When in doubt, aura!

Molly writes: 

I was stuck in the middle of a tile the other day. Doesn’t happen often, but every once in a while I hit a little road block. So paused for a bit and then for some reason heard my mother’s voice in my head, “When in doubt … aura."

So I picked my pen back up and just started to aura some of the lines that were already there. Those auras then led me to my next strokes and then the next which evolved into more tangles and so on.

For those of you new to Zentangle, We use the word aura to describe a line that echoes or mimics a previously drawn shape or line. Auras are simple and beautiful. It is a part of my practice that immediately allows me to enter space of calm. After creating that tile I kept getting lost in the idea of auras and it triggered some memories from my childhood. I having flashbacks of my mom creating with auras before way before we called them auras. I suddenly remembered my mother helping us with projects. She would write fancy letters on something and then show us how to closely draw a border around the letter forms that mimicked the shape and then we would draw patterns around the bordering line. She would teach us how to cut out photos and then show us how to draw a line around the shape to create funky frames. We would draw cartoons, illustrations and block letters and then we would draw these fun framing lines around the compositions to pull it all together. It was one aura after another. I started to laugh out loud when I thought about when we were whiny or bored she would make us run around the house 5 times … basically creating human auras around the house. I realized she had been carrying around this trick for years. "When in doubt, aura."

Was this part of her parenting mantra? How awesome. Once my head was in the aura zone … then I started to see the auras everywhere. Beautiful simple lines outlining and mimicking other lines and shapes within other art forms and works of art. A rock plummeting into a pond causing rippling circular waves. My loud voice in cavern repeating itself. The years of a tree’s life visible in its cross section with beautiful radiating rings. How amazing that we can cultivate this into our practice … just like a rock or a tree. How wonderful that this amazing beautiful technique not only found a home in the Zentangle Method but a beautiful descriptive name as well. I love that The Zentangle Method offers that access to creative flow. No time? You can tangle in a few minutes. No space? you can tangle in the palm of your hand. No artistic experience? If you can write your name you can tangle. Don’t know what tangle to draw? Roll the icosahedron die. Still cannot decide what stoke to do next … well you can always just aura.

When my Mom and Rick were coming up with method they had all of these experiences that lead them to make certain choices about the method and techniques, but I never thought about the aura component until now. So many of our tangles are variations and formula's of auras. So the next time your stuck on what to do on a tile … remember this. When is doubt, aura. 

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Speaking of auras, check out this blog from 2014 where Rick and Maria explore auras.