Jack of All Trades....Master of None

One recurrent theme on my blog is the quote, "Jack of Trades, Master of None." I've always loved this quote and feels it applies perfectly to me and the life I've led. 

The complete original quote is, "A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one." Being the Master of One just doesn't suit me.  

My blog has never been about one thing. It's not a cooking blog, even though I have pages and pages of recipes posted. I've done table-scaping posts, book review posts, low-carb lifestyle posts, Iwanna Wednesday posts and writing prompts. I've just dabble in a little of this and a little of that.

Am I just easy bored and restless and fly from flower to flower taking the best of each one? Or am I more interested in learning many things rather than specialize in just one? Hmm, I don't know. I think I would say that I am just evolving. 

At one time this blog was the love of my life, what I looked forward to the most. I love words and writing, always have, always will. It's what I come back to time and again, whether it's writing on this blog or writing in a journal, which I've come to do more and more.

But back on May 3, 2016 I found a new passion in ART. I attended a Wine and Paint class as part of a group celebrating the birthday of a friends daughter. While the wine was fantastic, it was my own artwork that amazed me. You can read that post here. 

Here's a photo of me with my first true artistic creation. Look at the smile on my face...you would think I had just painted The Mona Lisa!

Since then I've been creating art of some type. But true to my nature, I'm a Jack of All Trades and Master of None. 

I started with sketching.

Ballet Shoes

I've done Impasto Art with a palette knife.

I've painted on canvas with Acrylics.

I've done Art Journaling.

Staying true to form I'm moved on to something new that I want to share and  archive on my blog for my son and daughter to look back on someday when I'm old and feeble and just want to sit in my wheelchair and yell at the politicians on TV. Then they can remember that their mother was an Artist, a Writer, A Jack of All Trades, Master of none but she had passion.

Zentangle is my latest passion. For those that have never heard of Zentangle (I know I had never heard of it), Zentangle is an easy-to-learn, relaxing and fun way to create beautiful art by drawing structure patterns called tangles. Tangles are created using a combination of dots, lines, simple curves, S-curves and orbs. You can find more information about Zentangle here. 

My life was turned upside down on March 18, 2020 when the Governor of California, Gavin Newsom issued Executive Order N-33-20 which directed all individuals living in the State of California to "shelter-in" and stay home except as needed to maintain continuity of operations of federal critical infrastructure sectors. Our world as we knew it descended into something we had only seen in movies or read about in books. 

The management team for the company I work for told us at 2 pm that day to shut down our computers, pack them into our cars and take our little butts home to begin sheltering-in and working from home, until further notice. That's what we did and that's what I've been doing since that date. In a few weeks it will have been four months since I have been working from home, venturing out into the world only to purchase essential items such as food and home keeping supplies. 

Needless to say all of this weighed heavy on my heart and mind because I am the Head of Household. My mother lives with me, my son and daughter both still live at home and while they don't realize it, I feel as though they were looking to me to keep them safe and fed and sheltered. 

Thank goodness I own my home and don't have a mortgage, I kept my job and my pay exactly as before so my lifestyle didn't really change except for the fact that I had/have no life. I work at home, I eat at home, I sleep at home...I don't leave home. If I do venture out or if any of my people venture out I've had to make sure that we all wore masks and gloves and use hand sanitizer and wipe everything down with disinfectant wipes. 

How did we get from being a Jack of All Trades and Zentangle to talking about COVID-19 aka the Corona Virus? Well I found that I lost my will to be creative because I was so stressed out. I really had nothing concrete to worry about but yet I had everything in the world to worry about. I would see on the news where elderly people were dying alone in hospitals without their family by their sides because they were in quarantine and I feared that happening to my own mother. I couldn't let her get sick and die alone, no-how, no-way! 

Everyday was something new. At first I was comforted by the fact that the virus was by-passing young people, but then all of a sudden there would be a report that it was killing young people. Some days you would hear the virus is on surfaces, then next day it was only airborne. You couldn't count on anything so you had to take ALL the precautions and this was super stressful. 

