1.      At the end of 3 months, write an essay describing your experience of the practice.  (500-100 words)

I began maintaining a devotional artistic practice at the beginning of July 2018.  As someone who has never been extremely confident in my artistic skills, I was skeptical and had very few expectations on my own ability to follow through and be successful with this, but I knew I wanted to try.  I came to the decision that I wanted to work with Athena as my muse, and signed up for a drawing course called “The Ultimate Drawing Course – Beginner to Advanced” through a website called Udemy.  This course contained 65 lessons that started with the fundaments of lines, values, contrast, and perspective and moved forward into still life, drawing humans, and character design.  Each time that I sat down to do one of these lessons, I would make an offering, either of olive oil or tea and I would say a quick prayer like the one below:

Athena, wise one, goddess of many gifts,

I ask you to be with me in this work.

Guide my hands with your skills.

Grant me the wisdom to see clearly.

Share your gifts of craft with me.

I know I am blessed to have had a deep relationship with Athena prior to this work as I feel that it made my work here so much easier.  Each time I called to Athena, I felt her warmth surround me.  In one specific working, it almost felt like a large pair of wings wrapped around me and keeping me safe, while also guiding my hands in the work I was doing. Giving the offerings and prayers to Athena, I definitely felt her gifts given back to me time and time again.  While I am still not confident in my drawing skills, I definitely felt my artistic abilities grow in other forms, such as my sculpting and weaving.  When I call upon Athena, I can feel my tension ease and I feel more patient than I am by nature. I’ve felt closer to her as well, which is something I am always happy to experience.

During the last few months, I’ve explored quite a few mediums including drawing, sculpey clay, leatherworking, and weaving.  At one point during my studies, my drawing course began to explore two-point perspective in drawings.  After I called to Athena, I had visions of the Parthenon flood my mind, and ultimately that inspired my perspective drawing for my 3 drawings course submission. During another point, I felt drawn to weaving and have been so pleased with that experience.  It gives me such a deep connection to Athena, and is a medium that I really enjoy doing.  It’s meditative and trance inducing, while also so fulfilling. 

I also had the opportunity to visit the Tucson Art museum during this devotional period.  Prior to entering the museum. I made an offering to Athena and asked her to join me during my tour.  I took in all the beauty and then found a bench corner next to a wall filled with masks.  I sat there doodling, trying to mimic the different shapes and patterns of each of them.  It was a great experience, even if the drawings themselves didn’t turn out phenomenal.  I think taking the time to learn and explore has been a perfect way to honor Athena, both as the goddess of wisdom and the patron of art.  I feel like I’ve grown immensely, both in my skill level and in my confidence.  While I don’t know that I’ll ever be an illustrator, I’ve found two separate artistic skills that I feel comfortable working in, and that alone is quite a blessing. 

1.      Choose one of the arts/crafts you already work with and create a new piece which you can use in ADF ritual, and which requires you to learn or improve a specific skill or technique.  Throughout this process, record your experience after each time you work on the piece, reflecting on what comes readily, where your challenges occur both in handling the material and your own perceptions/attitude/resistance and how you overcame any difficulties.  Submit your notes documenting the process with photos of the work. 

After doing so much work with Athena through the past few months, I decided I wanted to dive into weaving as a way to work with her.  I started practicing by doing a few basic square pieces and then selected this project as my single ritual piece.  Athena has found her way into every piece that I have done, so this time I selected an Owl intentionally to act as a symbol of her during my next Panathenia celebration.

I was fortunate to find a very basic pattern to base my weaving off of, and I began by placing my pegs in the appropriate shape.  I was a bit skeptical at my ability to do this because I haven’t done any weaving that wasn’t just square, but I knew I wanted to try.  The shape itself looks very owl-like, and when my son was able to identify what it was I felt a lot more confident.

I then used a thick, grey yarn to warp my loom. This process took a couple of tries to get the shape the way I felt it should look.  I first tried setting it up as one solid piece, but ultimately settled on making the wings separate from the body of the shape.  When I started to get frustrated, I took a minute to talk with Athena and settle myself down before continuing.  Ultimately, I’m pleased with how it turned out.

After the warp was set up the way I wanted it to be, I began the weaving itself by using a dark teal wool to weft the shape of the first wing.  I had a general idea of how I wanted the wings to be shaped, so I tried to keep that in mind each row to identify which strings from the warp should be included, and which ones shouldn’t.  There were a couple of instances where the shape wasn’t quite right, so I removed some of the weaving and tried again.  I am quite pleased with the final result though.  I like the color combination quite a lot, and think that the shape definitely looks like a wing.  Also, I feel that I did a good job in keeping the weaving straight and consistent.  I was incredibly nervous about this project because it’s unlike anything else I have done, but so far I’m pleased with the results.

