[Webinar Recording] Joy Breaks with Lorraine Wilson: Fancy Letters and Doodled Quotes

October Joy Break

During our monthly dose of joy in October, we created doodled quotes using fancy letters and artistic backgrounds. Watch the video below to follow along. And, if you aren't already registered for our monthly joy break, be sure to register today to be notified of all upcoming sessions and receive the recordings straight to your inbox.

To download the audio, click here.

Read the transcript below or click here to download.

Note: This is not a flawless word-for-word transcript, but it’s close.

Lorraine Wilson (Ambassador, Davis Phinney Foundation):

Okay. Paper-wise, you can use paper out of your copy machine, your printer. You can use a notebook if, maybe you have like a journal that has graphs or plain paper or lined paper. We can work with any of that. I prefer plain, myself, for things like this. You might have no quotes in mind, so we can use my joy quote, but I would love for us to just artistically fill this page. And I'm going to actually combine several of these if I may. You guys do what you want. I'm going to do what we all want, I think, I'm, that's what I'm planning by getting this together. So, here's my personal plan. I am going to go with this water, oh, wait a minute. I'm going to talk to you and then I'm going to have to go to the screen so you can see what I'm doing.

I'm going to go with watercolor paper and I'm actually going to cut it to a four-by-four square. And you might be asking yourself, why are you cutting it to a four-by-four square? Well, I found these really neat frames, and it's not that I think that, you know, it has to be perfectly done in order to be framed. But these are what I like to give for little, what I call JB gifts. Are you guys familiar with JB gifts? Raise your hand. Does anybody know what a JB gift is? Yay. I'm going to teach you. Just because, just because sometimes I'll have these in my purse and someone's not looking like they're having a good day, and these are kind of generic, male, male, female, doesn't matter, or all the other. But even one day when I was at the bank, the young lady that usually helps me and knows my name and is very sweet, was quieter than usual.

And so, as I was leaving, I just took it out of my purse, put it on her little counter there at the teller area, and she said, Lorraine, you left this. I said, oh, no, that's for you because I want to brighten your day. And she was just like, What? And it wasn't anything special, I mean, but it was fun for me to make. I get it, enjoy the process. She gets to enjoy the surprise and away we go. So, I'm cutting four just because those 4 0 4 frames are so cool. All right, once I get that cut I am going to do part of what I call the color block process. So, I'm going to take my watercolor paint. You can also just use watercolor pencils. And then I've got water and brush and all that in here. And I'm going to just put down some color randomly. Okay? Once I get that color on there, it's just going to take a couple minutes to dry. It's very quick to dry. Then I'm going to start my quote and I'm going to go ahead and use my joy quote. Let me find my joy. Quote.

Well, it's on the bottom, of course. Here we go. So, I am going to use "Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls". Okay? So, I'm going to share the screen because I think we now have a plan. So, here's a paper that's a wee bit too big because I would like to do this. The frames, they also make five-by-five, but they cost more. And the joy break today, it's so fun to have Carol in the house to do this together. So, I don't know if you already have paper, if you're just using a journal, if you're cutting it to size, but whatever you want to work on. And sincerely it could be just printer paper. Now, is that paper size okay or do you want a trim? It looks like it's further four. I believe it, yeah. Okay, good. I just need that one bigger on purpose to show them. It's fun to have somebody in the house. I'm serious. Okay, so now here's my piece of paper. First thing I know, I'm going to do color blocks and I personally am going to use green and pink, a very bright green and hopefully a bright pink. I've got two sets of watercolor paints here. Then I'm going to come in and I'm going to pencil in my quotation. You can use any quote. Let me fold this paper half.

You can use any quote you like, but if you do like a joy quote I think this one is lovely, and I have a whole book of joy quotes. If you want me to read you something else, you can go into your phone, your iPad, whatever you have handy their folks, and find a quotation that you like, or just like Carol did wisdom, please feel free to just take a word, whether it's joy, if it was joy. Okay, so let's say you did joy, then you could dangle off of it with some of the, with some of, Oh, I'm down here now with some of the angles. That'd be fun for joy. And look, if you did j y and block letters, I'm going to have to do more than one thing. If you did j-o-y on these blocks, then the dangles could come off of them.

