THE FOURTH STRING MANDALA

This piece is gilded, and thus so much trickier to photograph.  It's much nicer in person.

This is the fourth and final string I drew with Ann Grasso's 4n1 stencil at the fabulous class I attended with her in Cromwell, CT last month.  I posted about the class previously here.  Ann is just a great teacher, very organized and supportive, and while I produced four formats (aka "strings") there, it has taken me all this time to create a completed mandala in each format.

After today I'm done with the class-created formats.  Now I have the stencil plus other mandala-making tools, and I am curious to see what I can come up with on my own.  I Of course, each of us who attended that workshop will come up with totally different and original drawings in the end.  That's the fun of working this way; we all hear the same instructions, and yet it's impossible to believe that when viewing final outcomes.  To see what I mean, go to photo stream on Ann's Facebook page, Ideas in Progress.  Prepare to drool when you click on that link.

Here are the stages this one went through.  (And then of course, I have to post the "mirrored" version at the end because I just cannot resist.)

Just getting started

The intermediate stage

Finished

And now..the mirrored version below.  You know I just had to try this out, using the mirror app on my phone.

To cap off this series--and I hope it's the first of many, as I am obsessed with mandalas--here is a quote from Jung himself: 

"The 'squaring of the circle' is one of the many archetypal motifs which form the basic patterns of our dreams and fantasies. But it is distinguished by the fact that it is one of the most important of them from the functional point of view. Indeed, it could even be called the archetype of wholeness.”

And a lovely blog with a great quote from Pema Chodron on this topic, and many additional thoughts and drawings, is here.  Have fun, and thank you for reading this far.