Weekend Art and Mandala Monday

Happy Monday! I hope you had a wonderful weekend. Mine was a busy one trying to get ready for Chanukah and starting my job search. Yes, after many years of being a stay-at-home mom, I'm going to try to join the work force again. Wish me luck!

Speaking of Chanukah...

This is my youngest's menorah. Each night, we light a different menorah starting with the kids'. I'm going to be drawing another one later today.

Here she is lighting the candle. And it wouldn't be Chanukah without latkes!

And since it's Monday, it must be time for some mandalas. The first one was inspired by the pattern on a fleece I used to make my daughter's blanket (which was one of the Chanukah gifts).

And here is the template.

This one was fairly simple to create once I realized the octagonal structure. And using only a compass and a ruler, you can create the octagonal base. Remember geometry? 

And speaking of geometry, I worked on another Islamic geometric art watching this YouTube tutorial. 

It's not complicated but very easy for things to go wrong. The backbone of this looked like this.

It's a series of squares and one hexagon. The ending pattern looks like this.

I apologize for the wobbly lines. You can either color this or add more details inside. I chose to add more details following some of Lex' designs.

Not quite happy with my work, so I know I will be working on this again. But I love how you can create different designs from one "backbone"! I hope you will give this a try!! 

Mandala Monday - Semicolon

Last Monday, I posted three free mandala patterns. I hope you had a chance to download and color them. If you missed it, here's the post. And here is one of mine I colored.

I used Inktense blocks to color. I used minimal water because this was just a copy paper and it can't hold up to much water. I love this pattern because there are so many ways to create different designs by manipulating the shapes within the mandala.

I really enjoyed creating and coloring mandalas so I decided to make this a regular feature on my blog. This week, I used the semicolon as my inspiration. Do you know about Project Semicolon? It is an organization created to support people struggling with depression, substance abuse, and self-harm. It has been featured in many publications like the Huffington Post.

I have family members who struggle with depression and self-harm, so I decided to offer my support for this organization by creating art using the semicolon. What you see above is a mandala done with only semicolon and colored with colored pencils.

I also created a semicolon Ensō (for an explanation of Ensō, here's my post about it.)

I used Copic markers to color it. I love how the colors blend. To me, the circle is eternal, a continuous process. And this particular Ensō suggests Pause-Continue and repeat. Life is full of obstacles and you do need to pause and process the negatives yet focus on the positives. I've had to do that a lot this year. 

And if you would like to try coloring these here are the blank files. Please email me your finished page or tag me on social media. 

Happy coloring!!

Coloring Fun

I haven't used my colored pencils in awhile. And today, I felt like coloring, just for fun. I do have a few coloring books for grown ups but I decided to create my own. So I got out my compass and got to work.

I drew these on heavy copy paper so using any type of water-based media was out. So I got my Prismacolors out. I love my Prismas... they are very creamy and so blendable. And because they are so soft, the lead breaks easily when you sharpen them. So you can sharpen them with a craft knife or try this.

I had just toasted a couple of pieces of Exekiel bread so my toaster oven was warm. I lined my pan with waxed paper and placed all my prismacolors on the tray. I left them in the toaster oven for about 10 minutes while I ate my breakfast. Since the pencils have lots of wax in them, the lead softens and fuzes any breakage. When I sharpened the pencils, I only had two that broke during sharpening an the second time sharpening did not break them. So I think those two pencils had a break in them already that might have been too far apart to fuse. I will let you know if I have any more breaks..

Back to coloring..

The right "petal" has a bit of shading. I used ultramarine to shade the purple, the blue, and the green sections and even a bit on the yellow. On the red, I used Tuscan Red and Dark Umber to add depth. I also used the same two colors for the gold part. I'm not done with them but at least I write down the colors I used so I can go back.

You also don't need the expensive Prismacolors. I like Crayolas almost as much. Are you ready to color?

Here is the blank copy!

Here are two more.. The last one has lots of possible ways to combine and rearrange so make sure to print a few copies!

Please let me know if there are any issues copying these blank copies onto your computer or on your phone. And if you do color them, please send me a copy of the finished pieces! I would love to share them on a future post! 

Happy coloring!!