Introduction to Sacred Geometry: Drawing the Vesica Piscis

1. Introduction to Sacred Geometry: The study and creation of Sacred Geometry is an inner voyage of discovery. The more you work with geometry, the more it transforms your consciousness. As artists, we experience a beautiful combination of achieving mathematical perfection in each shape while expanding our creative abilities. Sacred Geometry has been celebrated and studied throughout the ages by many cultures all around the world. It is also a structural part of our nature. While the study of this topic can range from mathematics to physics and even spirituality, this course will focus on a simple approach for artists. We will begin with a brief introduction, followed by a list of supplies, tips for using your geometry tools, and step-by-step instructions to drawing your first Sacred Geometry formation, the Vesica Piscis. We will then dive deeper into exploring this shape, its meaning, and variations. Your final project will be to take on your creative mission by creating an illustration using the medium of your choice. My name is Ana Victoria, I'm a watercolor artist, teacher, and author of the Modern Maker series. Which includes my most recent title, Creative Drawing: Symbols and Sacred Geometry. Find a relaxing spot, prepare your art supplies and open your mind to a meditative artistic experience. 2. What Sacred Geometry sacred? (Keynote): Hello and welcome to introduction to Sacred Geometry. I'm so happy to be able to share a little bit about this topic with you. Before we actually start diving into our drawing, I think that it's worth to share a little visual slideshow of what Sacred Geometry actually is and a little bit of my perspective on it. The way that I like to describe Sacred Geometry is the art of truth. The study and creation of Sacred Geometry is an inner voyage of discovery. The more you work with geometry, the more it transforms your consciousness. It really does that. I know that it sounds like a lot, but I promise that I will keep it super simple. I always like to start off by saying, I have gotten a question before. Hey, Anna, does Sacred Geometry belong to one specific culture or era, or even religion? The answer is no. Although Sacred Geometry is celebrated by many cultures, it is more like nature. Nature doesn't belong to us instead we are all part of it. I always like to share this beautiful image of these flowers with underlying Sacred Geometry grids. It's from a beautiful book called Flower Sacred Geometry Patterns in Nature. When I started to study Sacred Geometry, I was completely overwhelmed. It's not an understatement. I couldn't even understand where to begin and that is the reason why I wrote my Sacred Geometry book and why I'm teaching this class because I really think that it's an artistic practice that is so valuable for artists and I want to share with you in a way that makes it easy. Easy for you to actually draw these shapes for yourself and experience this beautiful inner transformation that I just mentioned. When I started to learn about Sacred Geometry as I mentioned before, I started to see all these different topics come up and I quickly understood that Sacred Geometry can be found in a variety of topics and interpretations. Some of these are ancient civilizations, psychology, philosophy, all forms of art throughout the ages, music, architecture, mysticism, symbolism, math, the Big Bang theory, human conception, anatomy, astronomy, chemistry, alchemy, etc. It truly is this huge topic and I want to share just a couple of visuals so that you can see what I'm talking about here. Hear some different interpretations of Sacred Geometry in all over the world, Scotland, Israel, China, Turkey, Egypt, Germany, France. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. I want you to just close your eyes for one moment and think of a circle and think of all the different places that you have found a circle around you in nature. Look up to the sky. Do you see the moon or do you see the sun? Your eye, how about your eye. How about a square? Can you think of different places that you see a square in nature? It's not that easy. That is because a square is more of a man-made object whereas the circle is the most common shape in nature. It's a little bit of symbolism for you. The square actually does represent the building blocks of human civilization and society and in art it does have this really cool symbolic nature. But the circle is the most common shape in nature and it really represents infinity. It's this magical shape and it's actually like the place where Sacred Geometry starts. Again, think of all these different shapes, a bubble at a sun, the moon, all planets represents the number one, a single-cell, the source of creation. It does have a boundary though and it's represented by a circumference which is going to be very important in our drawings and three words that I love to use to describe a circle is perfection, wholeness, and completion. That is this beautiful sense of satisfaction within the circle. I'm going to go over the names of all of the shapes in Sacred Geometry just to start to get you familiar with the shapes and what they look like and in our drawing process we're actually going to do a Vesica Piscis which is this middle shape that you see here. I'll explain how to draw them and what it means and the whole system behind these drawings. Sacred Geometry begins with a circle, as I said, and then we continue to intersect these circles so the middle point of your second circle will be set on the circumference of your first circle and that is how it continues to grow and grow. It's like a geometric grid set in motion so there are a lot of movement in Sacred Geometry. We start off with a circle and then we have the Vesica Piscis where the circle duplicates itself and it is like it becomes aware of itself and a point is born as well. Then in the Seed of Life, which is this third shape, this is actually the building block for the entire Sacred Geometry grid. The