Wow, what a wonderful time I spent with this tangle! When I first saw this tangle deconstructed by Barbara Finwall, I wasn't too excited, it seemed to me there weren't too many shading possibilities -- and I'm very partial to shading. Also, normally I'm not too crazy about grid patterns either. Nevertheless, having a lot of time on my hands yesterday due to not feeling really great and being stuck in bed, I tackled it first by creating one of my "recipe cards":

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Lately I've developed the habit of creating these recipe cards, as a way to try a new tangle and see the possibilities. Suddenly Zonked seemed a lot more attractive and organic, I LOVE this!

Focused Meditation and Mindfulness

For most of my creative life -- spanning over 45 years -- I have had the ability to "zone out" from the world when working on a piece of art. It is the most wonderful feeling! These days people are using terms as "mindfulness" and "meditative art" to express what to me, is the MOST important component of creating art, that ability to just be in the moment, thinking of nothing else but the drawing.

Feeling a bit better today, I decided to work on an a little experiment. Yes, I'm capable of reaching that "mindful zone" while drawing, but could I focus it specifically towards removing or understanding better a personal issue?

So instead of leaving my mind blank, I decided to go the opposite direction: I selected a specific fear that has been bothering me lately. Nothing too overwhelming -- not the cancer -- and I wrote it as a short sentence on the back of the white paper tile before starting to draw. (No, you don't get to know what it is, somethings are private).

WOW! What an experience!

During the entire time I was drawing, my mind was solely thinking of that fear and exploring the reasons why it exists in my life. Eventually, my mind started to wander and create answers and solutions to all that reasoning. Towards the end of the drawing, I noticed that the TILE ITSELF was full of symbolism and revelations about the issue at hand. Even breathing was different -- as I tackled the fear itself, I became aware of trying to control my breathing so that I could be more comfortable drawing!

INCREDIBLE, I love it!

Here's the final tile, after shading:

I used black ink 0.1mm for the line-art, gray markers and gray fine-liners for the shading, and 0.03mm black ink to cross-hatch the background (it was a very relaxing finale).

Here's a close-up of the picture, you can see the gray marker under the cross hatching: