Mandalas New and Old

I mentioned last month that I’d come across Zentangle and its concepts while I was looking for inspiration to redo an old mandala-ish piece. I thought I’d go into some detail into this mandala.

A long time ago (I promise this is not a fairy tale 😉 ), before I’d even heard of drawing as a meditative process, I made some art using freehand concentric circles on an A3 sized paper.

I didn’t really use tools to make sure the circles are circular enough, and just winged the whole thing. I used student sketch pens for the drawing–those were the only drawing supplies I had back then. When I was done drawing this circle art, I dropped some thinned acrylic paint from a height for some ‘splashes’. I really liked how this piece turned out.

I have more art supplies now, and last year, I thought it’d be nice to ‘reboot’ this piece, while retaining the original theme of depicting three similar items on a single piece of paper (A3-sized again.)

I used gel pens this time, and took more care to create better symmetry. I employed the mandala-drawing process of making reference circles and spokes / sectors for more uniformity–not that I had much practice with mandalas then, I just went big on my first attempt! 🙂 I really like this piece too.

Now that I’ve put up both of them on my wall and see them almost every day, I realize that thin-tipped gel pens are not very suited to large pieces of art, since a lot of details are lost when seen from afar. I’m definitely making a third version of this concept sometime in the not-so-near future, and I’ll use a thicker drawing implement to create larger positive and negative spaces.

Meanwhile, I’m happy doodling and making mandalas on smaller-sized paper! 🙂

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