Spirit Tree, Play Along with Me!

You've heard this before, I know, but every weekend I try to walk away from the computer to purge myself of All Things Social Media.

For me it's like an Honoring the Sabbath thing, an attempt at distancing myself from technology, a way of refreshing my soul with a bit of simplicity.

Sometimes I'm successful. Sometimes not so much.... This weekend was the latter, but I had a good reason: I participated in another PlayAlong courtesy of the 'Once Upon' site on Facebook.

You remember me telling you about the first 'Once Upon' PAL, I'm sure (if not, check it out HERE). The deadline for this one was yesterday -- a Sunday -- and by the afternoon of the day before I had yet to create my entry (you're surprised, I can tell).

It's not like I'd procrastinated about it, I've just been so BUSY. This is easily the craziest time of year for me what with the Monarchs, the grandbugs, the gardens, the Renaissance Festival, the fill-in-the-blank. When I remembered the PlayAlong I almost threw in the towel. I knew I'd be lucky to find the time....

But the directions for this challenge were to draw a 'spirit tree' on a sheet of 8.5x11 black paper stock using only white media, and I couldn't pass that up. Black and white? My favorite colors! TREES!? My favorite things!

Yeah, there was no way I wasn't gonna participate.

So although Saturday afternoon saw me scanning, cleaning, and readying original art for printing, I tried to sneak in some play time here and there with some construction paper and a white Crayola pencil. Thankfully my scanner is slow, so there were tiny blocks of time in which I could work.

Drawing on black paper was a challenge, but photographing it for the PlayAlong share was the pits. It would've worked had I used natural light, I'm thinking, but there wasn't much of that around at midnight. Still, I inched in under the deadline, and you can see my entry above.

I surprised myself -- or rather my pencil surprised me -- by drawing something more whimsical than spiritual. I went into it expecting to see stars and spirals and maybe a trunk like the body of a goddess, with arms reaching for the moon. Lots of drama! Yeah, no.... My drawing hand had other plans! But I like when that happens. I'm constantly surprised, and that's a good thing. And I wonder sometimes if having grandbugs now has my head stuck in Picture Book mode. Cool!

Be sure to visit the 'Once Upon' site and 'like' it, 'k? Then check out the PAL 2 album to see everyone's great Spirit Trees. Believe me -- there are some GREAT SPIRIT TREES. You'll be glad you did. :)
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