New-ance

Busy busy times. Last couple of weeks have been hectic to say the least. Work and life, balance and imbalance. To my complete surprise I found myself leading a survival battle for a most unique school. Hope to have good news soon.

So I skipped last 2 challenges, and was about to skip this one as well, until something surprising happened.
I gave myself a birthday present - a set of 5 Copic markers with the basic colors. Arrived couple of days ago. Love them. They look right, and feel right, and produce the most amazing colors.

I read through this week's challenge description, and was hooked to the "let's make it new", which is a theme I love. And indeed the drawings here are "new". New paper (with grid printed on it), a new pen (the most regular of ball pens one can find) and new colors (the Copic mentioned above). The results are, well, new :)

In the first drawing I also got some help from my daughter (and her own collection of Copics). She added the blues and purples

Inky Doodle

This time I'm experimenting.

The pattern for this week's challenge is generic enough to allow all kinds of variations. So I started doodling with it, and suddenly spotted a "calligraphy marker" on my table.
Yes, I was surprised exactly as you are. Turns out my daughter got it as a present from one of her teachers who saw how much she likes to draw. And my daughter left it on my table.

Did you know that some of the most amazing inventions started by accident? Like the towel, or the 3M sticky notes ...

For some time now I wanted to experiment with varying line widths. So this was the perfect opportunity and the result is the first drawing (which I like a lot)

I was inside the flow, so I continued with a more "traditional" variation of this week's pattern, and a second drawing was created

And then my daughter came into the room, and saw the drawings and asked me if I can teach her to "draw like this. With ink". So I said yes, and we sat together and I showed her several patterns, which in turn ended up in the third drawing

Me happy.

Crystallization

I'm starting to see a pattern (pun intended?) in my responses to the weekly challenge.
It starts with learning. Usually, I'm not familiar with the patterns and tangles, so I read about it. I learn the basic technique, and draw it
I then go to exploration. The main quality here is opening, or widening. The word that best describes it is playfulness. I explore different angles, different possibilities. In this phase I can fill one page or a dozen pages. I can get stuck, I can get frustrated. I give up, and then retry. By now, I know that this is an invitation for the creativity to come out.
The final phase is choice.  Now that there are many options, one (or some) attract my attention. Is it always the last one I draw? I can't tell. Maybe. The quality here is of narrowing, of choosing.

This week's challenge was of course no different :)
A new pattern which required learning. Pages all over my desk with variations. Some look great, some not. Some completely unrelated to the challenge, but when inspiration comes I try to always give it a space to act.
I had some ideas, and did some attempts. The final drawing started with a variation (straight lines Betweed), and then the flow took over and things appeared by themselves. By now, I had a full bag of variations at my disposal, so it was easy to add to the drawing.

I like the end result, and am very frustrated with the scanning quality. It looks so much better in reality. Will try to do a better scan tomorrow.

And here are some drawings that were created along the way