This post is going to have lots of photos, walking you through how I made the above mandala.
I am taking an online class with Marie Browning and one of this past week's assignments was to make a mandala and color it with Irojiten pencils. I was in Maryland, 800 miles away from home, and didn't have my normal supplies with me. As I was walking around a fabric store, I came across these quilting templates hanging on a rack.
It dawned on me that these templates would make pretty good mandala templates. I started pulling them off the rack and layering them on top of each other, trying to see what would match up together and look like a mandala. I ended up buying four templates and used these two for this project.
I placed one quilt template onto my paper and used a micron 01 to trace within the lines. Then I played with the second template, moving it around until it lined up in a pleasing format. Then I traced those lines. I didn't use all the lines, on both templates, just the ones that looked like they went together.
Next I started filling in lines, connecting paths that seemed to go together. A flower started appearing, so I added some small leaves and started outlining some larger ones.
A few more lines made those larger leaves start standing out more dramatically.
I filled in some seed pods with some purk, finished the larger leaves, then used the tangle phicops to start turning the rest of the design into flower petals. A little fescu soon became stamen.
Once I got my flower mandala looking the way I wanted it to, I used my Japanese irojiten coloring pencils from Tombow to start laying in some color.
These are some pretty incredible pencils. Not watercolor pencils, just coloring pencils. The shading and color variation comes from dropping in layer after layer of color.
I think this was the second time I used these pencils, so I still have a way to go with them before I feel competent.
I used five different colors to lay down a technique called scrumbling around the outside. The scrumbling gives an almost drop-shadow kind of cast to the mandala.
All in all, I think I used 15 different pencils. Here is the finished product and I love the way it turned out! If I can do it - anyone can do it!
We like cats at our house. We like cats a lot. Right now we have three cats that live indoors, and about fifteen cats that live outdoors. Five of those are babies. So cute! I drew this ATC while I was in Maryland with my daughter. To give you some perspective, this is on a piece of 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" watercolor paper.
Then I used my Japanese irojiten coloring pencils to add some color. Layer upon layer of colors gave me these rich hues. The design looks oriental to me. Could be those asian fans on the chest. Earlier I showed you the dragon ATC I gave to my nephew (grandnephew? my nephew's son would be what to me?) I sent this oriental cat ATC to my niece, sister of said grandnephew, would it be great-nephew? I have no idea, I just hope my niece liked her cat.
The next night I drew this ATC that I sent to my nephew. I figured my dragon was missing horns, so I gave some to this little dragon. Do you think I should start naming my little guys?
I am taking an online class and one of the tools we are using is the Japanese Irojiten Coloring Pencils. I hadn't done any work with straight-to-paper colored pencils before, just watercolor pencils, so this is a totally new venture for me. That's what I used to give this ATC some color. For those of you who don't know what an ATC is, it's short for Artist Trading Card. They are 2 1/2" x 3 1/2", the same size as a baseball card. It's amazing how much detail you can fit on one of those little cards! I am hoping that my nephew enjoys his dragon.
I wasn't super pleased with my first efforts with these Irojiten pencils, so I started over. I moved away from the tangles Marie had offered us this week, (I think that was part of my problem - making myself stick with those.) I used some tangles that I enjoy playing with and drew my tile first. I had already started laying down color before I thought to take the above photo.
This is what I ended up with. I like the results a whole lot better than the previous tile in the last post. I used a different paper and didn't concern myself so much with the color wheel. I think I have a decent head for color, so I just went with the flow. I layed in more pencil layers and I really like the results this time. Now, on to the Tombow dual-brush marker part of the class. This should be fun!
