I created the mandala below for the month of February. What happens is February, beside National Pizza Day, Ferris Wheel Day, Chinese New Year (wait, I could have easy created a mandala for these days)? It is the month that Valentine’s Day is observed.
A PDF of this mandala is available on my coloring page, for anyone to download.
It was created and colored in CorelDraw.
As soon as I felt the Epson Fine Art Paper, I wondered if I could use it for some of my coloring page. Over the last week, I have experimented with the paper.
This is the drawing I decided to use for the experiment. It was designed using CorelDraw.
It is also one of the first of my coloring pages I printed. It was printed using my Epson printer, on Epson Fine Art paper, with the thick-paper setting turned on. It printed nicely, but I did notice the lines in the middle were very close together.
I thought my first attempt to color it would be with color pencils; instead, I used watercolor pencils, with a water brush, and a light touch. The black line appeared to bleed a little, but I kind of liked that effect. The more color I added to the paper, the less the black lines appeared to bleed. The paper did really well with the water, there was minimum wrapping of the paper. Below is the results:
My testing of the color pencils did not go well. The color went on the paper like I expected, nice blending was accomplished. However, when you apply multiple layers of color with the pencil, wax bloom happens. Little specks from the color pencils gets all over the drawing. One method to get rid these little specks, is to use a kneed eraser.
The Fine Art paper, absorbed the gray color from the kneed eraser. It also absorbed the pink from the pink eraser and any color left from previous erasing off of a white eraser. There are two ways I can see to get rid of these little specks for future projects when using this paper: first, to clean the white eraser every time before touching it to this paper; or use can air to blow the specks off the paper. I am will probably go with the can of air.
Since I created the drawing in CorelDraw, I had to color it in CorelDraw. When I saved it out as a JPEG file, I though the background provided additional shine to the colors. Below is the piece of art.
It you would like to color this design, I have posted a PDF of it on my coloring page.
Below is a drawing I did by hand with Derwent Inktense Pencils and Watercolor pencils on 9″ x 12″ watercolor paper.
After I finished the drawing, I thought it would be a fun page to color. So, I recreated the drawing in CoralDraw. This version was created for letter size paper, therefore the flowers are spaces .75″ apart, instead of the 1″ spacing used on the hand drawing.
I created a black and white version that is available for download on my Coloring Page.
Here is my mandala for New Years. It was created in CorelDraw. A PDF coloring version of it is available on my Coloring Page.
A PDF coloring version of it is available on my Coloring Page.
I have added another drawing to my coloring page. The original line drawing was done in 2015 using Corel Draw. I just added color to it over the weekend.
Christmas Cards are done! Christmas shopping is finished (I think.) Work area cleaned, so I can get back to my drawings!
Here is a mandala I recreated in Corel Draw. It was based off of the one I drew by hand, which was Number 80 in the Mandala Challenge.
A black and white PDF version of this mandala is available on my coloring page.
This painting was done on a 5″x5″ canvas. It started out as a pour painting, but the blue paint took over the painting. After it dried, for about a week, put a mandala on top of the fluid painting using metallic acrylic paint.
Mandala 027
I must be crazy for drawing so many lines on a page and than coloring them. And, on top of it all, doing two drawings. I must be crazy. However, they were so much fun.
That is probably another rule of Art of Concentration – have fun. Enjoy what you are doing.
The Art of Concentration rules are:
The first drawing was a small drawing. It has a simple flower in the middle with a bunch of lines going through it.
There are some many colors that could be added to this line drawing. The first example started out as a simple black and white, but I could not leave it as that. The gray background the flower jump off the page.
The colored version is very busy, it draws your eye all around the drawing. It reminds me of a out country kitchen pattern.
Below is the hand drawing of the x-treme flower. It was done on a Studio Series Artist tile with Faber Castell Pitt Pens and Crayola markers.
Boxed Flower
Even though this Mandala started out as a sketch, I thought I could not do it justice on paper, so I put it in Corel Draw, increase the size to 8.5″ squared, and drew circles to the extreme.
From the center, a beautiful flower appeared. There are so many way this could be colored, so many possibilities. After creating a bitmap and using Microsoft Paint to color it, below is the results at my first attempt to color the Mandala. The black background made the color more vibrant.
AofC Mandala
PDF versions of the today’s line drawings are available on the Coloring Page for downloading. Starting with today, I will put the newest drawings at the top of the page.
Sarah Cath's Adventures 