Mandala

A mandala is a type of circle that is often used in churches and is helpful in focus and meditation. I was really restless when I started this project, and was instructed to draw a circle and then fill in the rest of it. I was pretty uncertain about how to go about putting design in the inside; but when I finally focused and tried to clear my head, I found that the method of making a mandala was very relaxing. I started by drawing a smaller circle in the middle of the original circle; and with a pencil tried to draw a clock that seemed to be moving. At the time of making this, I was stressing a lot about growing up and what I wanted to do with my life. It seemed like time had flown by and I hadn't had enough time as a kid. I really wanted to depict the time flying aspect of the work, so I made sure to include things that portrayed movement such as the curved arrow, and dashed marks by the numbers. After I got the movement going I started to draw random designs that I liked, such as stars and a sailboat. I finally had all of the designs I could think of, but unfortunately I still had a good portion of the interior that wasn't covered. My original solution was to just color it black as to represent the 'unknown' future that we all have; while this was a great concept, leaving a portion of my picture black wasn't going to accomplish the dynamic that I was hoping to create. I talked to my teacher about the problem and she suggested writing something in the space that would represent moving toward the future. I chose to use 'Room to Grow' so that it would show progression in the future. After I got all of the pencil drawing in, I had to decide how I wanted to add color to this picture. My teacher wanted me to use watercolor, but I had a deep hatred of that medium. Instead, I used a black Sharpie pen and outlined all of the pencil marks, and used other colored Sharpies to color the rest of the mandala. It was a challenge to try to keep the colors flowing, I wanted the color to be organized so that it didn't look like the colors were just flung on there in an attempt to finish the project. I was and still am very proud of this project. I think it shows my style and is a very good representation of what the inside of my brain is like when I'm stressed.