Finding focus with your line.
I began “collecting” trees in my journals after taking a class on forestry stewardship in order to increase my knowledge of the forest around me. I had never really looked at the rings of trees as storytellers until I became fascinated with some fallen trees and began to learn how to read them. As my knowledge grows, so does the wonder of the secrets the forests hold. I could spend hours in the forest looking at the details of life, growth and decay with my sketchbook in hand.
From these sketch breaks came the inspiration to bring the growth back to my studio where I added watercolor and soon found myself in the trance of line meditations, forming my string (in Zentangle terms) from the shapes of the trees fallen in our woods.
Combining the wisdom I found in the forest, and many of the principles of the Zentangle Method, I soon found myself engaged in a regular exercise of line meditations with the trees.
Upcoming classes incorporating this practice and working lessons are coming soon.
