PROGRESSION OF A MANDALA

Some days, you get outta bed and you know you just have to draw.  Or at least that is true for me.  I'd been putting it off for days, but I wanted to work on a mandala today, and told myself this morning that I wasn't going anywhere until I had it done.  After dragging my feet a bit, I pulled out the initial string (draft format) I had created at Ann Grasso's workshop in CT last month (blogged about that here) and began to plan what I would do with it.  Here's the start:

Doesn't look like much.  "Fengle" is the name of that center tangle.  Then a bit of free-form tangling around it.  I looked at it for awhile and then added this:

"Shattuck" is the name of that tangle.  Love that one; it's a go-to for me.

More looking and thinking...After some hand-wringing and trepidation, i added Citrus and a variation of Mooka, and some more free-form tangling, and ended up with this as the basic form of the mandala prior to shading:

I thought I might just stop there for the day.  But I couldn't leave it alone and just had to add some shading. 

Before shading, I made 3 copies of the basic form--one to shade, one to color later, and a spare.  Here is the shaded version below.

Quite a difference, huh?  I'll try coloring it next, but not today.  I used a 30% cool gray Prismacolor pencil, Periwinkle Prismacolor pencil, and a Uniball Signo White pen for the shading and highlights.  Plus the tile itself is tan and I did the tangling with a Brown Micron 01 pen.  I really enjoyed the heck out of doing this.

I continue to be amazed at how frightened I am before I begin all of these projects, what fun they are when I am working on them, and how much I enjoy the results.  I can only get better, so what have I got to lose by trying? 

I swear, it's an adventure and a lesson every time I sit down to work on any piece of art, even if I tell myself "It's only practice."  It's all only practice, no matter what!  It's similar to meditation in that way.  Here's a wonderful short blog piece reinforcing that idea.