Well hello again! I know I have been absent for a while! ...Life gets crazy and things don't get done unless we make them a priority!
INSPIRATION
Needless to say things have been busy around here, but what I'm most excited for currently is this series of Mandalas that I have been working on for about a year now. I kept seeing these beautiful zentangle and mandala designs on artists' pages and Pinterest around this time last year. One of my favorite BuJu inspirations, Kara from BohoBerry, was at the time doing a Mood Mandala in her bullet journal and that just blew me away. So I took a try at it for myself.
I created my first mandala as a mood tracker in my bujo as inspired by BohoBerry, and I quickly became addicted. I created a few more designs in my sketchbook, but I wanted to figure out a way to incorporate color because...well I live for color.
PROCESS
I attempted to color in one of my sketchbook mandalas...but that pretty much ruined my aesthetic. So I tried a different approach, instead of adding color on top of the design, I decided to try to add color behind the design.
So I grabbed my bin full of acrylic paint and chose a few colors to slop on the canvas. I wanted a gradient but hadn't yet settled on a style. My first few from this series have a very blended gradient background. I painted a few canvases like this, then started sketching out a mandala on them. I made 3-4 like this, then got distracted with life and moving and had to set aside the series for a while.
I picked it back up a few months later when I was getting ready to visit family in California for my Abuela's 80th birthday celebration. I wanted to make her something special but I was running out of time before we set out on our cross-country road trip. I took one of my large canvases and a few colors and just started painting. My painting approach was a little more rushed and less blended because I could feel pressure from the crunch time. It was less blended and more textured, you could really see where the colors met, where some blended and some remained a little more streaky. I kinda fell in love with the visual texture and decided this was going to be my process for the rest of the series, how every many that series would end up including.
MATERIALS
At first I was using my favorite Sharpie pens to draw my mandalas on my canvases, but I noticed that the tip of the pens were wearing down significantly because of the texture on the canvas. I loved the precision of my design details with the sharpie pens, but the rate at which they were wearing away was not sustainable, they're not bank-breaking expensive but they're not cheap either. I made a few using a white gel pen to see how changing up the color would effect the aesthetic of my mandalas, and I liked the visual, but they were even more stubborn on the canvas. The tip wasn't wearing down because it's metal, but the pen mark was very inconsistent and was super frustrating to work with on the canvas.
I knew I needed to find a better medium to create my designs, but I didn't know what, so I shelved the series until something came to me.
I mentioned earlier about moving, well it was while I was unpacking my art supplies and reorganizing my new art set up that I found a jar of india ink I had bought back in community college for an art class. I opened it up to check the consistency and it was still smooth and jet black, so I tested it on a canvas with a tiny detail brush and my mandala inspiration was reignited!
A SERIES COMES TOGETHER
Since summertime I've been making mandalas in batches. I'll take a few canvases of the same size, lay out some newspaper to protect my countertops, and 4-7 acrylic paints. Then I just paint. And paint and paint and paint. Sometimes I've sketched out designs in my sketchbook beforehand, but even when I copy one from the book onto a canvas, it's always different. That's something I've enjoyed about this series. The process has been so organic. I could impose my ego-centric need to control by measuring and multiplying and scaling it precisely, but why?
In the most simplistic description, mandalas are circular designs with repeated patterns. They are seen throughout many religions, usually in some kind of representation of the universe or the cosmos, metaphysically or symbolically. I am way over simplifying this element and if it's something that speaks to you, please by all means, explore, learn, share! I have personally become inspired by them simply for their aesthetic. I love the simplicity that is endlessly versatile. I love the separation between layers juxtaposed by the connection and co-dependence between layers. I love experimenting with line patterns and embellishments.
Maybe some of these fascinations can also be reflected on in a metaphysical discussion as well, but not today. Today we're celebrating this series of mandalas that I have poured my love into with every brush, sketch, and keystroke. I hope you enjoy them as well.
