclaim Your Life by Marney K. Makridakis. 

My daughter, Julie, and I are challenging each other to read this book together and then do "some" of the artistic suggestions or some spin off of them in order to explore time.  

The first chapter is a background exploration of how time is perceived.  

I underlined a few quotes from the first chapter: 

"In fact, the true 'present' is so brief that it can't even be perceived". and 

"Leonardo da Vinci said, 'the water you touch in a river is the last of that which has passed, and the first of that which is coming.  Thus it is with time present."

Then she talks about the different ways we define time in linear continuums...

• The scientific: order to disorder
• The linear: past, present, future
• The narrative: beginning, middle, end
• The perception: slow to fast
• The aging: young to old

And then as a nice contrast to that, how we think of time qualitatively in non linear time...

• bad time to good time
• comic time to serious
• orderly to chaotic
• conscious to subconscious
• quiet to loud
• static to kinetic
• bland to stimulating

So the questions that we are asked to answer in our first assignment are ones like...

1. If you had more time how might your life be different?
2. Do you wear a watch?  Why or why not?
3. What was "time" like in your home growing up? What beliefs did your parents have about time?
4. What drew you to this book?

(There are actually 13 in this first set.). Then we put them in our "time box".  But I've chosen to put mine in a "time envelope".  Who needs another box???

So as a note at the end here...I opened the Nov/Dec issue of Saturday Evening Post today and the article I read first is "The Quiet Diet" by Cable Neuhaus about the value of Quiet Time.  I quote: "Mice, when exposed to two hours of silence every day, developed new cells in the region of the brain that controls memory, emotion and learning." It discusses the troubling results of "noise pollution" and suggests by "carving out a quiet interlude every day, meditators remain intellectually youthful longer." 

So Zentangle® and art in general can promote wellness...I knew it all along.  Tune in for more on my quest for creating quality time.  And I'll keep this article in my "time envelope".  

Wonky House Project for Advanced Zentangle Class

Zentangle is in the air around here this week.

Following my class last week, I decided that I'd try a Zentangle reunion for some of the people who have already taken the beginner Zentangle class here at Hawthorne.  There are tons of them from over the years.  
So I set a date in January (plenty of plan and advertising time).
And then set about to look at the Wonky House plan that I did some years ago.  

Talked it over with fellow tangler, Maureen, and then decided that a simple 5 x 7 would be better...smaller and easier to frame.  

This was one format I dreamed up...
It is done on canvas because I am going to use it as a door prize for the Art lunch in January.  Drawing on canvas is not for the faint heart.  Yikes.  I will spray the final piece with 3 coats of clear acrylic.  

Then this is another possible choice.  I think this is the one I am going to use.  The students will work on paper, of course...not canvas.  

This version is fun but a little complicated for a class.  So while I had fun with it and I'll bring it as an example I think the second version will be easier for students.  Special thanks to Maureen so said she'd lend a hand getting the materials ready.  

I haven't finished this one yet...but you can see it's a little less complicated...I think.  People can pick and choose what they want to do.  I am trying to keep the tangles a little less complicated and not do the background sky.  Students will get a black and white version to take home...they can color as they wish.  

November 20 Zentangle® Class at Hawthorne Park

A quite nice afternoon from 1:30 to 4 pm in the Fine Arts Room at Hawthorne Park...a great group of gals.  Here Maureen is doing a demo for the group.  There is a rumor that we'll be meeting again in January for a lesson on Zentangle Wonky Houses!  More fun in store!  

Life in Florida in mid November

A little fun at Hawthorne Park this morning with friend Linda Heller who was there to be interviewed for Fine Arts!  Her paintings hung behind her and we chatted and then looked at her art enjoying her techniques. The show runs about 20-30 minutes.  I do this once a month.  

Playing around a little with a technique in Zentangle® called "cartouche".  Now in fact the history of a "real" cartouche is quite a different story.  If you look it up...an ancient piece of art originally and sometimes on a tomb.  But the idea is that it "enclosed" or "frames" something important.  So this is a sort of "take off" of the word meaning drawing something that encloses something else. 

This is a real key glued to the center. People often do this with a photograph in the center and then frame it, or a favorite spoon, or some small flat object such as an old brooch.  This is just an experiment but it is rather fun.  I may add some color to it later.  

I've been totally remiss on my "littles" lately...so much going on here in the park and lots of personal projects and getting up to speed on my projects.   But I am trying to get back on track again.  (You will note I was gifted with a new iPhone for my birthday this fall.). It's taking an inordinate amount of time to "get up to speed" on it, but should be less so as time goes on.  

First Florida group sketching for the season for me!

What a lovely morning for sketching last Thursday.  What a funny name for an organic farm.  (But we did meet the "dirty dog").  A young couple run the place.  And such a lot of work.  They are in Fruitland Park, actually, even though if you look them up it says Leesburg.  About a 20 minute drive for me.  Felt good to be out sketching again.
Hoping the gang will get together again soon.

Weather has cooled a tad since we arrived on the 23rd of October but it has REALLY cooled off in the midwest.  Temps in the single digits around the Chicago area!  Wow.  Setting lots of cold and snow records WAY before Thanksgiving!    We are in mid 70s mostly this week.  Hoping we see some 80s again soon.  

A Day at a the Model Train Show

 The Ocala, Florida model Train Show was last Saturday.  
A lovely day for a drive.  It's about an hour north of Leesburg.

 Hubby loves these shows...and swap meets. There are usually a few layouts running which is always fun for me to see. 

After I had made the rounds, then I settled down near Bill (in hat) who is from Savannah and brought his running HO scale layout (that, he says, folds up and slides under your bed.). Impressive.

Bill had a great hat and a wonderful chair that I could use to sit in!  He gave me a nice little book about all the scales of the model trains.  

Out to lunch on the way home.