Seed of Life is this beautiful petal shape that you can see here and many intersections are born. It is created where the second circle starts to replicate itself around the middle circle over and over again until we close the shape. Then we have the Flower of Life. This is probably the most recognizable shape in Sacred Geometry, maybe if you've taken a yoga class or if you bought some meditation mat or something, you might see this symbol there. Then these are more complex shapes that are built from the Flower of Life including the Egg of Life, the Tree of Life or Merkava, the Fruit of Life and all these shapes as they grow there's like more complex shapes that are born from them. This is called the Metatron's Cube. This is a really interesting shape because we start to integrate straight lines and in Sacred Geometry, it is said that straight lines symbolize this masculine energy and the circles representing feminine energy, so there's a lot of symbolism around balance and platonic solids are also born from the Metatron's cube. If you see this again, like within these lines, all of these other elements are born and they are all encoded within Metatron's Cube. Platonic solids, they have three characteristics that are specific only to platonic solids, which is that all of its faces are the same size. All of its edges are the same length and all points fit perfectly inside a sphere. Talking a little bit more about symbolism here, each one of these shapes represents a different element, which is really fun. If you are into a creative practice that you might want to integrate this into your artwork. It's a really cool way to have a little bit more of depth into your art. Fire, earth, air, spirit, water all these correspond to a different platonic solid. Then finally, I always like to integrate the Vortex or the Torus in Sacred Geometry. It is part of the system as well. Now that you've seen what the shapes have looked like, here are some examples of different places that we can find Sacred Geometry throughout the edges and all different places. We have these rosette patterns in Israel. We have some sketches by Leonardo da Vinci, and thankfully we have a bunch of different visuals. He was pretty obsessed with the Flower of Life. I found this photo of these really cool coins in ancient Greece. You will begin to see, remember how I said, Sacred Geometry nests and grows. These shapes where you start to discover shapes within the shape and then you can expand and also create larger systems and grids. Once you start to actually draw, you'll get a better grip on this. But I wanted to share this bottom one, which I think is really beautiful and it's the seven interlocking circles that could also be used as a template for more geometric patterns like underlying grid and Islamic art. Which is just, I'm fascinated with it. It's beautiful. You can see how we start off here with a more simple shape and then you start to connect the intersections with lines and you can get these really cool grids, which are beautiful painting subject matters as well. Here's a little bit more about da Vinci's art to your left. If you google Leonardo da Vinci Sacred Geometry, you will have hours and hours of stuff to read and images to look out. It's quite fascinating. Sacred Geometry, formations in biology. This image here is by Stephen Bowers and it's called sacred pattern of life. That's on the top-right. I really like sharing this because remember how I mentioned biology and Sacred Geometry. Then to the bottom right we have honeycomb. Which is a Sacred Geometry grid as well. It's a series of hexagrams, hexagons. These are called divine creator's. I love this. They create the perfect grid with six sides. One of the things that I'm fascinated about is how psychologists have embraced the mandalas. FYI mandalas are also born from Sacred Geometry, so Sacred Geometry is like the predecessor of all of this. You can call them magic circles. He really studied this and has books and essays on it. He really noticed how drawing these symbols created a really calming effect on his patients. That's just a little nugget there. If you want to research more on Jung and the magic circle, it's super fascinating topic. When we study Sacred Geometry, we begin to understand our place in the universe. As I said, we are part of this circle. Everything that gives us life and everything around us is made out of Sacred Geometry, including the macro cosmos and a micro cosmos. It really is no wonder that Sacred Geometry is so attractive to us as humans. At least, I was mysteriously really drawn to this topic before I even knew what everything meant and what the symbols represented. It really is because Sacred Geometry is an intrinsic part of our inner and outer world. When we begin to study Sacred Geometry, and it becomes more apparent that these symbols are part of absolutely everything that makes us. Now that you've seen it, you can't unsee it. You'll start to just notice that everywhere it's something really cool that happens. I've heard from students that it's had the same effect on them. Maybe before you start drawing or if you wanted to start drawing right away, that's fine. But I really do want to encourage you to upload a little bit of homework, a little bit of research on their discussion board. This is especially so that we can share with the rest of the students in the class. If you have any books or if you do any online research, or if you have been to temple where you've seen these shapes like, I would love to see photos of that anything interesting that you've found on the Internet, some really helpful keywords to use our Flower of Life, Merkava, Tree of Life, the Vortex, Torus, Vesica Piscis, Seed of life. I would love to see what you find online. It's a really cool conversation starter as well. I'm here to continue the conversation in the discussion board. I know that I really like closed over a huge chunk of information. But as I said, I'm trying to keep it as simple as possible and have this experience be about the art creation. I really liked this quote here, "Mighty is geometry, joined with art irresistible." Let's go straight into our drawing and I'll see you in the next lesson. 