Yeah. So, I'm going to be doing two things in alternating. That way you can do what you want, but maybe I can influence and help and please chat or ask the question. Just there's a small group speak out and we will do our best to respond. So, I'm going to get my little hand cup ready, got to get some water in it. And Carol, if you want to use watercolor, you're welcome to. We can share this water. Well, I was kind of thinking of just doing some drawing. Okay. And then using some markers later. Excellent. If you couldn't hear, Carol is going to be doing the drawing part now and maybe markers later. And for these dangles, the very fine markers are really lovely because the, usually the tips on the dangles are pretty small. I really like, I don't know if you've seen these, these are big intensity stick markers.

Ugh, they are so lovely, thin. And when you're filling in these tiny objects, I just like how they work. In fact, sometimes I use them instead of watercolor. And if you want to use them, we'll put them right here. All thank you. So, I'm going to get my background ready. If your background is solid, white, black, plain, et cetera, just leave it. But I'm going to get my brush. I'm going now to get the blotches that I want. And I don't know if you guys have done this. I'm going to just put down some water, kind of, of course, that's not going to show up, but trust me, these are just twiggles of wetness,. And I am just going to randomly and I'm going to keep them from touching in a couple places.

Then I'm going to get my colors ready. And I am going to use this pink here. Let me move it so I'm not putting my hand right in front of you. I put that there, that there and that there. That's better. So, I'm going to get a lot of water to make this where it's going to drip and use this to just, oh, there's a pretty one. I like it. There's another one. And if you've never done it before, it is so fun to get salt. Just table salt. And put it on this and it will really help dispense in unique ways.

I'm going to go down here. That's a little intense. Let's get some water. All right, I don't like that last one much. So, we're going to just do the old absorb trick. And that gives me a cute little block tie. I like, Okay, now I said pink and green. So, you know, get this bright green. And at the end hoping that you do get to finish at least one thing today. Let's make sure, and you guys help me remember that we hold these up to the screen and Mel can get a screenshot of our fun cards. That one's too completely like there colors. You like to blend together. Oh, I do like doing this to the green. See, it's an experiment. One can need a little bit more water down here, like a smiley face almost. I'm going to pick one color. I think I'm going to pick purple.

You might be using anything for your background. We don't choose it. There we go. Oh, and sometimes when people put a lot of water on and do this to get certain abstract, they will use a straw and blow on it. But I'm just going to let it drop off the page if it will be so kind. It's interesting how the tension changes and I, so then I like to turn it, which way do I like my card? Ooh, if I put this down here, it's almost as if my green is like a plant. Now, this got a little bit muddied. Just kind of change that purpose. That's one thing with art people get to decide.

So, I'm going to clean that up. So, a little nice darkness. Get a little more water. Make it drip. There we go. I like that better. Is there any difference between types of watercolors that you use? Yeah, let me tell you. With watercolors, there's the basics, which that you might call child or student grade. Long. Yeah, like the praying. Yeah. Well, and even. Yeah. So, you might spend a dollar 99 or you might spend a thousand dollars on paints. Lemme tell you these two that I have this small set right here is a bright color. I like the bright colors. I just like the bright colors. And so, this particular, and these are all travel sets. So, these are called Tropicals. But you can see the reason that we do the color swatches is because these don't really necessarily look like that. You know, it has to give yourself a look up there. Excuse me. And then these are coy.

Those were maybe 20 bucks, 25. These I think were 35, 40. You know, you use a coupon, don't never pay full price. Wait, wait until you can use a coupon. So, I'm going to let that dry a little bit. Now, sometimes people will use a heat gun. You can use the blow dryer. That would probably blow it around a wee bit. But while that's drying, I'm going to get my pencil and start sketching my joy quote. And I'll just kind of start here. What, so now this particular lettering is called ribbon. You may or may not want the ribbon part, but I'm going, and I may end up just doing a nice big joy with the angles. I think on top of the color me, those aren't even color blocks, those are colored watches, right? I like them. So, there's my joy or my J for joy.

