2022 is looking great!

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I am sooooo delighted to be starting a new year! What about you?

How are you envisioning your work and play in the coming year? 

Yesterday, I was struck by the idea of laying out every little bit of my planning for public offerings (okay, that’s an exaggeration) for the first four months of the year… and I’m almost there. Here’s what is cooking in the variety of interrelated areas in which I work and play.

Choose to focus on your area(s) of interest or take it all in!

  • bikablo — visual practitioner work and play
  • Zentangle for focus and calm
  • Appreciative Living Learning Circle for a new look at your daily life, increasing your joy every day
  • Transformative Coaching: Appreciative Inquiry Design with a Positive Intelligence Approach
  • Sharing the Highlights of Our Lives Visually (Creating a Visual Obituary)  (Most recent addition, didn’t make the visual!)

If you prefer to see the big picture and then look at the details, here you go!

If you love a list, here’s the plan… 

BIKABLO Virtual Training Programs

Bikablo Basic Day 1

For sketchnoters, scribes, graphic recorders, and graphic facilitators… those on the path to becoming visual practitioners.

  • Learn to hold the pen, draw clean lines, and structure your space on the flip chart
  • Create graphics and text containers/geometric shapes, objects, and symbols
  • Discover the easy ways the bikablo®  method provides to draw people, roles, groups, and situations
  • Use simple and fast options to color elements and spaces to support the graphic structure
  • Improve your handwriting—make it more legible and attractive—on flip charts… and more!

Training fee and materials, $500 USD

2.8, 10, 15 & 17.22 — First time ever in the evenings! Register here

3.4 & 3.5.22 — Friday & Saturday, Register here

 

Bikablo Basic Day 1 Refresher (for previous participants, 25% discount)

3.4 & 3.5.22 — Friday & Saturday, Register here

Training fee and materials, $375 USD

 

Bikablo Day 2

Continue your journey and take your skills to the next level!

  • Learn rapid drawing techniques—draw icons, symbols, and figures FAST
  • Explore emotions
  • Improve your hand lettering—make it more legible and attractive
  • Discover and practice a variety of headline styles
  • Capture live conversations using a simple, elegant technique for creating visually appealing charts
  • Work and play with mobile elements to create evergreen posters
  • Develop a complex visual presentation—from idea to draft to revisions to final product

Training fee and materials, $500 USD

4.8 & 9.22, Register here

 

Bikablo Advanced

  • Deepen your use of the bikablo visualization technique!
  • Discover the three levels of poster/chart design
  • Work and play with the emotions figures—bring them to life in a wide variety of narrative situations
  • Develop transformation stories in three pictures with the emotions figures
  • Write more legibly and faster—check your handwriting against legibility criteria
  • Add to your repertoire of attractive headline styles
  • Learn new mapping styles to take your scribing skills to the next level—develop meaningful, structured charts
  • Use all the learning steps and methods in concert to create your final project

Training fee and materials, $900 USD

3.15, 17, 23, 25.22 — Register here

 

1:1 Time—Visual Practitioner Coaching with Jill

Are you seeking to raise your competencies in analogue or digital drawing and design? Whether it’s for your personal practice or  graphic recording or graphic facilitation for clients, I can help you see your work in new ways, refine your skills in layout, use of color and lettering or guide you to explore new styles of drawing. 

Package of three sessions—$600. Choose your sessions here. 

(Choose the first date and we will finalize the remaining two sessions.)

Individual session—$250/50 minutes. Choose your session here.

Please reach out to me with your questions about all of this programming!

 

ZENTANGLE

Every session is 7 pm ET for 75 minutes 

Tangling with Our Favorite Memory of the Year!*

12.30.20

FREE

Learn more here.

Register here.

* Previous experience with Zentangle required

 

Learn to tangle!

Intro to Zentangle session — FREE Session 

Begin the journey by exploring the roots of this art and the steps to follow to draw your own beautiful patterns. In the very first class, working with creamy white tiles, black Micron pen, pencil, and a smudger, you will learn how to create your own beautiful Zentangle tiles and leave with a hunger to learn even more!

1.4.22

2.9.22

3.3.22

Register here.

 

Zentangle series

Class 1

Stunning Black Zentangle tiles*

Explore the reverse of all you have learned—we will use black tiles and white pens! With gel pens in hand and white chalk pencil at the ready, we will play with layering techniques to create fascinating new visuals. Black tile and white pens—an awesome combination!

* features black tiles, pencil, white gel pen, and white chalk pencil

Class 2

Introduction to Renaissance Tiles*

In this session, we shift into working with tan tiles, black, and brown pens, and white gel pens to visit the time of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. We will study the iconic characteristics of these masters and use techniques that are similar to make our own works of art.

