I woke this morning with a poem in my mind.
The words were waiting. Jumbled and swirling, I started to arrange them into something that might make sense. It took most of today to create something that felt right and embodied what I feel today, Valentine’s Day, and every day should be.
Always.
I’ve been doing my best to keep up with the weekly ‘It’s a String Thing’ challenge. Last week was the 278th challenge organized by Adele Bruno. The pattern she chose for us to work with was Ratoon, which was also to be used as the string (the guidelines) for working on the tile. Ratoon is a new to me pattern that was tricky for me to learn to draw – as patterns with loops and curves often are for me.
Difficulties aside, as soon as I saw it, I knew I was going to use colour in whatever it led me to create. I decided to work on a larger tan tile (4” x 4” or 10 cm x 10 cm), which presented so many options for colour combinations. This challenge also presented an opportunity to use fine line coloured pens and coloured pencils I hadn’t used in ages. I settled on a deep shade of red for the main pattern and added more shapes with a colour that reminded me of butterscotch.
I’m happy with the results; considering that Ratoon pushed me out of my comfort zone and I had to put quite a bit of thought into which other patterns to pair with it.
For anyone not familiar with Ratoon, it’s the pattern drawn with the red pen toward the center of the tile. The lines and dots in the center circle of my completed tile are not part of the basic pattern.
To see my completed tile for challenge 277 click here.
I’ve grown to love drawing lines.
I’ve written many times about how relaxing it is and how it can take on a meditative quality because it requires very little thought; but also one’s focus is completely drawn to drawing lines.
When I’m feeling stressed or overwhelmed by pain, grabbing a pen and my art journal/sketchbook and just drawing lines is one of the things I do to calm my thoughts.
If you’re looking for something simple to help you cope with stress, go grab a pen (or pencil) and a piece of paper and focus on nothing but drawing lines for a few minutes. You might even surprise yourself and create some interesting patterns.
I hope this is helpful for even one person.
My Small Surrenders 