And then it looks like if I very simply come in like this and overlap and then come in like this and overlap, this is going to go behind and come up. And of course, I'm going to do this meter as I get to my finished product. But when I'm sketching the shape and size, it's not a problem. And that's the most wonderful thing about pencil. It's a reason. And so, I'm going to bring this one down, but ribbon lettering has to be one of my favorites for just short words. I'm not necessarily a huge fan of it when I have like a whole phrase but bring this one down. I kind, I don't want it to be sort of like in my J here, but not exactly. So, if I bring this in here, take it there. This one went this way, but you know, nothing says it couldn't go up. It can. So, I kind of like that basic shape. It's, it's going to fit my four by four and going to do it near the top, probably a wee bit smaller so that then I can do some dangles and dangles are sincerely just lines. Now if you want to be very perfect, you know, straighter, you're welcome of course to use a ruler. And I will, ooh, you know what, what if, let me get a scratch.

He's getting excited. Now, who knows? What if we did this? Okay, so what if we did our J, I'm just going to kind of get it started. You'll see. And then we had our Y. Okay, what if here with, wait here, what if we had all of these, let’s see, this might be about the center. Yeah, what if instead of dropping the tanes, I brought them all in radiant lines and we take our joy all the way around, even though over here it's going to include the J and the y I. Let's see what that looks like. And again, you don't have to use a ruler, I'm just doing it for speed right here. So, this would go there, there. So, kind of thinking about this is the center of that. Oh, I can make that bigger. That would work. And then you could just keep going to different lengths. And if you wanted to, of course, we could come in here. Nothing says we can't use the entire thing. That might be an option. So, dangles from the joy, a circular dangle wouldn't be quite a dangle. What would we call a circular one that could work with one word, or we could do the entire quote. Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls. And any of your own handwriting, and it's fun, you might notice that in the "joy is a net," so, in a, I made it kind of look like a net inside the A and love, I've just colored around it for a little hard on the, at the end of the b I just kind of did capital letters, small letters. Here's the fun thing, too, about capital letters and small letters. Let's just be random. So, let's go.

Oh, let's see. I'm going to use this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this. So, I've just written a code. So, it's going to say, like, if I was doing the word which capital smile? Capital, capital small. Ah, it's interesting. So too, you can just randomly put out your letters for capitals or small letters. You can use an L for lowercase. And then when you're writing, oh, it's so funny because on this one I actually did do caps and littles, but I ended up with a small lowercase H and capital H. So, and then if I may, let me show you this because one of the things I really enjoyed doing that I learned from Lindsay Ostrom is the concept of messy lines. And then another thing that I really like from Joanne Sharpe is very similar. I'm going to show you Joanne's because I have her book right here. And then it's really easy for me to show you something from Lindsay as well. And these are just inspirations for me. Oh, look at these radiating lines.

And I don't know if you ever go to YouTube or Pinterest. There's so much that you can see that will inspire you and see these blocks right here, those aren't necessarily color blocks as I was thinking of them, but you could do a mindful slow drawing or Zentangle sketches in there. But this is one of the things I love that Joanne Sharpe does. So, we might put the word joy in the center with or without the dangles, and then she draws this border so I could put joy, and then from here I could put the quotation around the square and the little heart right there would be appropriate for drawing. So, lots of decisions, but I've about, I've about decided what I'm going to do. I hope you've decided you can do exactly what I do, similar to what I do, or completely your own thing.

So let me get my paper. It's not quite dry, so I'm going to make it go dry without making it have a noisy machine.  like a hair dryer. There we go. And I like that. In fact, oh, and if you didn't know it, your paper towels have a variety of textures. And so, this is pretty much a standard paper towel. But on watercolor paper and especially with a paper towel, you're going to get a double texture, the texture from the water paper and the texture from the paper towel. So, this one's ready, but I'm still undecided, I think now that I like it this way. Okay? And you will notice, of course, the water made the paper warp just a smidge. It's okay. That's another thing I would say is you put it under books when it's dry so that it flattens really nice and little fit in your frame very nicely. So, I am going to put my joy in the middle. And again, if I want to use a ruler to kind of get the center fine, I'm just going to eyeball it. But I'm going to start with my own so that I sort of get that center and I'm going to move up. No, not, yeah, right about here.

