Recently mandalas have been my favourite thing to draw.
So far I have been experimenting with pencil, paint, pens, inks, collage and threads.
Sometimes they take a few minutes and sometimes they take days. Sometimes I lose track of time and am so in the moment it is hard to come out of the moment. Sometimes it is hard to focus for more than a few moments. The important thing is that it forces me to notice these moments and work through them. Or take a break.
Using Indian ink and water is my favourite.
I am making it part of my mindful practice to draw one a day in my sketchbook.
I have one big canvas on the go which is getting layered up with (unintentionally my different levels of focus and unfocused) mandalas !!! It is not finished. It will be finished when I can maintain a state of awareness long enough that all the elements become one and the layers underneath become part of the whole picture. There was a point when it was looking pretty good but I went past that point and messed it up. It doesn't matter though. There are some parts on it I like.
Sometimes they take a few minutes and sometimes they take days. Sometimes I lose track of time and am so in the moment it is hard to come out of the moment. Sometimes it is hard to focus for more than a few moments. The important thing is that it forces me to notice these moments and work through them. Or take a break.
I am making it part of my mindful practice to draw one a day in my sketchbook.
I have one big canvas on the go which is getting layered up with (unintentionally my different levels of focus and unfocused) mandalas !!! It is not finished. It will be finished when I can maintain a state of awareness long enough that all the elements become one and the layers underneath become part of the whole picture. There was a point when it was looking pretty good but I went past that point and messed it up. It doesn't matter though. There are some parts on it I like.
Drawing a mandala feels different to the meditative feel of when I am drawing an object and really looking at it. That feels like an awareness of the world around me, looking at things as if they are new. Mandala drawing is meditative in a different way, like an inner focus that feels really comforting and makes the world around seem distant. It feels like I am drawing outside myself.
It feels calm and brings me peace.