  • features Renaissance/tan tiles, black and sepia Micron pen, white gel pen, and white chalk pencil

Class 3

The Beauty of Zendalas*

Step into the mystery of circular pattern drawing—it’s relaxing and fantastic! These tiles are astonishing and call for our best creative selves. Learn to create simple designs that pop in this new configuration! Fall into the rhythm of working in the round.

  • features Zendala tiles plus pens noted above 

Class 4

Crossing the Border 

Join in the fun of creating beautiful borders for frames, greeting cards, postcards, and more! Discover specific tangles that work well in this format. We will focus on making frames for photo cards. This is a great way to share your tangling skills to surround a special photo of your family or friends.

  • features notecards plus pens noted above

Series Dates: 1.11, 18, 25 & 2.1.22

Buy the package!

  • Package of all series classes with all materials sent to you one week prior to class (USPS in the USA) — $120 ($96.00 + $24 for all materials, postage, and handling). Register here.
  • Package of all series classes (without materials) — $96.00, Register here,

 

ZIA—Zentangle Inspired Art for Valentine’s Day 

It’s not doodling and it’s not scribbling —it’s Zentangle Inspired Art! Take the art of the Zentangle method for creating beautiful images by drawing repetitive patterns—and change it up! 

In this session, we will draw tangles within representational constraints. Bring your favorite image in outline form—a heart, your initials, your sweetie’s initials—you choose! We’ll fill it with patterns using our pen and pencil, making our own unique works of art! You will complete the session feeling relaxed and calm.

2.7.22

FREE Session, Register here

** No previous experience required

 

Appreciative Living Learning Circle

Imagine what it would be like to…

  • Energize yourself each morning with a positive, productive attitude for the day  ahead…in less than five minutes
  • Transform the negative thoughts and beliefs that keep you stuck and unable to create the life you truly want 
  • Develop stronger, smoother and more meaningful relationships with your spouse, family, friends  and co-workers
  • Recognize the potential good in ANY and EVERY situation  

Appreciative Living Learning Circles were created to do just that! You will learn an easy-to-understand, practical set of exercises that will change the way you see the world and help you become truly happier.  And best of all, it takes just a few minutes a day.  

4.9, 16, 23 & 30.22

Group ALLC – $149 + purchase book on your own. Register here.

Group ALLC for returning participants — $119 (20% discount), Register here.

Package — ALLC course + one 50 min coaching session – $349 (Group experience plus 20 % discount on the coaching session.) Register here.

Package of Group ALLC course + three 50 min coaching sessions – $749 (Group experience plus 20 % discount on coaching package of three sessions.) Register here.

 

Sharing the Highlights of Our Lives Visually 

When we make the time to think about the breadth and depth of our lives, there is so much to be remembered!

In this two-part workshop, we share what we know about writing obituaries and explore the topic of life stories. We learn about creating visual obituaries and use a variety of questions to spark memories. There’s time in between sessions to gather memories, photos, and materials and create your visual. We come together to share our creations and experiences with this life-affirming process.

3. 16 & 23.22

Register here.

 

Transformative Coaching—Appreciative Inquiry Lens + PQ/Positive Intelligence approach 

Available year-round!

Curious to learn more about this fascinating, fun, and life-changing work? Discover if this approach is the right fit for you!

Book a time for a complimentary strategy session, here.

Frame the way you want to see it! 

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As the year comes to a close, we may focus our attention on the grief, pain, and trauma of the last 12 months. And, without question, we need to spend time, be/sit with, acknowledge, and work with those emotions. And, that’s not a one-time experience. Grieving over disappointments and difficulties, sickness, and death is a process, really inner work, that happens over time, and on no particular timetable. Being gentle with ourselves, living in the present, and opening up to finding a place in our hearts and minds for our losses is crucial.

I invite you to reflect on this past year—all of it—and then shift your attention to what you want to remember and carry forward with you. I have created a guided visualization to support you in remembering the bright spots—the people, projects, events, and connections—of this year. I’m happy to share the link* with you if you would like to listen and use it as a prompt for collecting your memories.

And, I’m wondering if you would like to join me for a session memorializing your memory. Here’s what I have in mind:

Tangling with Our Favorite Memory of the Year!

  • Find a photo or draw a picture of one of your favorite memories of 2021. While it can be any size, I’d suggest 5 x 7 inches (or smaller).  
  • Use a piece of card stock—white, cream, or black, 8.5 x 11 inches if your using a 5 x 7 photo/drawing/image… larger paper if you’re using a larger image because we will tangle the “frame” of our work.
  • Gather a Micron pen (01), a no. 2 pencil, tortillon/smudger/have your pink in hand (hahaha!), and if you’re working on black paper, gather a white gel pen, chalk pencil and if you’re feeling like it, silver or gold sparkly gel pen too.
  • Have scissors and ruler or paper cutter.
  • Lastly, glue stick, glue, tape, or zots.