So, there's the start of the old up to the Y and I'm going to go with a, I'm going to keep this height here, similar instead of having an all of the J being above it. And I'm going to go ahead and say I can actually go a little further down. So, if I do that, the o is a little, that's okay. And then I'm going to come here with my Y. So that should work. Now I am going to go ahead and do this like a ribbon line. Oh no, I know what I'm going to do. Almost like a Zentangle. I'm going to pretend like the dots in each corner because Zentangle starts with a dot in each corner if you're doing the traditional square. And then once I get those on, I'm going to go ahead and you're going to erase everything you don't need, right? I'm getting the handout of your way. Next, I'm going to come right about here. Cause I want to be that thick and I'm going to go like this, this, this. Then I'm going to go like this and keep it as one. Then I'm going to overlap again.

And then I'm going to keep this as one. Now I'm going to go ahead and just use black on the two that I know I'm going to stick with. And I'm going to use these Micron pens. You guys may have any brand, but what's nice about these is they are waterproof. But don't, that doesn't mean you should touch them immediately. For example, if I put a mark and rub it immediately, do you see how it smudges? But if I put a mark and leave it alone, it will not smudge, it will be waterproof. And so, I could even do this and then paint over it if I so chose. But on these ones, I kept the same. I'm going to essentially make those, well first, let me trace that line. And I'm not checker boarding because I'm not having multiples, but I'm going to just make those black and white. And this is a very thick pen because I know for our purposes today, it will allow me to color faster, not that it matters. So, I'm going to have black and white borders on each side. Carol, have you made a decision on how what you're doing?

Carol:

Yes, I have.

Lorraine Wilson:

And what are you doing?

Carol:

Well, I have a phrase “Joyful, joyful, we adore you.”

Lorraine Wilson:

Yes.

Carol:

And so, I've kind of done this lettering with those and I've done something different than I've ever done before. I've put, I have joyful, joyful and I've put my dangles behind. And so, they come back out again.

Lorraine Wilson:

Let me show them. May I?

Carol:

Yes.

Lorraine Wilson:

Yeah, here we go. So, you can see her pencil underneath. And then she came back with black. And she has started her dangles right here. And even going behind, yay!

Carol:

Getting some trees and tons of holiday theme things around the side. And then I'll start color.

Lorraine Wilson:

And when I go to do my "Joy" neatly, I will show you one of the, it's not really a trick, but one of the things that helps me the most when I'm not feeling terribly neat, but I want my products to look neat if at all possible. So, I'm just drawing my line. You could of course be using a paintbrush or other markers, colored markers. Harold, that song is the first song I learned to play on the piano. Yeah.

Carol:

Yep.

Lorraine Wilson:

Piano players out there. I decided my left side, which is my bradykinesia side, needs to have some exercise. So, I bought a baritone ukulele and I'm learning to play it very slowly. One morning art is much easier for me than the uke. I have an eraser nearby.

Carol:

Well, come over, buddy.

Lorraine Wilson:

Raise your hand if you're doing one word or chat and raise your hand if you're doing a quote like Carol. Okay? And you might be doing something else. You might be observing. Now we're probably going to have time for two joy breaks today, which is very exciting. And actually, it's 1:37 my time. So, I'm going to get my Joy Break out.

And, oh, if this is your first time, we have a Joy Break Jar at the beginning of the year. I just type up a variety of little things that could be anywhere from 30 seconds to three minutes or even five. And it's something that brings me joy. Number one, for the surprise of what am I drawing out of my jar? But also, to then recycle. And if I want to and if I like it, cuz I get my permission to have my joy Anyway, I want, oh, here we go. Two wonder-filled minutes. I have my watch here. Not that we have to have it perfectly timed. All right? If you're doing a joy break with me. It says, "Sit comfortably, relax. Try to bring your shoulders down, relaxed, and back without feeling stiff". You know, just kind of as I was working with students in physical education, it would be ears over shoulders, shoulders over hips, hips over heels. So that like, of course, we're seated, but if the idea flat feet, no cross legs and we're just going to sit comfortably. Three more seconds and slow your breathing. So, as you inhale count silently, how many counts do you get when you exhale? Exhale. One longer.

Breathing is marvelous. We like breathing. Then it says for the next 20 seconds to look around or to look straight ahead, whichever you want to do, and pay attention to what you're seeing. And I'm looking out a window. So, I'm going to look out my window instead of at the shelf for the desk. And then it says, what are you hearing? What are you smelling? If you can still smell, I can't smell. So, I'm going to be paying attention to what I see, and what I hear for 20 seconds. It's kind of like a commercial break, right? Then it says, now for 20 seconds, reflect on four things that you're seeing, and three things that you're hearing. And if you can smell one or two things that you smell, I can imagine smelling what I'm seeing, but I don't smell it. So, 20 seconds of reflecting, pausing, and thinking.

