Around this time of year, I usually take a break of a week or so and do nothing but art. I call it the “Art Sprawl.”<\/p>\n
This immersion usually produces some nice drawings, progress on art projects and ideas for paintings. It’s also a time to focus on a particular technique.<\/p>\n
But I can’t do it this year, that’s for sure. My brain rejects any suggestions of drawing, and painting or playing in other mediums is just out of the question.<\/p>\n
The one thing I can do, I found today, is color.<\/p>\n
A dear old friend, Cindy, sent me adult coloring books. \u00a0One of them is mandalas, very intricate ones, and the other is like a children’s book, richly illustrated with line drawings for coloring.<\/p>\n
These books scared me a little, because they were so detailed. They’re for adults, after all, so they aren’t big simple forms.<\/p>\n
But I tried a mandala today. Even though I could only do a little bit, I think it’s a good idea.<\/p>\n
I don’t trust my brain to freehand anything. Or maybe my brain doesn’t trust me.<\/p>\n
With coloring books, I don’t feel like it’s such an emotional investment. It’s more like a collaboration, between myself and the artist who drew the mandala.<\/p>\n
Just moving my hand in a productive way, without having to think too much, is therapeutic.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Around this time of year, I usually take a break of a week or so and do nothing but art. I call it the “Art Sprawl.” This immersion usually produces some nice drawings, progress on art projects and ideas for paintings. It’s also a time to focus on a particular technique. But I can’t do … read more Coloring, at least<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6851,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[316],"tags":[35,493,355,683,684,504,585],"class_list":["post-6657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-improvisation","tag-art","tag-brain","tag-color","tag-coloring","tag-mandala","tag-recovery","tag-therapy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6657"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6657\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6664,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6657\/revisions\/6664"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}