Tag Archive for: plorking

What will you be talking about over the next 10 days?

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Whether it’s dinner, brunch, coffee or late night drinks—there’s a LOT to talk about with family and friends—from the personal to the world stage.

I want to make a few suggestions for dipping below the surface and spending time in meaningful conversation with others (it’s too easy to stay superficial and fall into the current Zeitgeist).

To be honest, while I am often delighted with what’s new and exciting in my personal and professional lives, I am definitely affected by the malaise prevalent in my circles at this moment… In my effort to step back and look at all of 2024, I am reminded of so many remarkable experiences. 

I was nudged to think of these because I received an email from my website hosting company blathering on about the amazing year it had been. I started to feel cranky and stopped in my tracks—I didn’t want to be that person. I’m no Pollyanna either. 

This year’s experiences ran the gamut from exciting, novel, moving, and powerful to challenging, sad, and heartrending. It took consistent effort to see all of life and not get caught up in the challenges that entered virtually every sphere of my life. My study and work with Appreciative Inquiry, Appreciative Living, and my spiritual practice supported me in seeing it all, focusing my attention with intention, using my skills, and reaching out to my circles/sources of support.

I’d hazard a guess that at least aspects of these musings resonate with you. What has your entire year been like—intrapersonally, interpersonally, at home, at work, in your community, and in relation to the world? In what ways have you called upon your knowledge, skills, attitudes, and your inner circles to support you?

What have you read, viewed, and listened to this year that has touched you? In what ways were you inspired, energized, angered, or heartbroken? Who have you shared good times with? How have you shown up in your worlds?

What’s in your heart and on your mind now? And what kinds of conversations do you want to have with family and friends about what you’re thinking and feeling as we move from this year into another? 

I’d love to hear about your experiences taking a step back and viewing the many aspects of your life over the entire year. If you’re seeking resources with an appreciative lens or support in stepping into that process, contact me. 

I hemmed and I hawed, then I did it!

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By chance, while at a local library, I saw an opportunity to join a meet-up to practice a skill that is still rather new to me. The piece of the opportunity that gave me pause was that it was practicing in public and sharing what I created…

I love:

  • my work with bikablo —teaching visualization skills
  • graphic recording, both on paper with markers and digitally
  • and how I’ve developed my own style that is “bikablo-esque”

I’ve also experimented with a couple of other styles of drawing. I’m a huge fan of Nishant Jain, the Sneaky Artist. I have followed his work and took a workshop with him right underneath the Brooklyn Bridge, which was awesome. I also like the idea of Urban Sketching, but it feels so different to me—more detailed, and with a greater need for accuracy. I’ve taken classes with a few different U/S teachers and enjoyed them, yet I do not feel confident when I’m trying to step into that style. So the idea of going to a meet-up on a Tuesday afternoon with working projects looming, with people I don’t know, to learn how they run their group, do some drawing (with others?), and then share it, felt really big. 

As it turned out, it was a very low-key event, and I had a great time! I thought we might walk around together or find a place to be, but it was every person for themselves. So I went to my favorite coffee shop in Nyack, grabbed a cup of coffee, set out my goodies, and worked to emulate a style I had learned several months ago. It was fun and challenging. The women I ended up drawing noticed after a while that I had been drawing them and came over to take a peek. They were thrilled and took pictures, with one woman making it her screensaver. I think it was her birthday. I then walked back to the meeting place/the public library and found a seat on the top floor with a gorgeous view of fascinating and colorful trees, the Tappan Zee Bridge in the distance and a few buildings. I drew a tree just outside the window quickly as there was only a little time left before we were to meet again. 

The café is named, The Runcible Spoon. The writing is backward because that’s how I saw it from inside.

We had the opportunity to share, not to comment or critique our own work. It was interesting to listen to people talk about their drawings and their efforts. There was a lot of self-denigration. I felt surprised and sad about that—it is so counter to the way I work with people. While I always know I can do better, I don’t talk about myself in those ways—it doesn’t inspire me to do better next time. Honestly, I think I felt worse about people’s criticism of their own work than they did. I guess they are accustomed to it. Happily, we left on a friendly and upbeat note. I  plan to go back next month!