So, whatever you are seeing, I hope is bringing you joy out my window. There is an incredibly huge red oak tree. It's still green. We're in Texas. And so, it's not gone to any kind of autumn color yet. And sometimes we don't have much autumn color, but I want to just enjoy the moment, not worrying about what's coming or when it's leafless, right? So beautiful, beautiful leaves. And it's windy because the leaves are moving, and the movement makes me think of dance. I know if any of you watch Amy says dance today was her farewell day. Carol was participating in that earlier movement. Maybe you're a walker. And so, when you're out walking if the wind is pleasant, that's one thing. When it's blowing like crazy, that's not as much fun, but it does give you greater intensity for your work. Work. So, my mind wanders while I'm thinking about what I'm seeing.

And I can't really hear because my window's closed, but I can imagine the wrestling of the leaves, and I can imagine seeing in my backyard and looking and seeing and really appreciating this tree. And I think the keyword there is appreciating. And the keyword for me is always "joy". It brings me joy to see that pretty tree, especially because since the tree grew, I can't see the house next door., I love the people next door, but sometimes we see, but we don't. Or you know, we hear, but we're not listening. That's an easier phrase to use is "hearing versus listening". Or maybe I, people will say, you know, you're blind, you see it, but you're blind. You're not really seeing it. But we'll have another joy break before we go. I think you get the idea on where I'm going with this.

I'm going to do different things in these, and I might get to one of those for you, but I want to get my joy on here. Oh, this way. Hello. There we go. Now I'm going to double-check in my pencil. Oh, and by the way, I think you guys know that the white erasers are really lovely for not leaving marks on your work. And so, these pentel pencils, mechanical pencils, they actually feature the white. It's a good white eraser. Can you tell I've been abusing myself lately? Look at these poor nails. This was the, I think I told you this was the pickup truck tailgate. Yeah. Got me. So, I'm going to erase this a little because I want to make sure I get the exact size I want now that I've got my lines up. It doesn't have to be fully erased, but I'm going to use these lines. And you see this has square, I don't know what you're using for your base or if you have a base, but I like to have a base. So, I'm going to draw just some dashed lines to help me see where I want my joy.

Okay, that's good. And I'm still going to go ahead and put my o and what I'm going to consider to be the middle. Well, here, let's see, four by four, look at that. That's close enough. So, I think my o is okay here, my outer shape first. And then for this type of letter, it's kind of vocal. Like if I'm going to come here to the point, then I'm going to go down, make it thin. So, see it's thick here, then thin. So that means that I'm going to want it to be thin to thick here. So, you can see how this shape, if you imagine that's kind of like you guys have the C trees, almost like an economy, oval lip football. What are you going to call people? Now I'm going to bring this line here. Going to bring this line here, and we're going to go out thinner to the Y.

Okay? Get my Y done right over here. Make it just a little bit thicker and then a little bit thinner. And I'm going to keep I think about that same shape from there to there. Bring this here, bring this here. Made it a little stuffier than the first one. And I'm just going to go out to a point here. I'm not going to worry about that one in the ribbon that I had in my other example. So, there's my j my y, I mean my o and my why. Now I do like, oh look, it's right there at that dot. How perfect. I do like having my J. Yeah, it's just a smidge bigger, not too much.

Make it a little squattier. Bring it here and let that be. That's fun. So now I'm going get my micro in pin. This is about your experience, but my experience with these fine liners is that you use them up at different rates. So, I always keep this one case where these are my newest of each size. And so, I'm going to go to the smallest that I have, which is a 0.005. And I'm going to come in now and I'm going to go like this. It's pretty thin, but we're going to be sticking it up later. And I'm going to go like this. I teardrop it and I'm just going to take it, not connect it to my o I like my separate O. So, there's my first part of my o my second part of my, this is going to come over. Am going to connect it to me, this here, this here. Bring that, bring that.