We’ll tangle a frame around the photo of our choosing… be ready to work and play with new Zentangle patterns!

See you on Thursday, December 30th at 7 pm on Zoom. Sign up here for the session and guided visualization* (Zoom details will be sent following sign-up.)

 

Hoping to tangle with you on Thursday!

Moving toward an end and a beginning

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Moving towards the end of the year always prompts me to become introspective.

What about you? Does it feel exciting, interesting, heavy, challenging, some combination of these feelings or…?

There are so many ways to gather memories from the past year. I love to…

  • review my Instagram feed… it’s full of wonderful reminders of adventures, on my own, and with family and friends
  • read my blog posts… such a cornucopia of diverse and, often divergent, ideas and practices discovered throughout the year
  • run my fingers through my bullet journal to see tasks and play from the year… as I sought to experiment with new formats for planning and capturing my days, I sometimes lost track of the details of the days
  • simply making time for a cup of coffee and a sit, to take in all that I have experienced… which happened several times over the past year in my quest to create a program about memory collecting and sharing. 

Each one of these journeys is an invitation to recall, and explore more deeply, the different facets of my life. There are reminders, celebrations, and at times cautionary tales of the different aspects of my recent past. They form another layer of my foundation for me to acknowledge and contemplate before stepping onto the new ground of the new year. 

Just a few of the mementos and photos that will become part of my visual legacy.

This process of collecting memories and making a collage of experiences is the seed for the sessions about creating visual obituaries (or, more gently/euphemistically stated, “sharing our memories”) that I have been hosting the past few weeks for clients and colleagues across the US.

I have loved designing these offerings, creating the containers for making the time and space in our lives to remember the wonderful, transformational, (perhaps painful) life-changing experiences, and the people (and pets) that are meaningful to us.

 

 

As Rachel Naomi Remen says in the foreword to The Five Invitations* by Frank Ostaseski,

“My grandfather taught me that a teacher is not a wise man, 

but a pointing finger directing our attention to the reality that surrounds us.”

This captures the essence of why I am drawn to memory collecting, this legacy work.

  • What about you? How are you engaging with reflecting on the opportunities and challenges of this year? 
  • Would access to prompts and a process for collecting, sifting, and sorting through memories be a resource you would use—maybe not just for remembering this year but also for a life review and legacy work? 
  • Might having a companion in this process facilitate the experience? 

I hope you will make the time to sit with these questions. And, if a guide or companion on this journey feels like a collaboration that would facilitate your journey, I hope that you will reach out to me. 

Life is here now… Live every day.

 

* I totally recommend this book!

286 hours…A Time of Transition 

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I am about to complete, a long, intense, and deeply satisfying internship. Now is the time of transition for me. The change—from being in the hospital seeing patients and in-class wrestling with thoughts, feelings, and questions—will end next week though I have been on the emotional roller-coaster of the ending for a week or so—that’s transition.*

I sat with my preceptor on Wednesday and said, “I am still here and I already miss being here.”

Do you ever have those feelings? You’re still in the experience and yet mourning its end?

And then in class last night, I also welcomed the change of pace that will occur as soon as I am done, as it’s been just about 35 hours a week of placement, classes, readings, and papers—in addition to my everyday work that I also love, and making time for family, friends, and self-care.

The true dichotomy of wanting to continue the experience and also the sense of peace (and relief) that settles in when a “chapter” is complete… 

Have you had experiences and feelings that are similar?

What is it about certain experiences that makes them qualitatively different?

Happily, in my class, I was assigned the last slot of the semester for the delivery of my presentation/“Didactic & Dialogue.” I took the opportunity to tell the story of my lived experience over the months in pictures and words…what I learned about myself, people as individuals and in relationships, life, death, pain, suffering, happiness, connection, power, self-care, silence, the systems within which I was working (hospital, department, university, and class/group), and more. It felt big. It was big.

While I do a lot of reflecting on my learning and life through drawing my thoughts, wonderings, opinions, and plans, I don’t often do so religiously. Over the course of 16 weeks, I filled a notebook and then culled over 100 ideas that I want to explore more deeply. I’ve started creating diary comics to further process and then share my musings…  I think I will discover even more through this process and perhaps it will become a graphic memoir. 

This finite timeframe certainly made it easier for me to capture the dynamic and multi-faceted nature of this great adventure though I am taking with me a newfound love of creating containers around experiences and finding simple ways to memorialize them.

I’d love to hear the ways in which you choose to capture aspects of your life and how you carve out time and space to reflect upon your journaling, drawing, artwork, or… I hope to hear from you!

 

*My favorite resource on this topic is Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes by William Bridges.