Feeling stuck? Get unstuck with lines, just lines.

Hello, everyone. I wanted to make a little extra video. Lately I have had several people in several of my groups that I belong to. They say they've lost their Mojo, right? They

just

don't feel it. like any of their mosaics speak to them, they feel like they

just

have BL and I totally understand that particular

feeling

, uh that happens to everyone, it happens to me and I just wanted to tell you what I do instead of Trying to fight it with a pattern, even if it's a pattern, it's one of your favorite patterns, something you do all the time, sometimes it's still a struggle, but you want to draw, you have that need to draw, but you don't know what. to draw, right, you don't have a string, you really like it, you don't have a pattern, you really want to do, um, I just start drawing

lines

, so I wanted to show you my drawing

lines

, uh, what I do and it's not . a pattern, so I can't, you know, call it anything.

I'm going to make a little border because it requires one. I start randomly drawing some random lines just to break up my mosaic a little bit, maybe one here. that's good enough, they don't need to be fancy, right, they could even be straight, but I think curves work best and then all I do is repeat those lines. I don't echo the aura, which means I let myself get a little closer. A little bit, I actually start on the line and go up and then come back to the line like this on each line and I just go around and do that across the entire tile, I just fill it with these lines and sometimes I'll feel like I'll do it there and then I'll do it here and then I'll do this next one and maybe like this and here and some of them are skinny and some of them are fat and it's not like that.

It doesn't make any difference and I just go around and just draw lines because just drawing the lines is comforting and I get into that Zen place where you know I'm not drawing any particular pattern, it doesn't make any difference if my lines are crooked because I'm not drawing a pattern, I'm just not drawing lines, okay and sometimes I go around and do all the lines like this, sometimes I just do one. the whole shape first like maybe there and maybe make some lines here like this and then maybe this one I want to do it, but this way and just draw lines.

I keep drawing until I've filled my mosaic and it's very peaceful, it's very comforting. I don't have to think that I took out my pen, no matter what it looks like, I don't have to follow that one exactly, I didn't follow it exactly, I just did what I felt like doing. one went wrong, okay, we'll just do it like this. I'm just drawing lines without thinking at all, just without thinking because sometimes, um, you just need to get into that relaxing place and sometimes, and I was, I was telling this to you. of ladies is that sometimes you need to put it in your head that you know it's just paper, you know that's it and if you don't like it, throw it in the trash, you know it's just paper and sometimes you might want to draw by the way. on a surface that you know will end up being temporary, whether you're drawing on a whiteboard that you can erase or on one, you know, if you're lucky enough to live on the beach and get to or near a river or whatever you have a Sandy Sandy Shoreline um that you can um just draw lines in the sand because you know it's going to wash away or someone's going to walk on it or whatever um you know it's a temporary art Get it, get a paintbrush, a fine paintbrush and just a little bit of water, and go find a nice comfy pillow or something to sit on, sit on the side of the sidewalk on your street and paint some lines on the sidewalk or sidewalk. with your water and they will disappear, there is a Zen thing you can buy and I don't remember the name but that's basically the thing is it's some kind of stone that looks like a roller coaster or maybe it could be a little bit bigger than that and it comes with a water brush and it just disappears or one of those kids toys with something like that.

I think it has metal shavings or something that has a little magnet on the end of the um. stylus and you draw with it and it attracts the magnetic particles to the surface and then when you're done you slide it and it sucks all the magnetic particles M to the bottom. I don't know, they call it some guy. that it's a children's toy, all that kind of stuff would be great when you don't feel like you want to draw on paper, draw on them with just some simple lines just to get your Zen back, you know, just to feel calm because just The act of drawing the lines here is super relaxing.

I woke up this morning thinking about drawing these lines, they were just talking to me so I decided. Well, you know what happens if I get up and draw this? I'm going to video it and let you guys see what I do when I have the urge to do this kind of drawing and I'm just filling in my spaces, that's all and I think maybe sometimes we have this preconceived thing in our head. head, you know, you say, oh, I'm going to make this pattern, I'm going to make that pattern and then when you know your pen sometimes it just does what it's going to do because there are things happening in your mind that you're working on um you have your uh your problems your struggles during the day and sometimes um it's part of your process to just work that out on your paper and sometimes in your pen, I mean, you guys have watched me That's enough, those of you who have been here for a while, you guys have watched me enough when I talk about what I'm doing in my newspaper and why I'm doing what I'm doing and there are times when why I did it. do that I have no idea why I did that I just did it I followed my instinct I followed my uh what I thought I wanted my mosaic I was just listening to the mosaic and um I have no idea why I drew what I drew it's just something that happened, I'm learning to stick with it and not get disappointed when things don't go the way I expected, I guess I'm starting to, I really mean. really letting go of expectations and that's pretty amazing just letting go of expectations and you know, sometimes I'll do this and I'll just fill the whole tile and you know what this tile is telling me right now, it's done.

