I’ve had a couple more goes at layering 3D mandalas. Making the layers sometimes causes some head scratching, but as I have been used to editing layers in other design work, it’s not all bad. The first two are based on my hand drawn mandalas, and the second is based on a photo of a real snowflake.
If you care to remember, I have been drawing mandalas from scratch. I’ve also been expanding my skill set designing and cutting on my Glowforge laser cutter. I’ve seen several 3D mandalas online where the design has been cut from layers of wood, with variable complexity and some true artists whose work must have taken days, if not weeks, to do.
My first attempt at a layered mandala, using 1.5mm thick birch ply:
I’ve had a bit of a creative funk recently – I had little direction to work in and consequently, things have been a little quiet in the Studio. That changed this week with my application for a large local Christmas Fayre being successful. I know, I know, it’s only April and I’ve started on Christmas prep – but that’s how competitive getting a table was since the invites came out in March.
So, the laser cutter has been blazing away with a couple of new designs. The first uses a disc designed to be a wooden earring. At 5cm diameter, it seems to be a little large for that, but I thought it would complement my other wooden tree decorations. A quick bit of design and hanging an amethyst coloured heart bead created this:
The trickiest part is hanging the heart. This was originally planned to be a star, but I didn’t have any suitable beads to hand – I think the heart works just as well.
I’ve noticed recently that on drawing lines, such as writing or outlining, I’ve had a noticeable (though very minor) intention tremor. Now, this may be medication side effects, but I decided it was more likely to be lack of practice and a resultant deterioration in fine motor control. Noticing it in the first place may be due to my perfectionism as well! As a result, I’ve started drawing mandalas using my fountain pen, both for their repetitiveness/meditative process and for retraining my fine motor muscles. Here are the results so far, in date order. I’m pleased to report that after just six to seven hours of drawing over eight days, the tremor has all but gone.
Continue reading I recently took up bullet journaling as a means of recording what I intended to do each week alongside what I actually did (or didn’t). I thought it would be helpful to have some visual prompts for my pages, so invested in a set of stencils designed for bullet journalers. Well, the bullet journaling lasted about 8 months, but the stencils hung around and I started using them in my Bible journaling instead. There was just one problem – they were too big to use in the margins of my journaling Bible. So, this week, I created my own to fit!
Here are some journal entries demonstrating my stencils in use:
The weather outside is frightful – the risk of freezing rain didn’t amount to much, but it’s cold, dark, blustery with heavy rain. As a result, I am in a toasty warm studio with pencils and pens out and doing some Bible journaling. I thought I’d take some of the less familiar scripture verses that are relevant to the Christmas story and develop some graphics to capture them in my margins.
I’ve drawn a few more mandalas and, during breaks from doing my accounts, I have done some colouring in. This time I seem to have played with tints and shades of the same colour with some grey and an accent colour thrown in here and there.
Stained glass window? 
Feels like the middle is draining away…
Simple and blue. 
I’m not sure of this one, I think the light pink is too dusky.
I’ve used Promarkers to colour these mandalas – alcohol-based ink pens allow blending and layering and smooth gradients.
A while ago, I created several line drawn mandalas. I always intended to colour them in, and did so digitally for some. My favourites were saved for real hand colouring and I had the opportunity last night to do so. I used [amazon_textlink asin=’B01N5PLCQ3′ text=’Chameleon alcohol pens’ template=’ProductLink’ store=’themanicstamp-21′ marketplace=’UK’ link_id=’526e71dd-e29e-11e8-99e3-31a942bc75e3′] to do my colouring and played about with a couple of ideas, some of which worked and some that didn’t. Here are the four…
I’ve been busy Bible journaling, trying to get back into the habit of reading and reflecting on what it is I am drawing. I’ve found my own style now, and my process still begins with choosing the words or phrases I’d like the emphasis to rest on in my illustration. Next is playing with typography, something I now prefer to do on screen – the undo function creases the page less than trying to rub out pencil lines! Then follows adding illustrations where appropriate, before tracing and colouring into my Bible.
One benefit of working in this way is that there is a FREE downloadable version containing all five outlines for you to print out and do your own thing with… just click the button:
I’ve been playing with resin this week and in these overlarge bottle caps (5.5cm diameter) I’ve added clock parts and snowflakes over a resinated book page. I love the layering that is achievable with resin, and the depth the layers create within the piece. I’ve completed seven different pieces designed to be used as Christmas tree decorations, perhaps with a steampunk theme? Resin isn’t cheap so each of these will be £7.50 each.
Unfortunately, due to the gloss reflections, the photographs don’t do them justice! The snowflakes are more translucent white than opaque grey and layer well within the resin.