Simply Sunday - Making Marks and Filling Space

Glammers, glimmers, and Amy Maricle's Inchie Challenge

Aug 06, 2023

I started my notes for this week late one night, talking out loud to my phone because my eyes get so tired these days. Plus, it feels like podcasting, and podcasting opens things up for me. I really miss it.

When I opened my notes the next morning, I was faced with the line: "After last week's focus on glammers, it felt like a particularly dim week."

Sometimes, I really love the typos that come from speech-to-text translation. I can even imagine it might sound like “glammers” where I grew up. After watching Ted Lasso over the last week, I can totally hear the drawl. Sounds like home. Glammers, glimmers. Either way.

After last week‘s focus on glimmers, it felt like a particularly dim week. It isn't that I didn't try. (Although, really, that has to sort of be it, right? It can’t be that there weren’t any?) I hate not following through on things I suggest, but it wasn't the brightest of weeks. In the most literal way, the week was shrouded in fog, icy white mornings. I love the fog and am grateful for the stretch of cool days. I love wearing fleece in August. I love the fog, but the week felt dim.

It is easy to say what we need, or what we hope, or what we think would make a difference, but it is not always easy to make it happen. Sometimes, saying things out loud, sharing them, putting them in a text or a post or a bottle increases the odds. Going public adds an implied layer of accountability, even if it’s just in our heads. No one was really going to be checking to see what glimmers ended up on my pages. But having talked about glimmers, I wanted to be in the right mindset to gather them. I even hoped that having talked about them might put me in that mindset. Things aren’t always that easy to manifest. So many things I try to do, habits I try to make, life lines I put in place for myself sometimes come and go, unravel, shift in and out of the daily mix, even though I know they might be important pillars of self-care.

By Friday morning, I hadn't recorded even one glimmer. I had to sit with that, really.

I could still write a list of gratitudes though. That helps clear some things up. Last week I thought they were similar, that they might even be interchangeable terms for me. This week, by the absence of glimmers, I see that while my glimmers may also be gratitudes, not all gratitudes are glimmers. (You remember your syllogisms, right?)

It's probably good that I wasn't overwhelmed with glimmers, right? Then it would seem too easy. This way, glimmerless, I am reminded that glimmers are special partly because you can go days without one, and then, when you notice one, it feels especially bright.

While there were no glimmers this week, there were clowns. I found myself unexpectedly traipsing and trailing and tracking through the world of clowns. There were so many clowns. Today was supposed to be about the clowns, but I'm going to give myself a cushion and talk clowns later. They need to simmer. (They might reduce down to just a one-liner rather than the current sprawl. Who knows.)

A Short Challenge

Amy Maricle's "Inchie Challenge" starts tomorrow (August 7, 2023). This is one in a long string of challenges you might consider when mapping a creative year.

Amy’s Inchie Challenge has nice and accessible contours. It's a short challenge, 12 days. It only requires small papers. It doesn't have to take a lot of time. It can be an invitation to really slow down.

Filling Space

In my journal, I have always had a thing for filling small boxes (or circles) with various kinds of mark making, especially hatching, and I go in and out of various doodle and tangling (or Zentangling) modes. No matter what term we use, or how freeform our marks, I think many of us do these things. I find that the illustrated journal makes room for a lot of this as a way of mindfully filling space.

Mindfully filling space.

Both parts of that are important. Filling space is part of my overall voice and aesthetic, but filling space is also part of how I've found new patterns of slowing down, calm, and mindfulness in the last few years. These are important to me and my sense of balance and coping. They also, historically, have let me really enjoy a range of fountain pen ink in the simplest of ways—filling space.

The Inchie Challenge

Amy's Inchie Challenge is a low-key way to kickstart your creative processes, whether you are looking to try a short daily challenge, looking to do some line-inspired work that might lead you to Zentangles or other repetitive drawing patterns, or looking to slow yourself down, a bit, and make art with mindfulness as a goal.

I talked about Amy's book, Draw Yourself Calm: Draw Slow, Stress Less, last year in Episode 469 of the Creativity Matters Podcast.

The cover of Draw Yourself Calm: Draw Slow, Stress Less by Amy Maricle — The cover of Amy Maricle’s *Draw Yourself Calm: Draw Slow, Stress Less, on top of an open illustrated journal from 2022. A. Cowen*

I did the challenge last year with drawings in a sketchbook grid (which is a favorite approach for me) and on separate tiles. I don't know now where those individual tiles got to, but the sketchbook page reminds me of the week. I did two drawings each day, one in the sketchbook and one on a slightly bigger separate tile. The two drawings each day were similar but always a bit different. Usually I did the standalone tile second, giving myself a chance to stretch and explore through the grid one first.

At the same time as the 2022 Inchie Challenge, I was also doing another round of 30 Days 30 Inks. I was working in the same sketchbook and using a similar gridded approach (though larger squares). I was using only purple and mint/teal inks and using the challenge as a way to compare similar inks and also to, yes, mindfully fill space with freeform, unplanned doodles. As you can see, the filling of space in the two challenges was similar.

