Under Starter’s Orders

Welcome to the world of the terminally bewildered, Yorkshire Branch. (You should be hearing Twilight Zone music in the background…)  In addition to my normal state of slightly querulous vaguenicity, I am suffering from what I am beginning to know as Tangler’s Doubt.  The condition, for which there is no known cure, can be triggered in either of two ways;

1. The receipt of a partially completed piece of artwork from another tangler, to be finished by the sufferer and then displayed for the world to see her shame and degradation at ruining a perfectly good start.
2. The preparation of a card or paper with either inks or colours, ready to be tangled over.

In both cases the result is a sudden loss of memory about any suitable patterns, an indecision about where or how to begin, leading, in the worst cases, to Tangler’s Block. (The music playing in the back of your head should have changed from Twilight Zone to Jaws round about now, possibly The Ride of the Valkyries will be there too.)

I have recently suffered from this condition thanks to the appalling kindness of a woman who I had previously seen as a friend but who is, I now see, a fiend.  She goes by the innocuous title of Michele but I have seen through this thin disguise. She is a Princess of Temptation and Despair. Each week she writes on her blog (Coffee and Creativity)  about artwork and her trials of new skills and each week she gives the impression that it is possible for anyone to do this. But I suspect that she uses Dark Arts to produce the effects that we see.

And, then she draws in the poor unsuspecting fool, someone like me, for instance, and offers to send starts for them to finish.  In all innocence I asked her for some and she, oh wicked woman, sent them to me. (Dragnet music here, I think.)

Why did this bring on an attack of Tangler’s Doubt, you may ask. Well these are the two starts she sent. Just look at that gorgeous background.  How could you draw over it? How could you draw round it? Where would you start? I am currently sitting in the corner of the room, facing the wall, sucking my thumb and rocking to and fro.

And the atc is just as bad/good, depending on how you look at it.The shading is terrific and I can’t help feeling it doesn’t need anything else.  Maybe the answer is to scan them, practise on the scans and then risk the real thing.

But it doesn’t end there. In a moment of madness I mentioned to her that I’ve been dabbling with art journals. (This, essentially, has meant cruising You Tube watching OTHER PEOPLE doing art journals.) so in with the two pieces above, she has sent a page ready to be used in an art journal. And, even worse, it’s a page torn from a book. Dammit, woman, I am a recovering English teacher for whom writing over the pages in a book is tantamount to sacrilege.  NOOOOOOoooo! (Now I will admit that it is a page from The Brothers Karamazov, I think, and therefore will be improved by being covered with gesso and the like but still, it goes against the grain.) You can see it at the top of the post.

Well, world, I bit the bullet and stuck it in my journal ready for the next stage. (The printed page, not the bullet.) What will it be? Your guess is as good as mine, since I’m still dithering over making a decision about any of them.   But, assuming I have not been dragged screaming into the booby hatch, I’ll let you know.

LATER…

Well there has been no Diva Challenge for a couple of weeks because Laura has health problems. You might find her post on the subject an interesting insight into mental health problems so I offer the link here.  http://www.iamthedivaczt.com/2018/06/that-time-i-went-awol.html It resonates with me because one of my children suffers from anxiety and depression and what Laura describes is very much what my daughter has described to me of her experience. The desperate helplessness we feel as her parents is nothing in comparison to what sufferers go through but it hurts nonetheless.  You may wonder, in view of this, how I continually make reference to going bonkers and the like, casting doubts on my own mental health at times. Well just remember i live in several worlds, Zentangleworld, Facebookworld,  Blogworld and none of these is the real world I live in every day. They are where I go on mental holiday and only my rules apply.

So instead of doing the Diva Challenge, I decided to dive back into Artjournallingworld a bit more.  I managed this page, which I feel is a bit thin but will do as a starter.

But then, in a fit of overconfidence, I started to work on the page with Michele’s contribution. Now I’ve watched videos of people slapping black paint around like nobody’s business and getting a finished product that looks, as my Grandad would have said, “Summat like…” But not for me. After hours, and I really mean hours, I have a page which is

A. Unsalvageable

B. Looking like a bloodbath in a horror film

C. The best thing about it is the quote.

Sorry, Michele, I will try harder.  Or maybe I should just go and have a lie down.

Until I feel a little stronger then, farewell world and be good to each other. Not good-ish, you don’t know what they are going through inside – so, just this once I say to you – be good.