Fairly frequently, I am fortunate to have the opportunity to tag along with my partner when he travels out of town to a conference. I have started packing some art supplies for these trips, and take the time to work on a project or do an on-line class while he's tied up with meetings.
This trip I did a free mandala class called The Seed of Life, by Guadalupe Brizuela Caba
I quite enjoyed the process of creating the mandala with a compass and ruler. I found myself becoming absorbed in the repetitiveness of making the patterns. I tried several different designs on some scrap paper before I settled on one that I liked for the next step.
We 'painted' with water-colour pencil, which I am just beginning to experiment with. It was a good exercise in learning to use the medium, but in all honesty, I didn't really like how it turned out.
The last stage was to add 'doodles' (her word-not mine). I have a set of coloured Staedtler Fineliner pens, and I used them to add z e n t a n g l e ® patterns.
For the most part, I did tone-on-tone, rather than using black or
contrasting coloured pens. The result was more subtle, and now I'm
happy with it.
