Back in the Saddle Again

Ah, it really felt good this evening to make a mandala! I had intended to work up a design that I'd had in mind for the next painting, but my subconscious had its own plan, apparently, as what came out was something else altogether:
I like it very much, but it's not really what I want for the next big painting project. There are too many shapes - reflecting, I think, the fact that I've got more going on right now than I can handle!

While I was working on it, N was busy with her latest work - bookmaking. No, not taking bets; she's making lots & lots of tiny (as in 1/2" to 1" long) notebooks, illustrated on the outside. Very cute, and handy for making short lists. Here's one she made me for tomorrow:
I think she's now made about 20 of them, and they're all taped up on a large, colorful display in the kitchen.

Meantime, here are the last few of Z's works from her summer drawing class. She's gotten very accomplished at drawing hands, which anyone who draws will tell you are wretched hard to capture:
and this is a cute picture of our guinea pigs:
But here is a typical Z masterpiece - one of her fantasy drawings, just made up from her imagination. As with her portrait of her birthparents, it's done in colored pencils - she gets such rich effects with pencils it amazes me.
Needless to say, Z got an A in her drawing class.

Tomorrow Z & I begin classes at the community college. Z's very excited. She's taking Intro. to Psychology, which will give her a good idea of whether or not she's on the right track in planning to go into Art Therapy; Chinese; 2-D Design; and Figure Drawing. That's a lot for a high school senior, but I think she will handle it just fine.

I am sad to see my summer end. I don't feel as jangled as I did at the end of last summer; this has been a good summer, as I've really fed my soul for the first time in years. It's time to look back on my "49 Project," I think. I didn't do 49 mandalas, but I did focus on art and mandalas for 49 days straight, and that was spiritually very nourishing.

The most important thing I learned was how soothing it is to spend time in the right side of my brain, and how easy it is to slip into it by picking up a piece of paper and a couple of colored pencils or gel pens. And you know, in the beginning it wasn't easy at all! I'd sit and stare at the paper for a long time before I could get started, and I was very critical of myself. Now I can sit down and just begin - well, most times.

A few days ago, R said in a frustrated voice, "I never spend any time doing anything creative, and I really need to!" I've been telling him this for a while, but I think he needed to see me doing it regularly for it to sink in. So this evening when I sat down to make a mandala, and the girls joined me, he came to the table and began folding origami shapes with us. I can't recommend the concept of a "family art night" enough. It's a great way for families with wide age ranges to do things in tandem.

For the next 3 weeks or so, as we all adjust to changes (new semester for me, 1st grade for N, college for S, and C's absence in Georgia for all of us), I will just keep making mandalas as often as possible. But once we're all settled into a routine, I'm hoping to put together some kind of plan. I did promise K's guides I'd come up with a 2-year plan, after all, and that was three months ago.

I suppose if I'm going to teach tomorrow, I'd better get some sleep.

Oh, click on the title for a link to a very entertaining blog. The writer is my new heroine.

~Namaste

The Best Movie of the Summer!

Yeah, I know, this isn't a movie review blog, but I can't help it - you have got to go see "Death at a Funeral"!!! While down in Virginia visiting S, I had the great good fortune to see it, and I can't say enough good things about it! Alan Tudyk (the pilot of "Firefly") is just one of the many wonderful actors that make this a highly successful film. Click on the subject line and check out the website. Better yet, go see it when it comes to your city (alas, for some bizarre reason it's only showing in 200 cities across the US).

And yes, it's even better than "Stardust." Whodathunk?

I've got a lot of catching up to do tonight, now that I'm finally almost ready for classes to start on Monday. I'll start with the last two projects from my painting class, one that I am very happy with: the one my teacher, Ro, called our "loosey-goosey" portrait. She told us to do anything we wanted, incorporating elements besides paint if we wished. I began with a bindu, of course, which at first I intended as a bindi - nice little pun, only it turned into the nose instead.
As you can see, the face became an yin/yang symbol, and the yin/yang shapes kept appearing in other places in the design. It turned into a painting for N, which I called "I Will Meet You In Your Dreams," something that I often say to her at night. The face has a bindi after all, and there are mini mandalas in the painting, as well as the Chinese symbol for breath, the Hebrew letter "chai" (for life) and the Sanskrit "aum."

One of my classmates said that all of my painting is "fluffy," a characterization I didn't much appreciate until she told me she meant it was calming, which is a good thing - this one in particular I intended to be tranquil and reassuring. She said my paintings seem like they'd be good illustrations for children's books. Hm. That's okay, but fluffy? That I don't like.

Here, just to show you that I'm modest, is the portrait. I don't like it. One of my classmates exclaimed "Ooo, it's just like a china doll!" and I agree - no life to it at all, though I am not sure that's what she meant, exactly. I didn't enjoy doing it at all. I learned quite a lot, and it's better than I thought I could do, but I don't expect to do any more portraits, and that's a huge relief. All the others were fun to a certain extent, but this one was just onerous work.
Glad it's over.

I got an A in the class. I learned a lot, and for the most part it really was fun. I don't plan to take any courses this fall; I do plan to paint more, though! The thought of giving "my" paints to Z for her 2-D Design class is painful, but we can share. She shared her brushes with me, after all!