Glimpses from 30 Inks 30 Days grids from 2022. A Cowen — Glimpses from 30 Inks 30 Days daily ink swatching grids from 2022. A Cowen

Filling Space in an Illustrated Journal

My Illustrate Your Week journals all bear the marks of “filling space.” The approach varies. Sometimes I fill squares or circles. Sometimes I fill in the background behind drawings. Sometimes I fill in the margins between all the other things on the page. I fill space.

I think filling space may have a lot to do with why the illustrated journal works for me. It satisfies me visually, but it also gives me an anchor. No matter what is happening, whether I am up or down, whether things are okay or not, I can draw lines. I can fill small boxes with lines. I can fill circles. I can hatch in four layers to see how ink fills. I can fill in margins. I don’t have to make a work of art. I can just draw lines.

Filling space is one of my favorite things to do, which doesn't mean it's something others always understand. “Why does she just fill squares with hatching lines?” “What are all those little boxes about?” “What are the pages chaotic?” “Why does she do that?”

Because I do.

No Plan Required

I haven't had time to really think through what I'm doing right now or next. (I have time, but I don’t seem to have whatever it takes to think things through.) The work days feel endlessly long and unrewarding, the evening hours are too short, and the weeks are flying by. It hasn’t been the summer I hoped for. I’m navigating that. I know this is the cusp of yet another cycle of change, and I had hoped it would unfold differently. Instead, there is work, a few hours of night, a lot of disappointment, and the sense of time falling away.

Among other things, I’m discouraged. I seem to be always behind. I seem to always be tired. I seem to always be erasing and deleting. I seem to always be wishing and worrying. Beyond the “real life” contours, there are too many sketchnotes, drawings, unfinished projects, things I would like to make, weekly tasks, community tasks, and this, the writing and the accountability to show up, face in place. (I really should have written about the clowns.) The writing tasks have rolled in like a whale in a backyard kiddie pool. I know it's all too much, and I’m constantly running in place, not making any headway.

I can barely keep up with the things I feel accountable for right now, but when I saw Amy's challenge pop up, I thought “I might do this again.” My next challenge isn’t until October (if I do Inktoportraits this year), so the Inchie Challenge seems like a nice opportunity to add something small but also to maybe realign a bit. I come at it from a slightly different angle. I'm okay with loosely following the rules. I might do it again in the same sketchbook as last year, or I might even put it directly into my illustrated journal.

This kind of slow, freeform drawing is something I wish I was doing every day. At times, I have. Maybe this will be a good process of rekindling.

Examples

Here are some assorted glimpses of fill-in from recent years from different journals. (I could have photographed any of hundreds of pages. These are just randomly selected samples that show some form of fill-in. Looking back though, even quickly, gave me a lot of food for thought. I’m still trying to pinpoint something I seem to have lost.)

Samples from various illustrated journals from the last few years. A Cowen

If you decide to do Amy's Inchie Challenge, she uses 2x2 inch squares. (You could work in that range.) (Once you sign up for the free challenge, you’ll receive information from her about how to prepare, what to expect, and how to participate.)

I hope you’ll consider the Inchie Challenge or at least making some mindful marks in your journal or sketchbook this week. Sometimes, doing a bit of doodling or a bit of mindful mark making can really make a difference, in the moment, in how you feel.

From the Creativity Matters Podcast Vault

Episode 369: Filling Space: using a cast-off ring sizing template to make circles…. and then filling them in.
Spark Nov 5 – Making Marks; Making Space

Chime In

Let me know in the comments if you plan to participate. Outside of the world of slow or mindful drawing, what is your typical go-to doodle? Some people do flowers. Some do people. Some do monsters. Some just make marks or circles. What’s your go-to? When you find yourself in a meeting or on a phone call, what fills the piece of paper at hand? (You know, when you truly are just doodling without expecting to show it to anyone.)

Thank you for following along on Sundays. I value those of you who are here reading, and I know some of you are waiting for podcasts. I didn’t realize the summer logistics would be such a stop-gap. I have to find a better system. I used to seem to be able to fit things in differently. I am holding on though, hoping the pendulum will swing in coming months. All things come around. Thank you for hanging out and for your patience. To those of you sharing your illustrated journals, thank you for your honesty with the process and with your sharing. It’s a personal project, and I hope you find that it helps you navigate and find meaning in your day to day.

I draw with a few women on the weekends. If you are looking for a small creative group, reach out.

Questions!

Are you here for musings on creative life? Are you here for illustrated journal tips, examples, and inspiration? Are you here for whatever happens? Do you prefer just one email landing in your inbox a week? Will you unsubscribe if there is more than one?

If you read this and are someone using the Illustrate Your Week prompts, leave a comment to say “glammer.” If you are not doing Illustrate Your Week, leave a comment to say “kaleidoscope.”

Illustrate Your Week — Week 32

The new prompts for Week 32 have been posted.

Insightful Read

“So would you say that ‘happiness’ and ‘joy’ have a beginning and an end? A time when you feel those emotions and a time when you don’t?” “When we don’t feel major joy all the time…. we make overgeneralizations like ‘There’s no happiness in my life.’” Backwardfacing Therapy

A Look Back

I did 30 Days 30 Inks two other times in larger sketchbooks, both times filling space in circles

"30 Days 30 Inks" (2021) . A Cowen — "30 Days 30 Inks" (2021). A Cowen