Okay. Now, so, that's very thin. May I borrow that eraser? Yeah. Got it. Well, and by the way, when you get marks on your eraser, I just erase it on my desk. Then you can see it's shaking, and it gets the marks off. Then you just have to kind of clean your desk later. So now I'm going to very gently come in again, get rid of the pencil marks. Don't want competition between the pencil marks in my lines. And I'm going to then show you how both Joanne Sharpe and Lindsay Ostrom do some of their letterings in a kind of fun, freehand way. Okay, there we go. Write that better. So, what you'll notice is my j is like my biggest letter always right there. I did y a little smaller on purpose because I just, I wanted to kind of fill this space, but I did a nice big thing there and I could do something here or here, I'll show you.

But now I'm going to get the rest of my quote and I'm going to use my pencil again and I'm going to draw a line. Oh, like that. Then I'm going to draw a line like that and then I'm going to come like this and I'm going to go like that. And then I'm going to go like that. So, I filled my space with lines. Now the rest of the quote, I'm just going to like a pencil without really penciling it. I'm just going to look. So, if I put joy is net, then it'd be of love by w-h-i-c-h you-c-a-n, can catch, oh, and then souls would be down here centered. Ooh, that's fun. Okay, I think that's what I'm going to do. I do need space perhaps for Mother Teresa's name. We'll have to think about that. We'll get her in there. Let me see. So here we go. I'm going to put my is and I'm going to do it with a circle and with just a nice straight eye. And my s I'm going to leave I think kind of skinny singular with a little lip here and a little lip here, on the lip here. Okay? And then my, I like by a with the net look, but I'm going to make it be a little bit bigger than my line allows.

So, there's love, is a, and I think I'm going to block print and maybe, oh, I know, the top of the n e t can be like the top of like a tennis net maybe. We'll see. Okay, love is in that. I'm going to go down here for, I think I'm going to cursive that. Bye. Oh, I know. I'm going to go ahead and go with my cap and lowercase. So, I'm going to go lowercase cap, cap, lowercase, lowercase. Okay, so, “Joy is a net by which, ooh, let's do block you, y o u. That was it by which you, and it's kind of small. I know what, let's do skinny caps and then I'm going to do really thick lowercase c a t c h. Always annoying when I misspell something and I'm writing. But thank heavens for pencils. Okay, so, "joy is a net by which you can catch souls." I'm going to do all cursive against souls. Oh, you, I keep that. And then I have room for mother there, right here. And she does not have an H if I understand correctly. So, it's t e r e s a. And what's nice is I don't have to worry if that's neat, messier or what have you because I'm going to fix it now if I feel like I need a fixing with my marker. So first I'm going to thicken my joy and I'm going to decide,

My gosh, my time is escaping. And I wanted to do two joy breaks. One joy break that I had the other day was to send a text or email to someone I haven't communicated with lately. And what was fun is they wrote back, I'm just kind of striping my joy. Usually, when you start writing, moving the pen, you get an idea. And so just, okay, I'm going to put a little whimsical heart right there. Okay, so you get the idea with how I'm going to do my joy. So now let's move on. So, the question might be, can I really read these letters very well with those color blocks below them? You know this is an experiment. Might not be my favorite. Have to see what happens when I finish it. But I'm going back to a fat pen this time I have eight cuz I want these to be kind of thick block letters.

Okay? And I'm going to change that a. I'm going to go to cat and then I'm going to switch my net to be thicker since these color watercolor letters are a little, or the watercolor blobs are a little bit big. Okay? And I am going to put circles, you know, I was thinking of tennis. These are tennis balls. Not really. And I'll probably come back with color in between. Then I'm going to square these like the edges that might be hard to read until I get it blocked. And you take that one out. There we go. And I will use a thinner pan.

Strike this. I like that one playing. Put this one this way. Okay? But I want them to stand out a little bit more. We are about running out of time. Not, not completely yet, but I just want to show you something. So, you know, once that has dried a bit. So, I'm going to come over here to the left where I started again, going back to these lovely white erasers. They're just a rubber plastic polymer, whatever. So, they leave no residual. And I just gently go around, and you can see the lines are gone. The pencil marking is gone. It just cleans it up so nicely. I like it.

And if I had wanted to remember, I could do joy bigger and put is a net by which yeah, all around it. That's fun. But I am going to try my, another big letter for us before we move on. So, I'm going to come back to my o I'm going to pull around a little thicker, I did pencil and then I did the oh five just so I could see it better. Once you've got the O oh five, there's not a lot of room for change, but there's some room because this is so much thicker. So now on this one, I think that I'm going to take my oh one and I am going to go ahead and I'm going to come right in here and I'm going to just put lines up there. Okay, then here I'm going to go like this.