And now on to books. Peggy Orenstein's Waiting for Daisy was the next on my list from Elle. I read it in two sittings, not because it was such a fast read, but because I couldn't stop reading it. Orenstein is a very good writer, and her story is compelling - but that's only part of the reason. Her story is also, in part, my own story, and she wrote about things I hadn't thought about for many years.
Orenstein's book is about a lot of things, including infertility and what the quest for a child can do to a couple. Her descriptions of taking her temperature, keeping ovulation charts, talking to doctors, dealing with the INS - all of that evoked in me emotions I had not felt since I finally became a mother.

Of course, the title rather gives the ending away, but there is much more to this book than even the long subtitle would suggest (Waiting for Daisy: A Tale of Two Continents, Three Religions, Five Fertility Doctors, An Oscar, An Atomic Bomb, A Romantic Night, and One Woman's Quest to Become a Mother). Orenstein's honesty captured me from the start; I felt she was speaking directly to me, woman to woman. Her last chapter alone is worth the price of the book, and should be required reading for every infertile couple and every infertility doctor.

Too much thunder & lightning; have to shut down the computer for now. Go read the book. It's not just for people with infertility issues - it's a damned good story.

~Namaste

AAAARRRRGH!

I'll be back again shortly - we went down to Virginia for a few days, and now I am paying for it, i.e. trying to get ready for the new semester that begins in just a few days. I've finished my syllabi, so only another few hours and I will be able to relax by uploading the mandalas I've done (and do another one, I hope). Stay tuned . . .

~Namaste

Post #61

And that's about how old I feel right now. Spent almost all day driving to, walking around, and driving home from Marywood U., which is in lovely (NOT) Scranton, PA. Z loved the place - moi, I felt it was not the most attractive campus I'd ever seen, and there was just something that didn't feel quite right about it to me. But we're looking for a campus for her, not for me, so I guess it's not my call. :-P

Anyway, the rest of the day passed in frantic phone calls to SCAD (for C), to LCCC (for Z), to a couple of other moms to discuss synchronized swimming team arrangements (for N), getting dentist appts. for all three kids before school starts. And then frenzied prep. for my fall syllabi.

And now it's time to put N to bed and then grade final exams like a fiend, as the grades are due by Wed. morning at 10. So far today, no mandala time at all, and I'm feeling quite jangled as a result. But I do have something for you to look at: Z finished her final project for Drawing I over the weekend, a 14x18 colored pencil drawing of her birthparents. The photo does not do it justice - IRL it is not blurred at all, and the photo has foreshortened their features considerably. It actually looks more like pastel than pencil. Very lovely.

The original looks so much like Z that her classmates asked if that was her boyfriend in the picture! So now she knows that it's not just me who thinks she looks just like her birthmother.
~Namaste

Postsecret

So this makes, what, three posts from me in one day? I can't help it, I have to link to this before I forget it: Postsecret has a very moving video that is worth a look.

And now I'm going to bed to read more of the next book on my Elle list.

~Namaste

"Syzygy"

It's done. And I have to say, it's rather a let-down. After working on it for 30-40 hours, I feel a sense of loss, because it is finished and I don't have time this coming week to begin the new mondo-dala that I began thinking about two days ago (I'm going to use the 24"x24" canvas I've already got, but turn it so it's a diamond). It just feels weird not to be in the middle of a huge mandala project. Naytheless, it means I can get back to doing small daily mandalas again, which will be nice.

I call it "Syzygy," and if you look closely at the stars in the bindu you will see a syzygy there - three heavenly bodies in alignment.
I'd fully intended to have a ring of stylized clouds in the color modulated outer rings, in honor of Georgia O'Keeffe's "Sky Above Clouds IV," which I love. But once the modulation rings were done, I was convinced that the clouds just wouldn't look right. The mandala seemed done, so I stopped (after a whole lot of tweaking).

I wish there were a way to show you online just how huge an accomplishment this feels like.

Almost every single day now for 44 days I have worked on mandalas or learning techniques to apply to mandalas. I need to take some time to reflect on how that has changed me, but I will say one thing immediately: it has become a habit and a need. Does this equate to an addiction? Of that I am unsure.

~Namaste

Penultimate Day!

I have got to finish my mondo-dala by the time I hit the sack tonight, even though it isn't due in class until Thursday at 6. I simply have too many things to do next week to have time for painting, and then we're leaving for VA by 6 am Friday, in order to get there to watch the visiting Tibetan monks creating a sand mandala (yippee!).

I've been painting steadily every day; the greatest obstacle I have faced has been my indecision over colors and design past the green rings.
As you can see, I did figure out what to do - Z suggested that pink would go well with the green "leaf" color, & she was right! I decided on the water and then sand colors to go with the pearls, which have been part of the design for a while now (many thanks to C & Z as consultants on how to paint pearls!). And then I dithered forever, while doing other things, over the penultimate ring.

Now I know, so after a trip to AC Moore to get more white paint (man, do I ever go through a lot of that!), I am about ready to set up to finish. I hope I can get done before midnight.

I've also been reading like crazy to read all the Elle books by Sept. 4, and have only two left. I got through Meredith Hall's Without A Map pretty quickly, and I have to say it was a big relief to finish it. She is for the most part a good writer, but her choppy, inconsistent style is very frustrating and at times confusing; one moment she is living in Boston with her boyfriend, the next she's walking alone down a dusty road in Nebraska with no explanation of how or why she got there, and then on the next page she's back with her boyfriend again and they've bought a fishing boat and there is a sketchy explanation of how that came about.

Guiltily, I also have to admit that it was a relief to stop reading about such a very sad life intertwined with so many other sad lives. After a while, it just became an overload and I couldn't take in any more. Which was too bad, because there were some very nice bits of writing in this book.

~Namaste