Our first day back in class was gentle, which is the general tone of my course, which is why I love it so much.

They did trick us a little though: they asked us to write down three things we noticed that day, and rather than ask us to draw something based on those three things, we had to pass our three things to our neighbor. We then had 20 minutes to draw something based on words that we had no relationship to or context for.

My words were:

• black clouds gathering

• grey slicing rain

• pink geraniums dropping

My classmate was very kind to me, no? She listed colors, things, and action. On the other hand, I wrote something like, “ate kale for lunch” 😆.

I immediately approached this strategically. I would not draw something figuratively - we only had 20 minutes, I only had charcoal and pens, and no image in mind. I instead approached it conceptually, and with a process - as I swirled my charcoal on the page, symbolic of the black clouds, I “sliced” my eraser across the page, symbolizing the rain. Over and over I made the motions, not really looking at what was happening, not wanting to think it too much.

After a while I stopped. The page was littered with eraser. I hadn’t addressed the pink geraniums yet. Leaning into the process, I circled eraser bits with my pen - they could be the geranium petals. I settled into a meditative state.

A friend had made beautiful meditative drawings that looked like tree cross-sections. When she wasn’t in that meditative state, the drawings just didn’t work. When you move the pen slowly and mindfully, there’s an organic quality to the line. It is with this in mind, that I drew the outlines.

Doing things this way can be wonderfully freeing. I don’t worry about how it will look like, and just let the process evolve something on the paper.