Jotting things down

If the holidays were quiet with softly falling snow and sips of something nice and crisp pages to turn, then the starting gun for the new year was a loud canon. Whoa!

I was trying my hand at doodling every day as prep for the Sketchbook Challenge but it was a false start as I got involved with setting the scene by decluttering so I'm starting again. I am not a sketcher in the sense of realistic drawings. I think I'd rather try to do representational or stylized work. I had heard all the buzz about zentangles but resisted the whole fad idea.

I'm rethinking it because I have several page sized samples of free motion quilting that has a zen quality to it that surfaced during the clean up. The page challenge for Common Threads is a line drawing. We were shown a triangular echo technique that is actually a zentangle concept. hmmmm??? During a free motion embroidery workshop I was ecstatic with the concept of draw a shape and fill it in with teeny tiny stipple. Things are beginning to jell, methinks!

The big black spiral book has some things already in it that are kinda embarrassing but the only place to go is forward and it will be my practice/technique book for collage/wet techniques. I really liked the idea of loose pages as this fits my interest in altered books. The small brown spiral will be for the more dry techniques. The big brown spiral is THE sketchbook for the challenge. I'm dividing the 48 pages into 12 months and that gives two 2 page spreads for each theme. I'll practice and then embrace the theme which will have had some time and test runs.

I'll have my little book for daily warm ups as I try lines and patterns.

The lined molskines I bought in haste have turned out to be good for jotting down my year/month/week/day plans. I guess I can later turn them into another journal ! This is certainly an ongoing process. I have already discovered that 5 is the magic number. Too many and it is all a dream, but 5 makes me rethink my priorities for the week/day. It just tickles my fancy that I can maybe learn to be smart!!!