Mombie – a bit of everything

Drawing practice

Drawing of four people from the back.
A drawing (black ink on white paper) of four figures in skirts and long sleeves lifting their arms into the air. They are all seen from the back and they all have long black hair.

Glamour Pig

While my sister’s family was on vacation, I helped take care of my nephew’s Guinea pigs.

Just for fun, I sent them pics of the piggies every time I was over there to feed them and this particular photo cracked me up.

Doesn’t this critter look glamorous? Like a cartoon character who will speak softly and wrap all the other characters around her paw?

A photo of a black and white Guinea pig in a cage.
A photo of a very furry, black and white Guinea pig in a white cage. She is stood part way up with her paws on a ledge and you can see one of her eyes. Because the black hair around her eyes is surrounded by white hair her eye looks huge and perhaps like she is wearing mascara.

Focus on Fun for August

Yep, that’s the plan!

I’m not taking the month off or anything as marvellous as that but I am planning my fun before I plan anything else.

I don’t have a full plan yet but I have a vague shape of it in my head and I’ll soon have it on paper.

I will probably take some practice to get used to it but it’s worth a try.

Fingers crossed.

A restful moment

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Yesterday, in the middle of trying to get stuff done, I took a break and sat in the shade of a tree in my yard.

Naturally, Khalee had to come outside too – after all, what about if I was in peril and she wasn’t there to bark at the menace?

I was so happy just sitting there looking at her looking at me that I snapped a photo.

A light-haired dog sitting on grass
A photo of my medium-sized, light-haired dog, Khalee, sitting in the shade in the grass in my yard. She has a sort of doggie smile on her face which is probably just from panting in the heat but is fun all the same.

Useful but not particularly interesting

I have done meditative drawing before and I have meditated before and I have ‘drawn my breath’ – moving a pen on paper in time with my breath, but I have never drawn AS meditation before.

What’s the difference?

Maybe some people wouldn’t distinguish between all of those things but for me there was a qualitative difference.

Meditative drawing in mindful drawing – paying close attention to what you are doing and keeping your focus on what you are creating. It’s restful and mindful and soothing but it doesn’t feel the same as meditation to me.

Meditation takes lots of forms but for me it usually centres on focusing on the breath.

Drawing my breath is also meditative but it feels more like a warm up than a meditation. As in, it would slow me down on a hectic day so I could then sit in meditation.

Today’s experience was different again.

Yesterday, I saw an Instagram post suggesting doodling for stress relief and I decided to morph that into drawing as meditation.

I set my timer for 10 minutes and breathed slowly as I drew lines in one direction on my card and then in the other and then drew small squares where the lines intersected.

As you can see, 10 minutes is not enough time to put a square on each intersection but it was enough time to feel focused and like I was finding some inner stillness.

I’ll definitely try this again.

A drawing on a white card
A square white card on a green surface. The card is covered in thin diagonal lines that run from bottom left to upper right and another set that run from bottom right to upper left, crossing over the first set of lines. About 1/8 of the intersections at the top have a small square drawn where the lines meet.