Playing with Mandalas

Thinking about mandalas, I created this hand drawn one in my small journal the other day.

But as usual, I couldn’t just leave it at that. I had to play with it once I’d scanned it. I started off by adding some ‘twirl’, then blended the two together to come up with the final version.

Once in the blending mode, I find it’s difficult to stop! This image is a blend of two paintings to which I added the Maslow quotation.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to you all!

December flew past, taken up with finishing my dissertation followed by a really relaxing family Christmas – it seems like ages since I last posted. But I have been busy creating!

It’s become a habit over the last few years to use this workbook from Susannah Conway to review the passing year and look forward to the New Year, including choosing a word to represent the coming year. This year I chose ‘Emergence’ as my word and placed it in the mandala from the workbook.

After I uploaded it, I just couldn’t resist pushing the invert button to see what happened. I’m not sure if I like it. What do you think?

A couple of days ago, I was inspired to create this large painting by these words from Leonard Cohen‘s song ‘Anthem’:

“…There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.”

Today, I couldn’t resist the call of a ball of yarn in my supply box. It was calling to be made into a doll. This is the result!

I devised this method of creating a doll from yarn last month when I was playing with a few scraps laying on my desk one evening. With the exception of the head, which was stuffed with a small ball of tissue to give it shape, the entire doll is made from wool wound round on itself. This is the original that I made last month.

They’re so simple to make, and have endless possibilities from a therapeutic point of view which I’m working on developing at the moment.

Last Mandala

I’ve just finished the last mandala from Julie Gibbon’s Mandala Magic course

I’d seen these ‘Hamsa’ symbols before, but never knew what they meant. Apparently if the hand is upright it represents protection against the ‘evil eye’; if it is inverted, it represents God’s goodness and blessings. I enjoyed creating it, and I love the bright inktense colours!

Then I put all the mandalas together – as you can see, my favourite is the collage mandala. What’s yours?

I’ve just signed up for Julie’s year long course called Mandala Magic starting in January. I’m really looking forward to it! – check it out.

Mandala Magic

Just a quick post to show you my second mandala created on Julie Gibbon’s Mandala Magic Course.

It’s called an Intention Mandala, and I really enjoyed creating it. It has a hidden layer behind the collage – powerful stuff! I’m working on number three now. Watch this space!

Creativity Rocks!

Creativity rocks! I’ve been so busy writing my dissertation that I haven’t had time to do anything else. But I took a couple of days off last week and did a bit of catching up!

A couple of weeks ago we had our dissertation tutorials and as part of the tutorial, our group were asked to create an image to represent our finished dissertation. I knew I had to create a doll, but as we didn’t have much time for the art work I knew she had to be simple. So I made a wrapped pipe cleaner doll and called her “All wrapped up with a feather in her cap!” Do you like her?

This image started out as a photograph of the kitchen sink with splashes of water all over it. Then I blended a painting into it – et voilá!

This one is a blend of two paintings created during a recent painting workshop.

I’ve been fascinated by mandalas for a long time as any of you who have followed my blog or flickr stream will know. So when I saw Julie Gibbons was running a five day free course, I just had to sign up and play along. I must say, the course is one of the most comprehensive mandala courses I have ever seen and I am learning so much. Thank you Julie. This is my first mandala created on day two using a pencil drawn grid, neocolour crayons and watercolour pencils.

And I just couldn’t resist playing digital with the mandala after I scanned it!

Old Photo Rummaging!

The other day, while rummaging through my photo files looking for an old remembered image, I came across three images which caught my attention: a bag of grapes, a string sculpture, and some old seed heads.

They looked like they might work well together…

…so I just had to try them out with some digital blending! I love the 3D effect of this one…

…and the mosaic effect on this one. But as usual I can’t decide which one I like the best. How about you?

Finally – I just couldn’t resist playing with this flower!

No blending on this one, just a few digital adjustment layers, some grunge brushes and a layer mask. What do you think?

Reflections and Light

It all started with a piece of white paper and four bottles of ready mix poster paint in blue, yellow, purple and fuscia pink…

…I squirted the paint into the paper, folded it in half, and squigged it everywhere! This photo was taken when it was all gleaming and wet. As soon as it was uploaded to the computer, I just couldn’t resist playing…

…and this was the first result created using the Snapseed app. I think it makes it look like a piece of beaten up metal. What do you think?

Next came the serious photoshop stuff…

…and this is what evolved! I called it “Looking for the Light”. You’ll have to look at the large image to see the light at the end of the tunnel which reflects the meaning of this image.

Which one do you like best?

Two More Pages!

Two more pages to add to the steadily growing collection! Another painted postcard for journalling on…

…created using acrylic paint, a stencil and acrylic ink. The black blots remind me of seahorses or maybe glow-worms. What do you think?

And another page in my recycled journal. This started out as a collage with acrylic paint. I added the scanned person doodle and blended her in, then chose and added the Nelson Mandala quotation using digital text.

Digital Magic!

Todays first image started out as an acrylic painted background in my handmade journal, which I transformed with a bit of digital magic!

When I first created this, I called it ‘Christmas Background’ because I thought the colours looked very festive…

…then I played digital – adding a digital image of Molly doll and a digital caption to explain why she’s there!

Image two started out as a simple oil pastel drawing.

It too fell prey to the digital magic that was in the air and it ended up looking like this!

Filling the Journal!

I’m slowly filling my recycled journal! If you look closely you can see the fabric strips down the centre of the page marking the end of one signature and the beginning of another.

I created the background using acrylic paint in layers and used an old credit card to scrape the final layer on which gave it a more textured look. Some of you may recognise the quirky bird on the right. I originally painted it some time last year, but thought it would look good on this page so I added it digitally and blended it in a bit. Lastly I added the quotation using digital text. I love how the coffee creamer lid shape from the previous page makes a perfect frame for the quotation!