I have to say, I am really happy I went. I’m going to exhibit a few pieces in the upcoming show of the Nyack Urban Sketchers work at the library. I’m excited!

What about you? Where do you hesitate? How do you work with your doubt? What (or who) supports you in taking a step into the unknown?

I admit it—I am an adventure lover! I believe that my desire to try something new was the push I needed to move past my discomfort. I am so glad I did!

I’d love to hear your stories.

 

Playing with new ideas…Editing/Rewriting/Reworking/Redrawing

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What is your process when you’re plorking* (playing and working) with a new idea?

I’m developing visuals for my latest project and started here— brainstorming ideas to represent the breadth of the program I was developing. These fast scribbles represent different ideas that became these drafts on my iPad.

 

 

(These particular drawings were made traveling south on the New Jersey Turnpike to Grounds for Sculpture. If you’ve never been there, be sure to go, it’s amazing—and the restaurant, Rats, is fabulous!)

I seek to convey the essence of this text:

Creating your path through the maze of end-of-life choices is challenging.
Aligning your decisions with your values to prepare for the quality of life you desire will enable you to love life more fully every day—a gift to you and your family.

The feeling of bigness, overwhelm, making a path, and being on a journey without it feeling too big… too much. 

I’m getting closer to what I want, yet I haven’t quite landed. 

 I am pondering my next move. Is it refining one of these existing drawings or striking out to create a new one? The latter seems unlikely at this point because I need to move forward. I can’t stay in creation mode too long; there’s much to be done.

As I’m playing with the images, I’m reminded of conversations I instigate during final presentations in all of my Bikablo trainings. I share about how when I am finished with every single drawing, I reflect on what I have done well and think of how I will do some things differently and better next time. It’s a mindset of continuous improvement, building on the foundation I have laid.

How do you approach creation? Does it vary by medium?
I’d love to hear about your process!

PS: Which version would you refine to convey my meaning? I’d appreciate your opinion. This is the placeholder on my doc right now…

PPS: I also just renamed the program yesterday. It’s now, Living Well, Leaving Well: Shaping Your Future with Your Heart-Mind, which, of course, brings other visuals to my mind. Ahhhh…

 

* h/t Bernie Glassman

Loving my daily practice! How’re you feeling about yours?

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What makes daily practice easier?

I’m an Advocate (with a capital “A”) of daily practice, and have learned a thing or two over the past few years about what supports me in achieving consistency in this special endeavor. I have created guidelines for myself that I reflect on before diving headlong into a new practice period. (I love defined beginnings and endings.)

What about you? When was the last time you sat with yourself, perhaps enjoying a beverage, and mused about what makes practicing and growing your craft (whatever it might be) easier, more fun, and successful?

I’ve just concluded Bijou’s* Be Well, 21-Day Zentangle Journey. That experience and another, with mindful stitching every day, reminded me of what keeps me engaged in the “daily-ness” of it. Here are my realizations:

The practice needs to:

  1. be immediately clear to me—what am I working on today? 
  2. be brief—15 to a maximum of 25 minutes per day
  3. the set-up for the work has to be simple or left for me to come back to easily (without taking over a portion of our home)
  4. provide a sense of completion in my chosen timeframe (I don’t have to finish a piece though I have to find a place to stop comfortably to feel accomplished)
  5. keep me moving forward—revisiting a rusty skill, refining a new technique, deepening my competence, or broadening my repertoire
  6. bring me pleasure or joy—”plorking” (playing and working) with the materials, having fun messing about, achieving my desired result (these last two areas sometimes occur on their own and sometimes in concert—think of a Venn diagram)

I learned with the mindful stitching practice—making a small square or rectangle a day using one or more stitches and/or threads—that I:

  • had to work too hard to think of what I would do
  • didn’t want to put the work down until I finished the square for the day—because who wants to fall off the schedule?
  • worked for too long (and I saw my evenings evaporate)
  • had to learn too much to be able to move forward at my desired pace.

