New toy :)

So I seem to recall saying I was going to post some of my Zentangles this weekend. Well, sadly, I got distracted by a new toy. After a lot of shall-I shan't-I dithering, I caved in and ordered a Sensu from Jet Pens, and it arrived Saturday morning. So I've spent rather a lot of time playing with it. I also grabbed Procreate - a sketching/painting app for the iPad (with a name that makes me snigger, immature sod that I am), to join ArtRage and SketchBook Pro.

The stylus has a standard rubber tip when closed, and a rubberised grip and the brush when open. It looks like a reasonable collapsible watercolour brush in appearance, although feels more like the soft brushes designed for acrylics - this is a Good Thing, as it it was too soft, it wouldn't be as good to choose as a stylus brush.

The experience of using it largely depends on the app used. SketchBook Pro just doesn't have enough of a paint feel for there to be much difference using the brush or a normal stylus (although either beat my finger). It works a lot better with ArtRage, although it does feel a little odd using it with the pencil and some of the pen settings - I found I switched to a normal stylus for those! ArtRage can also be a little laggy, which makes controlling the strokes a bit difficult. With Procreate, as with ArtRage, I found myself swapping between brush and normal stylus depending on the tool used; and again, as with ArtRage, it worked very well with the brush and brush-type tools. One of the main advantages Procreate has over ArtRage is speed - I couldn't detect any lag on the strokes.

These two are some of what I've been playing with - absolutely nothing intended as a finished piece, just playing with apps and the stylus. The first is done in ArtRage, the second in Procreate.

Lack of updates and other burblings

So the last few days I've not felt inspired to do anything outside of work and sleep. According to my little Fitbit my sleep has been over 90% efficient these past few days - which basically means I've either not woken up for several hours or I've had longer periods of sleeping so soundly I've hardly moved; or a mix of both. I would have thought this would have been beneficial; but apparently I feel more alert and with it if I have less efficient, more disrupted sleep. Which is a pretty longwinded excuse for the lack of updates.

I have been continuing with the Zentangles though. I've not quite been managing to do one exercise a day, but it's been close. I am still deeply unenamoured of the terminology and whole cult-like feel to the things, but I am turning out decent looking abstract doodle-things.I plan on scanning or photographing some of these over the weekend and uploading them.

My current bugbear with it is the assumption that using top quality supplies will make it easier to start doodling, sorry - tangling, and that doing so will automatically improve the quality of your work because you will be aware you are using top quality materials and therefore treat it with more seriousness. It's not stated in those exact words, but that's the gist of it. I am all for using the best quality materials and supplies you can afford, simply because it tends to make the whole thing a little bit less painful. But if you are uncertain of your skills or otherwise lacking in confidence, they can be far more of a hindrance than a help. I know I'm not the only one who's held back from using the good stuff because they didn't feel worthy of it, or because it intimidated them, or because they felt they would be wasting it somehow. But a random biro and the back of an envelope - they're not intimidating. And the Zentangle designs work just as well done with those as they do with anything else.

Random blatherings

Saturday night segued into Sunday morning with the sound of a car being over-revved. Not an unusual sound, to be honest, but not normally heard quite that late. Then a moment or two of silence, followed by a very loud bang. A glance out the front and back windows showed that all the houses were probably still standing, so we just ignored it. About 10-15 minutes later there was a sound that can best be described as someone trying to angle grind their way into something. There were also flashing lights and a lot of smoke. The yeti went out to discover a car broken down in the middle of our road (which has very little traffic), with its owner trying to persuade the police the bang was just the turbo, the smoke was minor and there was nothing to worry about. The police were of a different mind, and a few minutes later two fire tenders rolled up to deal with it in case it actually caught fire. One of them drove off again (to my mind, two did seem a bit overkill for one (literally) hot hatch).

Excitement over, I went back to day 4 of the A Zentangle a Day book. On the one hand, I do feel a bit of a mug for paying for a book that teaches what is basically structured doodling. On the other, I am getting better results than I usually do with my own unstructured doodling. I'll keep with it (at least until almost the end where it involves using supports that I have little interest in), but I can't see I will be buying into the whole Zentangle thing, going on courses with qualified instructors, and using the correct terminology, or even using the recommended equipment (I far prefer look of a 0.4 Pilot C-Tec gel pen on smooth paper than a 0.1 fibre pen on rough paper - the paper I will be keeping for watercolours!)

I will post pics at some point - once I've done some single-sided. I'm currently using both sides of quite thin paper. It's fine for practising, but the previous page shows through a bit too much for reproduction.

New Year's Resolutions?

I'm not sure if I'd call it that. To start with, I made them a few days ago, closer to the winter solstice than the calendar new year. And they're not resolutions as such, just vague aspirations of habits it would be nice to get back into, and things I wouldn't mind doing.

One of the habits I want to get back into is being more creative. It is far easier to sit and read forums or play games or read books than actually try to draw or paint or knit or make or create. It's not laziness that drives it though, it's fear. What if what I do isn't good enough for me? What if I've lost whatever skills or talents I had? And if I'm as bad as I think I'm going to be it will be a waste of my "stuff" (paints, paper, beads, yarn, metals, all manner of other supplies) to even try. So I hoard supplies and feel scared to use them in case I don't do them justice.

This year I hope to get over it a bit more. I've been making slow inroads into it after coming off anti depressants last year. The ones I was on have a long half life in the body, apparently, and it's only been recently I've felt my brain starting to wake up properly again.

One of the things I thought might help with the process is something called Zentangles. Now I may well be one of the last people on the internet to have heard of them, but I found I book about them (One Zentangle a Day), had a very quick flick and thought it might help. I bought that book, and another (Zentangle Untangled), and determined to start in the new year. I like the idea of the doodle-design-drawing-things, but the books seem to exude an almost overbearing and cult-like enthusiasm for the whole Zentangle organisation (there's official patterns (tangles), accredited teachers, ready-made kits to get you started which is all a bit much for me. I will be working through A Zentangle A Day, but I have no plans to keep rigidly to its strictures about what paper and pens to use. Nor will I be cutting up decent watercolour paper to make into tiles to do it - squares drawn in smaller, soft-cover Moleskines (of which I have maybe too many) will do me fine.

A brief hello

Or a placeholder while I get this sorted ;-)

I plan to post about what inspires me, what I'm up to, and once a week (hopefully) post a photo I've taken, with a colour scheme from it, and something that both have inspired me to create.

It's to help me overcome my creative blocks, to push me to create more and procrastinate less, and - hopefully - connect with others. And not become one of the thousands of dead blogs out there.

Wish me luck!