           

The second wing was much easier to do since I had the reference from the first wing.  I essentially reversed the process and created the second wing.  I can definitely see the owl shape taking form.  I was a bit concerned about the way the wings were pulling away from the body, so I knew that would have to be addressed when I started weaving that piece, even though I wasn’t entirely sure how to do it. 

The next time I picked up this piece to work with it, I knew I had to bind the wings to the body.   I didn’t even know how to begin, so I took several deep breaths and made offerings to Athena, asking her to guide my hands and help me plan as I worked on this next piece.  Then it was time for me to weft the body of the owl.  I started at the top and began weaving the body, looping through the wings to pull it all together.  As I worked with the yarn, I felt Athena’s guidance helping me to know where to move next.  At the end, I feel that the piece looks cohesive and well pulled together.  I do like the contrast between the wings and the body, and it definitely feels much more solid after I connected everything together.

            The next step in this process was the weave the head of the owl.  In the middle of this, I knew I would need to use two different colored yarns in order to create the eyes as well.  I once again called to Athena and made offerings to her before my work.  I feel peace wash over me and know that I will have her guidance in this work. I weave the teal color of the face, starting at the bottom and moving up.  As I got to the space that I wanted the eyes to be, and wasn’t sure how to proceed.  I took the time to look at the work and decided that I would weave the teal yarn under the space that the eyes would go, leaving the weft unused for the eyes.  After I finished weaving the head, I went back in with the yellow thread and added it to those blank spaces.  I definitely feel like it’s starting to take shape!

            Next, it was time for details to get put in.  I used black yarn to create pupils in the owl’s eyes.  It made a huge difference in the appearance. I then went back in with the yellow yarn and created a beak and feet for the owl.  I wanted the beak and feet to stand out so instead of weaving those pieces into the work, I more embroidered them on top of the weaving.  I like the way they look and the details helped finish the look of this working. 

The final step for any weaving project is to remove your creation from the loom and weave in your ends.  I carefully removed the owl from the loom and did just that, carefully weaving each yarn end into the back of the piece while making sure that they didn’t show through on the front. 

And here it is, my finished product.  Ultimately, it didn’t turn out perfectly, and there are some flaws that I would fix in the future if I were to do this again.  However, I am quite happy with how it turned out, especially as my first real effort with this type of weaving.  I know this piece will be an important part of my next Panathenia ritual, and I’m excited to use it. 

1.     Exit Standard: Submit required drawings with brief paragraph descriptions of each.

            Drawing 1:  Still Life – Owl Figure

           

                      

            For my first drawing, I found myself drawn to the small altar I keep on my desk at work.  On this altar is a small purple owl that represents the nature spirits and also makes me think of Athena.  I drew this little owl several times and overall, I’ve learned that Still Life is not my strong point.  My artistic style tends to be a lot more cartoony than based in realism, so my still life drawing looks like a cartoon version of my owl figure.  The different values help show dimension and give weight and depth to certain items.  It also shows you where your light source comes from and helps it seem more realistic, even in my cartoon-y style.

           

Drawing 2:  Landscape – Sacred Grove

This is a landscape drawing of my vision of the sacred center.  Standing firm in the background is Olympus, the tie to our Omphalos.  In the foreground is the sacred tree, firmly rooted in the ground.  Above and below drawing, you can see two of the symbols from the Cosmos sigil represented as well.  I used a lot of value in this drawing, especially in the tree, to give it dimension.  You can see the shadows in the tree and the values help give additional dimension.  I am very pleased with how the tree turned out in this drawing. The mountain probably could use some additional work, but I like the bright highlight matching the lighted edge of the tree.   This drawing shows a fairly symmetrical and centered composition, helping it feel balanced overall.

Drawing 3:  Greek Temple

 

When I began exploring perspective in my art class, I immediately began to think of the marble-pillared temples found in Greece, like the Parthenon. I decided to create my perspective drawing to reflect that style of building using two-point perspective.   While this drawing isn’t showing any specific temple, I think the effect is decent.  If I were to add additional values to this drawing I think it would make it seem more three-dimensional, giving shape to the pillars, etc. As it is, the drawing does look fairly flat, but I think that the perspective itself is appropriate.  

Drawing 4: Portrait – Athena

As I approached this final submission, I realized that all of them had been tied to Athena in some way, so I decided that I would try to draw her as my portrait submission.  I didn’t want to get too tied up in details, or I knew I would beat myself up, so instead I focused on a line drawing.  There are different thickness and valued lines to show detail or shadow, but in general I tried to keep it quite simple.  I am pretty proud of the helmet although I do wish I had drawn it in a different place so that I would have had room for the entire helmet to fit.  Overall though, I’m quite proud of this submission.