In keeping with my focus this month on everyday pleasures (achievable by most of us), today I’m grateful for watercolour pencils. Yes, really. They’re an inexpensive ‘luxury’ (no one ever died for lack of watercolour pencils, I’m sure!), but one that I increasingly rely on.
Most days — probably 4 out of 5 — I ‘draw’ my day. In a small ‘graph,’ I colour the day’s weather, my mood, and then I draw a kind of doodle ~ a variation on a Zentangle. Unlike most true Zentangles, I don’t fill in every millimetre of white space, and I do colour it. With those coloured pencils I’m grateful for. (And fyi: I’m also grateful for the pencil sharpener that keeps them nice & pointy!)
It’s a small moment out of my day, but it’s pleasant to try to distill my mood to colour (or colours). If the limited colours in my two boxes (I have four!) of pencils don’t provide me w/what I want? I can layer colours, then add a wash of water, & I have a colour I may not even have a name for. How cool is that??
Because art — even our own pretty lousy attempts at it! — is the best of therapies. When I colour w/ my pencils, or crayons in a colouring book, I’m lost to stress. All that exists is the colour in front of me, and the one to come. Sometimes the ways in which they relate, too. But not what I ‘should’ be doing, or what I’ve ‘forgotten’ to finish.
Adults do far too little play. We make everything (sometimes even play…) into work. And it’s sad. I love to colour — I even have 2 colouring apps on my phone & iPad. Those aren’t everyday pleasures, I realise, as they require smartphones, which many Americans flat can’t afford. I don’t apologise for my material happiness, but I’m well aware that it isn’t everyone’s good fortune.
Still, coloured pencils aren’t pricey. Not even the watercolour kind (which are MUCH more fun!). And you don’t need a fancy colouring book — you can use a straightedge, and draw a graph, and find ways to fill those neat boxes, one by one.
Try it! It may be the key to helping you relax as we enter an increasingly hectic pre-holiday season. ????
Tea and Breath 