Mandala Monday - Flower of Life

Do you remember your high school geometry class? For the most part, geometry was not my thing trying to memorize all the theorems for proofs. But I did love the construction unit in which you learned to draw various polyhedrons with a compass and a straight edge. Another unit on tesselation (tiling a pattern), golden ratio and Fibonacci sequence (think nautilus she'll) was among my favorites too. I just think it's super cool that mathematics can be used to explain so many beautiful things nature provides for us. I think it's even more super cool that in nature, so many seemingly different things are connected to each other.

So for today's mandala, I created the "flower of life" pattern. The term, "flower of life", is a recent one though the pattern is ancient. I won't bore you with the details, but if you are interested, start reading this.

I love this pattern so much that I created a couple of stencils with this pattern. I drew the patterns on cardstock, laminated them and cut out certain parts using an X-acto knife. I used the stencils to create my piece for today. I colored using Inktense blocks with a baby wipe. 

And here's the pattern if you want to color it. My daughter was surprised that I created this using only a compass and used the same compass angle until the very end when I drew the outer circle. 

Can you see the different patterns you can create by coloring the petals in different colors? I see a Jewish star, a hexagon, a pentagon, a square, and a triangle.. And if you draw more circles, you can see a cube.. I hope you give this a try.. 

Mandala Monday and the Week From Hell

Happy Monday! I know it's been over a week since I've blogged. And if you follow this blog regularly, you know it's happened before. But it was never because I wasn't creating daily, except this time. I went four days without creating a single drawing and on the fourth day, I drew something and immediately had to discard it. I could not get into a good mindset to draw.

Last Saturday, I drew this.

I had convinced myself that the prompt for that day was "stress relief" when in fact it was "favorite game." No big deal except that I tend to do this all the time. For example, I have attended meetings and birthday parties a week earlier even though I've had the correct date on my calendar because in my mind, the date was something else. I don't know why I do this. Regardless, the quote and the drawing was actually fairly prophetic for things to come.

And on that Saturday, my two older kids and I were getting ready for their finals. And you will think I'm crazy but I did over 100 physics problems for my daughter, not so she can just use my work to study. I know her. She is one who has to do it herself to understand how a problem is solved. I knew that she was stressed about the finals and my time was limited trying to help my son as well so I decided to work all the problems step by step so she can check her answers and get help if she got stuck. I would never do this for my son because he won't bother to do the problems himself, he needs one-in-one time, which he got at least for math and chemistry. The things we do for our kids.

On Sunday, I received devastating news about a friend and didn't feel creative at all. So for the first time in months, I didn't draw. And I stayed away from most social media. I tried to draw on Tuesday but I just didn't like it, so I kept trying until I got to this.

The prompt for that day was "snowflake" and I wanted to use zentangle patterns. And I got yo use the Lyra watercolor crayons I won in a giveaway (thank you, Felicia and Fauxbonichi Journalers group on Facebook). 

By Thursday, I was getting back to normal. It was the last day for my high schoolers and was excited for my son because he and his friends were watching all 6 Star Wars movie getting ready to watch the new one on Friday. And Thursday's prompt was "light" and I knew I wanted to draw a Star Wars light saber.

And then my husband started to feel pain in his lower back, so painful at times that he couldn't get up. We called our doctor and initially diagnosed diverticulitis and promptly sent us to the lab for CT scan. The scan showed it was not diverticulitis but instead, kidney stones. It was evening by the time I got to finish my page.

My artist friend @itchyello does these amazing paintings of nebula and galaxies so I modeled my sky after one of her paintings. 

From the weekend..

The kidney stone passed without much excitement on Saturday and on Sunday, I finally got to see The Force Awakened. My kids did well on their finals and we are now enjoying the winter break. 

And back to Mandala Monday instead of me whining about my week.. Here is the blank if you want to save and color for yourself!

And here's a close-up of one I colored.

As you can see, I added some details and embellishment on mine. Don't be afraid to add things when you color! Sorry about the whining and have a great Monday!