Painting on wet
Some wet paper painting…

080415 Arounna of bookhour craftprojects inspired me to paint watercolors on wet paper this week. I did a page in my journal and filled one of the daily art cards with flowing colors.

You cover the entire page with water and then let the watercolors flow into each other. The pattern this makes is beautiful, and they create great backgrounds for writing on. But I doodled me some big flowers with a ink pen when the paper had dried. A great method I have tried before but forgot about for a while now.

080416 I also run into a page with black and white doodles that are called zentangels recently and of course I had to try. Making a daily art card is one of the best ways to try new techniques at once I’ve discovered.



I love black and white doodles
but I’ve never covered an entire surface like this before. Making one of these will help you concentrate and to go slow over your page. I had a feeling of being humble when I did this, because I trusted my fingers and let my brain rest. I breathed in, out, in, out. Zentanlges are said to be relaxing, intuitive and is describe as a ceremonial act;

Zentangle is an artistic meditation that supports relaxation, focus and inspiration and can be a wonderful daily ritual. Zentangle’s philosophy, symbolism and metaphor is elegant and profound. There is much to discover about life and one’s self by this simple act.[..]

Creating designs, manipulating symbols and putting pen to paper is part of our human heritage. In a time of keyboards and computer mice and cell phones, Zentangle allows a return to the comfort and familiarity of this timeless, basic creativity.
zentangle.com

I’d suggest that you start with a small card (mine are 10×10 cm) because if you go slow and carefully this is a time consuming art form – but well worth the time!

Inspiration | Flickr tips

By the way… Did you know that if you are a flickr fan like me you can use flickriver.com to view your or others images? I love looking at my favorite groups like Journal Junk pool through the river. It shows each image in size big which save you from a lot of clicking. Don’t forget to click through to the images you want to comment on though! You can view some of my Daily Art Cards there too or other peoples photos that I’ve stared as my favorites (talk about inspiration)!

* Also today read Andrea’s post taking my own advice – she is also writing about meditative drawing today! She writes;

I hope I am describing the extent to which this is a revolutionary feeling for someone who has a zillion lists running in her head, is always in motion and has mild anxiety a lot of the time. Feeling completely okay is like touching nirvana.

I totally recognize this feeling and just reading that makes me long to do more meditation, both in drawing and just sitting and breathing. It is something I leaned to love many years ago.

* Just found zentangles on flickr too (is there anything that doesn’t have a group there?). View it in the river here!

Now I need to go make today’s Daily Art Card, I think it will be another zentangle!