Of course, I could have engaged in a kobayashi-maru** (changed the conditions of the work to be done) but that wasn’t what I wanted to do. I finished the month, am proud of my work, and won’t do that again! 

On the other hand, the Bijou’s Be Well 21-day Zentangle Journey was perfect for me! It ticked all the boxes. And because I loved it so much I went a bit beyond my (self-imposed) timeframe, making multiple tiles of some patterns) because it brought me such joy.

I have just started Tammy Garcia’s ICAD/Index-Card-A-Day Challenge. (You’re not too late; it just started yesterday, lmk if you join!). I have started it before and had a little trouble staying on track because I’ve had to think about the prompts I want to use instead of just taking hers (which don’t always feel like a  fit for me). However, since I’ve just come off such great success with the Zentangle Journey, I am all in. I will say that my good buddy, Julia, is doing it too, and the incentive to do it together and support each other over the 61 days (because that’s a long time!) has bolstered my resolve. Another important piece to this is that I am focused on fun and experimentation—leaving “results” to show up as they will. That wasn’t true of my tangling days, as I am very focused on the end result there… This will be a fun shift in perspective! Perhaps you will join me?

I know that I have waxed on about the joys and challenges of daily practice. It is my hope, (as it was my intention), to ask you to reflect on your (perhaps)unarticulated) guidelines for ensuring that you are growing and enjoying your daily practice—whether it’s drawing, tangling, painting, gardening, running, writing or…

I would LOVE to hear about how you stay on track; please tell me!

I’ll be posting my ICAD journey on insta @jillig, though my Zentangle play is on insta @letstangletogether. I hope you will visit and chat with me there!

 

(*FYI—Bijou is the name of a type of tile/paper we work with in Zentangle and the name of a whimsical, wise character/personality in Zentanlge lore.) You can learn more here, https://zentangle.com/blogs/blog/bijous-be-well-bundle-a-21-day-tangling-journey)

** for all you Star Trek fans out there

What inspires you?

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Last Friday, at the Allentown museum (PA) I saw a piece that struck me as brilliant and inspirational…

As you can see from the description, the artist, Sam Gilliam, created a piece, then cut it up, and placed the pieces in a different configuration. I was gob-smacked!

I thought of my Zentangle work. I could create a piece and tear it or cut it up! It sounded exciting and scary! I’ve never done this—destroyed, torn up, or reassembled my work…

I approached the new adventure with a bit of nervousness because, in general, I like what I create. So I took a photo at the various stages of creation, the marker and paper, the shading that I added… and truth be told, to get a little more freedom, I made a copy of the piece before cutting it up. The piece didn’t need to be complete… I usually fill almost all the space on the surface yet since it would be a mash-up perhaps more white space was fine. I’m not sure about that thinking. It was liberating and maybe faulty—we’ll see!

 I did a bit of preliminary experimenting and didn’t like the results of tearing the paper so I decided to cut my work into pieces. I also experimented with a tile (what we Zentangle-lovers call the 3.5 inch square of Italian paper that we generally work with).

I was excited and curious throughout the process wondering how much to cut and whether I really cared if the pieces truly fit together like a puzzle. Does it need to be a perfect square or rectangle again? Is that overthinking it? Or, should I create more prototypes? It was beginning to feel kind of heavy, too up in my head—for now. I just wanted to see a few quick results, learn from them, and then take the plunge.

When was the last time inspired you were inspired? What did you do with the thought and feeling?

Here are the beginning stages of the process. Here are a few photos and a chatty video of my experience cutting up/re-purposing my original artwork

 

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(Click the link to watch the video.)

If you’re pressed for time, just watch the reel on insta, though it won’t show you my final design!

What do you think? I am still reflecting on the experience.

All materials copyright ©2019 Jill Greenbaum, Ed.D. All rights reserved.