DOMESTIKA COURSE – THE ART OF MANDALA DRAWING – FINDING MANDALAS EVERYWHERE!
Our next exercise at the beginning of this new course was to find mandalas in nature and in everyday life.
Mandalas from things found in nature
Veg prep
One of the early exercises in this course is to look for mandalas (the word literally means “circle”) everywhere, in nature and daily life. I’ve been a pattern and texture junkie for years and am always spotting these wherever I go, but spotting mandalas is something new, and I am sure I shall be noticing these everywhere from now on, as well!
The nature mandalas are all my own photos. I often photograph cut vegetables in the kitchen when I am preparing food, as they make interesting patterns and shapes.
The next montage features more veg prep as well as a beautiful dandelion clock I found in the garden a couple of days ago. The original photos are on the left, and the digitally manipulated images are on the right.
Seeds inside vegetables often make interesting patterns, and red onions usually yield dramatic patterns when cut. That paw-print-like cut red onion amused both my hubby and me!
Mandalas discovered in everyday objects
Moving on to mandalas in daily life, I decided to take the digital route, stacking layers of circular objects to form mandalas. Some of the images of these objects have been digitally edited, e.g. with drop shadows to create dimension etc.
The following two mandalas were created with layered images of gearwheels. Unfortunately some of the images were rather small to start with, so at higher magnification, the resolution isn’t great. I added further digital editing with various filter effects, drop shadows, dodge and burn, etc. to create more dimension and contrast.
The final mandala is a stack of china plates topped off with a red rose. As with the gearwheels, transparent background png’s, resized and stacked, with added drop shadows for dimension, and some manipulation of brightness, contrast and saturation to create more distinct separation between the layers.
This has been such a fun exercise! I love messing about with this stuff!
The next exercise in the course is to find examples of mandalas in different cultures around the world. This is all proving highly educational!!