It's randomly, okay, then right here I'm going to do just a small, just five. I like to do things in odds. And then I'm just going to, I think leave that for a moment and see what I want to do. But I like the bottom of the Oh, that, I like that. So let me get my pen just where I can show you what this is going to look like. Going to go right here, look at the watch. Oh yeah, we have few more minutes. You know and going back to that original concept of doing accordion books it is so fun for me to have them actually become so like special sayings or, or letters to folks. And I'm going to go with my oh three and this one, I am going to go this way just to give it a little personality. And on this one I am going to go like this three times this, three times this, three times this one, three times. Yep. I might put a dot; I might put a triangle dots. And then in this one, I am going to, hmm, you, I'm doing this one. Let's go with, ooh, please. It's a small book, but down here I could do curly cues in this big one too. So just to kind of have a light border, dark border, light border, dark border, little bit of color, not necessarily a color block. When I finish this, you know, in solid black, like I can show you guys’ next month and if you'll show us years next month.

Melani Dizon (Director of Education, Davis Phinney Foundation):

Thank you so much, Lorraine. It was wonderful. Thanks, everybody for showing up and sharing your work and we will see you in a month's time.

Show notes

We had a great time at this month's Joy Break with doodling quotes with fancy letters. Here are some takeaways:

  • When you have an art project, try to fill up the entire page. Whether it be Zentangles, watercolors, or just borders, your mind and your body want to fill the page, so do it!
  • Lorraine reminded us of her Joy Break Jar at this month's session. To create your own, get a jar or something with a lid you can put pieces of paper in. Write down some ideas of joyful actions you can do throughout the day (or use the suggestions we found here) on strips of paper. Fold up those paper strips and put them in your jar or container. Lorraine sets a daily alarm to remind her to take out one of her joy break ideas and do it then. If you like your break, put it back in the bin to do it again! If you don't, throw it out and make a new one. You can always add to your own joy break jars!
  • One suggestion Lorraine gave for working with art supplies is creating color swatches. The reason she suggests this is that many times, the supplies themselves don't look like the color they'll create. Lorraine created swatches for her watercolors by painting little squares of each color on a piece of paper the size of her watercolor box, labeling them with the color's name, and then putting the swatch in the lid of her box. Now, whenever she looks at the watercolors, she knows what colors to use.
  • Lorraine said, "one thing that's great about art is that we get to choose." If you ever come to a Joy Break and don't like the activity we're up to, make your own art at the same time and share it with us anyways! If you have a suggestion for something you'd like to bring to Joy Breaks, email blog@dpf.org and we'll try to incorporate them. Art gives all of us a voice and we'd love you to use yours.
  • Practice first. We use pencils in art because we can practice what we're going to do without being stuck in our choices. That doesn't mean we won't make mistakes when it comes time for final drafts, but that pencil practicing ensures that you have the best outcome possible.

mentioned materials

Joy Breaks Supply List

Zentangle

Lindsay Ostrom's Letters

Joanne Sharpe's Website

Micron Pens

related resources

How to make envelope books

[Webinar Recording] Envelope Book with Tags: A Joy Break with Lorraine

[Webinar Recording] Lettering and Doodling: A Joy Break with Lorraine

Choosing Joy and Living Well with Parkinson's

Sketching for Joy with Lorraine Wilson

about Lorraine

Lorraine WilsonLorraine Wilson, a Davis Phinney Foundation Ambassador, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in early 2017. Just a few months later, she assembled a multi-disciplinary team of colleagues at the university where she was teaching, and her personal and professional journeys joined forces. They began an exercise study with a fresh look at resistance training with instability and cadence walking. That was followed by a study of blood flow restriction used during resistance training. Lorraine helps facilitate the local support group. She knows that the support from family, friends, and others with Parkinson’s is critical to living well each day. Maintaining a positive outlook may not be easy, but it is a worthwhile effort that lends support to others, making life that much better. One of her favorite quotations is from Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Scatter joy!" She strives to do this in as many ways as possible every day. You can find some of Lorraine's other work here.

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