It's time to stop and leave those spaces and it tells me to take out my brush and fill those spaces with darkness, so instead of fighting the tile and trying to force what I think the tile wants on the tile that is when is when I make mosaics that I think are really ugly, it's when I forced it instead of doing it. I'm just listening because I intended to fill every space in this tile when I started and this tile. He's telling me no, he wants some black, that's what he's telling me, so I go ahead with it, but it's as simple as this like not making a pattern and just drawing lines.

It's done? You say it's done? I actually feel done this here I want a little bit of darkness right there okay this one this one says it's done um I'm going to put a little bit of shadow right where they are like in the cracks here because for me If you know most of the time my Mosaics aren't finished until they have a little bit of shading, so be it, take my little stump and they don't have to be curved lines, they can be straight. lines that you don't have to feel, you know, sometimes you feel linear, more controlled and it's okay, you know, just draw a bunch of straight lines, something like that and just a little bit of something, and then sometimes, I'll make the lines straight let me let me turn it around.

I'm going to do another one because it was pretty quick. And what I find interesting about straight lines is that they are never straight to me. You're never straight like I've drawn a straight edge and that's not straight not even close to being straight um and that's what my lines are like and I enjoy watching my line change so what I'll do sometimes is also start with straight that's so straight as I go, okay and then I'm going to make an aura or an echo of that straight line and I'm going to follow that little curve like it has a little curve there, so I made it a little bit more curved there, can you see? that kind of bump there and then maybe this time I'll follow that bump a little bit more.

I'll echo that and instead of following the line and repeating it exactly, I'll follow the intention of that line where you seem to want to curve one a little bit like this and then that one goes up a little bit and that one bounces up and down a little bit and it starts to take on a life of its own when I continue following that line, I am echoing or repeating that. line, but I let my pen go ahead and do the natural thing, not what it's going to do in a straight line, and I just go straight and do exactly what I think the mosaic feels it wants and I'm just letting the natural movement of my hand because I can't, I can't draw a straight line for the life of me.

I just go with it and just follow that not straight line, but just this movement, this drawing of a straight line is actually very calming this straight, not straight line, and the further I get from the original line, the bumpier it tends to get and I just continue to follow those bumps with whatever and I just follow them and as I push it, it creates its own cousin. I'm oring but at the same time I'm still going with the natural not straight even when I'm aurating I can't I just can't Aura exactly I can't it's just me I'm going to turn it on my mosaic so I'm going the other direction now so I'm not thinking.

I'm just drawing a straight line in quotes, it goes down a little, it goes up a little, it goes down a little, so it's not necessary to have a Zen

feeling

, it's not necessary to draw a pattern at all and I think it starts from when people get If they get

stuck

in quotes it's because they're trying too hard, they're forcing it and you're getting frustrated because what's in their head doesn't match what's on the paper, so you just need to almost close your eyes. I know you and maybe it would also be an interesting experiment to get your mosaic out. and you close your eyes and you draw and you see what your pen does and then maybe you take what you've drawn and incorporate that into some kind of pattern now all of a sudden that line is taking another turn that I didn't really expect, but there's a kind of right there to see what's going on.

Isn't that cool? And all I'm doing is just following that other line and just letting my hand make a natural movement, you know it's going to make mistakes that aren't going to follow exactly like there, it actually touched that previous line, which, you know. , if I was being a perfectionist, oh damn, that's not right because I'm supposed to make them even separate, you know, go with the flow, folks. I'm going with the flow and learning through this drawing process. You know I've been doing it for almost a year doing daily drawings and yeah I know sometimes you know I draw two or three full days at a time so I'm.

I don't actually draw on camera every day CU. I don't have the schedule to do that, but I do a minimum of seven drawings a week. I usually do more than that, but at least I do seven drawings. a week and I'm learning to let go of that perfectionist tendency, you know, I'm doing oh well, I say oh well a lot because I can't be perfect and I'm learning that even trying to be perfect is very stressful, so if I let it go and I say, well, and I do that in my life, you know I do the best I can, but sometimes you just have to say, well, you like last weekend.

I had a wonderful weekend with my family but we tried some culinary experiments we cooked some things in a way we don't normally cook we cooked some things we'd never tried before um yeah, it was a cooking experience that turned out not to be so good uh we Everyone looked at each other to each other and said: do you want to save these leftovers or are we just going to throw them away? and we all decided that none of us would eat them again, so the food just went, oh, it was just bad. The meat was burned and how can you burn meat in a crock pot.

I don't really know, but we managed to make it and it just wasn't very tasty, it was delicious, the tenderness was delicious, it was very tender, but it just tasted. It was really horrible and then we did this try with this cookie mix that came in a box and I don't know if I just didn't follow the instructions correctly but they were like G, they were like eating sawdust, they were horrible and the vegetables were good but everything what we did was open a can of vegetables and microwave them, so you know there wasn't much I could do to harm them, but in any case, you know, I just had to do it.

