 Hi there, it's Sandy Olnok and today I'm going to talk about finding the zone by doodling nonsense. And I'm not putting this artwork down by calling it nonsense or doodles. It is an epic drawing. It's on my largest pad of Hanamula lettering paper. And I'm using a Twizby Eco fountain pen to do it. This took me about two weeks of working on it each day for a couple hours here and there and between other projects to complete because it is huge. And it's in the style that I have been learning from somebody here on YouTube called Peter Draws if you've ever seen his channel. He does a lot of pen and ink work and he does lots of these types of drawings. Different than I do, I'm not trying to mimic his style. I'm trying to learn from it because one of the things that I've discovered from just trying to do some of these drawings where I'm not trying to draw a thing is that not drawing a thing helps me to get in touch with my actual process of drawing, my feeling of drawing, if that makes sense. Probably doesn't. But when I'm drawing something like this and I start to really go with the flow, I can feel it in my body. I can feel my back relax. I can feel my hand just moving almost like it knows what it's doing. I don't even have to think about it. The instant I start to think is when I tighten up and I start critiquing the line that I just made. Oh, I messed that up. This line's not straight. That line went over top of another line shouldn't have done that. On and on and on. All kinds of different things enter my brain and take me outside of my own creativity. And this kind of drawing, since I'm not trying to replicate a thing, I'm not trying to draw an object, I'm freed from having to make it look like that object for one and I'm allowed to just make lines. I have freedom to just draw and not to worry about trying to impress anybody by making an object looked real in any kind of a way. The only thing I did for this drawing to get it started and had sort of a vision at the beginning of what I wanted was to create a few basic pencil lines to start with. I wanted a structure of some kind because this was going to be big and I knew I would need to do it in sections because one big empty piece of paper could be intimidating. So I drew some circles using a compass and I have, you'll see in the finished one, it's got partial circle on it in a couple of different layers. And then I have some horizontal and vertical lines that I drew in pencil. Some of them go all the way through the drawing. Some of them don't, but they served as reminders to give myself a small amount of structure. But there were moments when I was really freed and doing all kinds of really wonderful lines and enjoying the process and feeling really good. And then there's those flowers that I just drew. I had these rounded places and I found myself get this thinking, okay, what's round? I don't know what I'm going to draw in there. Something that's round, flowers around, so I'll draw flowers. And what happened in that moment was I started thinking about real things instead of just drawing what my hand could fit in those spaces. It's not that flowers are bad. It's just that that moment felt very different than everything else around it. And it ended up looking different than everything else around it. But I was able to then pull myself back into the drawing. It sometimes just takes recognizing in my body that it feels weird. Something feels different when I fall out of the drawing. And I start either trying too hard to think of an object to put in here, like what can I draw in here? Or I get stuck and, you know, getting stuck is normal, something that happens to all of us. And I'll look around the room. I try to look for things like a shadow of something instead of the object so that I don't get lost on trying to draw the object. I have a lot of wires and cords and things in my studio. And I'll try to look at something like that and get a shape from it and then just start to go from there. But there's sometimes when I see something and I just start drawing a thing or, you know, something pops into my head or there's a word that is in a song on the radio. And that just takes me to that object instead of leaving me in the drawing and leaving me present to what I'm creating. This process doesn't only happen when you're drawing nonsense like this, when you're drawing things that are not a thing. And I am trying to get to the point where I can start to feel when I'm in the zone while I'm painting, while I'm making a card, while I'm doing my alcohol ink work. Any kind of project that I'm doing in whatever the medium requires being able to be present in the moment and not just trying to stay in my head and do it right and get everything correct. But it's just letting the creativity flow that is the hard part of being an artist. And it's something that I'm always, always, always fighting and working on to try to stay in that space, in that mental space so that I can be my best as a creative person. That doesn't mean that if you have never experienced that zone that you're not any kind of a good artist or anything. Some people maybe can create better that way, but I find my artwork is better and more natural and really steps outside the box when I can live in that zone with whatever it is that I'm doing. And sometimes I just, I need to walk away from what I'm working on if I find that I'm just stuck and I can't find that zone. I'll go grab a sketchbook and a different medium, and I'll just spend a little while on sketching a couple of pages of something. And if I'm not able to shake that loose, I'll go for a walk or go do something else because I find that it's really not worth a lot to force myself to try to do something when my head's not in it. And it's really important to me to stay in the game when I'm doing my creating of whatever, whatever it is that I'm making. So this drawing I was super pleased with. It is giant as you can see. There's a picture of it over on my blog if you want to go check out more in detail because it'll be really big over there. And it was a lot of fun to do. I hope that some of the thoughts that I shared weren't complete nonsense like the drawing was and that maybe it helped you a little bit. And I will see you guys again soon with another video. Take care. Go draw some nonsense and let me know how it goes. See if you find the zone. Bye guys.