I personally love mandalas!
They have this zen-ish feeling to them and it calms me down to color them and even look at them when I see one that grabs my attention. For some reason, the technique didn't click when I tried making one myself. I decided it was about time to watch a few tutorials on how you start drawing a mandala, and not give ut that easily to eventually create one myself. Today I will share with you how I tried to draw a mandala myself which turned into an accidental art class as my daughter decided the mandala wasn't ruined at all! On top of that, she also created her own without any tools which I think is well-worth sharing!
I was feeling blocked yesterday
And the things I wanted to do, didn't work, so I looked for something to do that would make me feel zen again. Maybe trying to create a Mandala was the answer. At first, I was drawing by myself, as my daughter was outside playing with sand. I could sit and focus which I sometimes need so much, rather than having her support and chatter in my ear, lol.
When she noticed I was drawing, she had to come and have a look and decided the sand playing was over and it was time for some creativity instead. Nothing wrong with that, but at that moment, my personal moment of zen turned into an art class. Which ended up being good for my mind as well, so a win-win for the both of us.
The beginning of the Mandala
As per instructions in online videos, I started creating circles:
And drew some lines:
I have to admit, that I'm barely handy using this tool to draw circles and quite clumsy when I'm trying to draw the lines in the exact middle. Technical drawing isn't really my thing so it seems, that's probably why I kept postponing to give this another attempt.
While I was struggling, my daughter was watching closely how a drawing slowly appeared and she was already in awe at that moment. To me, this is where the frustration really started because what's next? I look at these examples online and think that can't be that hard, can it? And instantly forget what I just saw the moment I get my pencil, haha.
I just started drawing
Without a real plan, I just held my pencil and tried some intuitive drawing to find a piece of zen in my mind. I told my daughter that this should be relaxing and that I don't know what I'm going to create exactly, we'll see how it turns out.
Above you see the beginning, I made the error to start coloring the part I drew right away, which was an epic fail because I used markers that I hadn't tried on this thick paper yet. That didn't work out well and it annoyed me to bits that the lines weren't sharp.
At this point, I decide this mandala will be too much work and I won't be happy in the end anyway, so I asked my daughter if she wanted to finish it for me. I agreed immediately, as now I could see how she would finish this artwork as sometimes she ends up showing me the most creative drawings.
Kiddo happy, and happy mom, let's see how she finished it:
And the final result, including a mermaid sticker :)
What do you think?
That wasn't all though
Before she took over my mandala, she was creating her own mandala without using any tools, this was made without any tools or help from me. I didn't take process pictures of that, because I was trying to focus on my own mandala at that time, but I really want to share this one with the readers as I think it's super creative and I love it!
I see different things in this mandala, but I'm curious to find out what you see in it? I would love to read your comments below!
Thanks for reading!