Well, that's how it was. A culinary disaster, but hey, now look at that, isn't it great? All I did was start with a line and follow it as it meandered across the page. Now you can roam more. I mean, you can wander around on purpose and actually make it. Start really shaking and that's it and sometimes that's what I need to do. I need to just get out of my head so I don't think about a pattern, just leave lines on a piece of paper and really like what happens. This is one way of doing it and it looks completely different than that, but they're both good and even with this you could go in here and get your pencil and you could shade a little bit in those places where you can see a change in the direction of your flow here like so maybe here you put a little bit of shading there and maybe here and I see a little change in direction there and maybe right there I see a change in direction and maybe here I'm putting a little bit of shadow right in these places where I see this change of direction and I'm going to blur like this, look, that's not so amazing.

I think it's amazing anyway, this is what I thought this morning, is thatyou know we don't always have to make a pattern and sometimes you just need to draw and not think about the pattern and just put your pen to paper and just do it. movements maybe you want to get a bigger piece of paper and just let me zoom out a little bit so I can make gestures maybe you want to get a bigger sheet of paper, let's say my background here is the biggest piece of paper, I mean let me zoom out a little bit more, okay, you might want to take the big piece of paper like this and I'm going to take my blending stump, so I'm not really doing a a, but you might want to get a big old marker and, ya you know, put lines and fill the page with random lines like this and maybe that's what's going to get your creative juices flowing, maybe I'm just going to do that.

I'm going to take this. piece of paper, this, this piece of blank paper, I'm going to take my paintbrush and I'm going to start drawing lines, maybe this is what you need to do an exercise to just put ink on a page that isn't even a pattern? Don't even make lines in any way. It's randomness. It's chaos. Maybe this is what you need to just put it out there and not worry about the final product. It's not about the final product. about drawing is about expressing yourself with your pen and I'm just doodling. I'm making lines on purpose, but not paying attention to where I put them, these beautiful long long strokes and I just do it on the Look at the page, that's not so wonderful and I'm not planning any of this.

I'm just talking to you and expressively moving my pen. This is my brush that I'm using and I'm just moving my pen around. the page and I think this is fabulous, this is great and then I could take that expressive page and then use that same type of movement in a mosaic and I would end up with something fabulous, you know, it doesn't have to be all that. stressful just let yourself know if you need big movements get a big piece of paper get a big pen get a crayon get you know stick a stick in the dirt and just draw with big movements or take out your pen like my tile where's my Go and do small movements, either of these are ways to get your stuff out, put it on your page.

You will be very surprised at how much better you feel after doing this exercise and, um, you may end up with something that you really like, like I really like this or you may end up with a mess like this, it doesn't matter because it's the expression, is the way to post it on the page and maybe after some of these exercises you can You have to do them more than once. You may have to start with this big, expressive one and then maybe do some lines and then maybe go to this more swirly one and when you've done those, then you'll feel more relaxed. and more Zen and then you're able to make a pattern uh just sometimes that's all you need to get over that block because we all have them, we all have them you just don't see mine because I solve it somewhere else before I see and draw my pictures in the video, so, yeah, I just wanted to get that out into the world and let them see that it's okay to make a mess and it's okay to not have a plan and it's okay not to do it. a pattern and that's fine, just the act of posting it is very liberating and it's psychologically important, that's what I can't emphasize enough, is that the drawings themselves are pretty, they really are, but the psychological advantages of drawing Zentangle and Zentangle patterns and You can't even imagine how much they help me.

I cannot put into words how much this process has changed me. I'm less anxious. I'm less grumpy. I'm much less grumpy. I am much happier. person I was 3 years ago, four years ago, before I started doing Zentangle, my stress level was really beyond, you know, there is a gradation of stress in which down here it is not so bad and up here it is terrible. I was living here for a long time. and I actually ended up taking a stress leave from work because I lived here full time and my stress level was through the roof and one of the things that the doctors recommended to me to reduce my stress level was do some hobbies and do some CRA , whatever I did with my hands, with my body, to release some of this stress, so I found Zentangle and I started making patterns and I started drawing and I started drawing more frequently and the more I draw, the more of that bar stress level went down, so most days I live somewhere here, there are days when I start living up here, but I rarely go up here anymore.

I'm usually down here and I totally attribute that to the drawing. and mess and I know that when I'm getting stressed and my husband will know that when I'm having a really hard day, he's going to draw something and I'll have to go draw something and suddenly I feel better. That's why I carry it with me everywhere. I have a pen, a pencil, and a couple of index cards in my bag at all times because you know I get to a place where I get stressed. You know the car broke down. I sit and wait for the auto club.

I'll sit and draw because it will make me feel better. You know, I can't stress enough. I really can't stress enough how this has absolutely changed my life. Anyway. This lasted longer than I had anticipated. I really enjoyed it. I leave you a good close-up of this and yes, I zoom. I do. Zoom, let's get over it. I'm sorry. That comment alone bothered me. That comment error bothered me and my stress level went up. I have to say, oh, it doesn't matter, just get over it, it's okay guys, have a great day. I'll see you later.

I hear my alarm go off in the other room, which means it's time for me to get my act together and I put my shoes on and get ready for work, so I'll see you guys later, I'll see you tomorrow at my videos and, um, Have a great day because I'm going to have a great day because I just put all my worries and everything. My stress on this page and on that page and on this scribbling thing. I just did that and now I'm going to have a fabulous day. See you later bye.