Luckily one day I stumbled on a new a "Stay at Home Zentangle Class" by a YouTube artist Hannah Geddes. Here's the first video:

I was amazed how something that looked so complicated and beautiful could be so easy and I has hooked, I had to learn Zentangle and I started Hannah's classes. 

I just started and didn't really research anything about tangling or Zentangle, but I learned as I went along. I learned from Hannah to slow down, to concentrate on the lines and to breathe and I found that even though the world was still in chaos, I was able to calm my mind and help myself to be more at peace and to sleep through the night again. I've been doing Zentangle ever since, soaking up all the different patterns and watching several other CZT's or Certified Zentangle Teachers. I've been having a great time.

I watch her do each design and then I have been using Index Cards that I've cut down to 2 1/2 inches by 2 1/2 inches. Once I make them and get used to the tangle, I've been gluing them into a simple composition book that I've been using as an art journal, writing journal and tangle journal when COVID-19 began. Here's some of my earlier ones from weeks 1, 2 and 3. Each Tangle has a name given to it by it's creator.

DIVA DANCE

NZEPPEL

ENNIES

EMINGLE

MEER

Here's a few that I did today. These were just for fun, not part of Hannah's class.

MESHMERIZE

DIDN'T WRITE DOWN NAME OF THIS ONE...SORRY

THIS HAS SEVERAL DIFFERENT TANGLES

So anyway, this has gotten to be a rather long post and it's almost time for me to prepare for bed and work again in the morning. We are supposed to be back in the office on June 22nd, barring any further drama and chaos...wish me luck!

Featured on Art Group!

You guys remember when I started on my Art Journey? It was May of 2016, so it's been more than three years now and I've been pretty consistent in doing art of some type.

Am I getting any better? Well, there's some improvement, especially in my drawing skills. I'll have to share some more artwork in the future.

For now I just want to document an honor that I've been give in one of the art groups I'm in. The Art group is called Nina Ribena's Art Journal Prompts and More. Each Sunday we are given an art prompt and then we can run with it. One person's art is chosen to be displayed on the groups masthead. This week it was mine, here it is. I was thrilled when I saw mine was chosen as there are such fabulous artists in this group!

This Sunday the prompt was to Reuse/Recycle/Repurpose. We had to use just scraps and bits of paper and stuff we already had. I have an art journal that I made using a cereal box and scraps of paper, I'll have to post about that later.

So I did this two page spread using acrylic paint for the background, then scraps of a pink paper I had used on a different project to cut out flowers. The leaves are made using what we call "painty paper" a very technical terms which means we just use left over paint and put it on random papers which we keep to use later, nothing goes to waste! I did some doodling on the flowers and leaves and then used a lettering method called "wavy letters" for the quote.

So just wanted to share this little gem so I have it somewhere forever. Maybe this weekend I can find time to photograph the scraps journal, it's so stinking cute! Thanks for reading!

Art Journaling Update

I'm really looking forward to Autumn and cooler weather. It's been so hot that it's just taken the wind out of my sails when it comes to painting, but I'm happy that I've found an outlet in Art Journaling.

Here's a page I did today. I needed something bright and beautiful after my Dallas Cowboys lost to the Panthers. I'm hoping they do better in the rest of the season, but they did inspire some beautiful art work. C'mon Cowboys...turn into butterflies!

This is almost an art journal, even though it's a rock. Sometimes I miss Arizona and I was inspired by one of those kind of days to create something that reminded me of Arizona. Arizona's beautiful sunsets, there is nothing more beautiful!

Last weekend I did this one and it was so much fun! The background was from a sheet of script paper that I purchased at Hobby Lobby for $1.00. It was 12 x 12 inches so I still have some left. The flowers and leaves I drew and then painted on old book pages and then cut them out and pasted them on the page. Same with the birds and the branches.  This one took a while, but I didn't even notice the time, it flew by because I enjoyed doing this so much.

I did this one last weekend also, same technique, old book pages. I never thought of making art with old books, but I love it!

As soon as the weather changes and it gets cooler, I hope to get back to painting on canvas with acrylics, don't worry cousin Stella, your owls will be the first thing I do! I have the background done already.