3. Geometry Tools: The Number one tool that you are going to have to use no matter what is a compass. There's different types of compasses, and maybe that you haven't used this since you were in school. For example, I've taught geometry in-person quite a bit and some people almost have forgotten to use these tools. You are probably familiar with them but anyways, I'm just going to go over just different aspects and a few quick tips on how to use these. Here are three different types of compasses. They all have the same characteristic, which is that they have a lead point in them, which means that they have some pencil. There's also all different ranges of professional, school grade, etc. If this is your first time, you can maybe just do a quick search on Amazon or your local craft store or something. These are very easy to find if you don't have a compass. Your compass has two arms, like this. It has two arms like this. Some of them will have a little screw in the middle and these are actually just open like that. It has two arms and one of them has a needle point and then the other has your little pencil here, which is the lead point. Then the most important thing is that you're always going to want to use your compass holding it from the base and not from one of the arms. Because if by mistake you open up, this aperture changes a little bit, your whole design is going to be off. Just being very careful, very mindful. This is why geometry is also such a meditative drawing practice. You just have to pay very close attention as you're making all these shapes. A quick tip is to make sure that this needle here is super secure in your paper. I'm going to just dig that in here and I'm very sure that it's not moving around. I would rather you not worry about having these markings than doing it too soft and having your entire design be messed up. What you're going to do is you're going to really dig in there, make sure it's secure and you have a certain aperture here. See how easy that is. It didn't move around or shift or anything, holding it always from this base. As you can tell, probably from this, especially from above, you really won't be able to see these pencil drawings too well because it's a little bit light and we have a lot of light going on here on the paper. When I would be doing my geometric drawings, I would usually be using this especially because we have a lot of grid work and guidelines and stuff, and then we go in and erase and stuff. Then I just wanted to share this one with you. I like this compass too because it's almost like one of those mechanical pencils here where you can release the point like that. This gives you a lot of precision. Again, just like all art work, it's about your personal preference. You can play around and discover what you like to use most. As I said, for class purposes, it's going to be a little bit tough for me to always be using a pencil like this. I'll use it sometimes, especially when we're going to need to erase. There's another type of compass like this one here, which allows you to use your own drawing tool, and it has a little screw here which will secure that into place. For example, most of the time you might see me using a pen like this, which you will be able to see a lot better on screen. Again, this is mostly for demonstrating purposes. In my personal experience, these are a little bit harder to use. I don't know if you make a little mistake it'll go out of balance. Again, you have an aperture here. Make sure that the needle is really in there, and then only holding it from the top, you go around. Sometimes your circle gets a little too big and it's even nice to be able to flip your paper around like that where you don't have to move too much. That's another little trick on using your compass. If you have this type of compass, you can also even use your own personal drawing tool, your pencil in there. You can also just do this, which can be useful too, because maybe you really like a certain type of pencil and you can use that. Just always making sure that the screw is pretty tight. You really never want this to be wobbly. Then another quick tip is, for example, let's say you want to be drawing some geometry on black paper. This is nothing special, it's just a regular white colored pencil. This is from Prismacolor again. You can also do this, and let's say you're drawing on black paper or even craft paper, any colored paper, you can also use this as your drawing tool so that you can actually see what you're doing here. See how that's a fun little trick right there. Just make sure that it's always pretty sharp because you are going to need a lot of precision when working with geometry. Another quick tip for your geometry tools is basically how to use your ruler. These are the three go-tools that I always have handy. This would be my basic ruler that I use. Sometimes I like to have this little one here because it's really easy to move around, especially if I have shorter distances. You guys have probably learned this at school, but I'm just going to make sure that you know this. Whenever you use your ruler just make sure, let's say right now I'm doing a half point here, make sure that you have it set in place and then you apply pressure with your left hand or the hand that you're not using to draw with. Apply pressure. Make sure that's really in place and then just draw pretty soft, like that. Just a super easy tip there. One more thing about compasses is that, obviously there's different uses for your compass. One, the most obvious is that it's going to measure the radius of your circle. The radius of your circle is the center to the edge of the circumference. But sometimes it'll also be useful when drawing to measure distances. Here I have the aperture that's two inches, and let's say that I want to measure two inches from here to here. It's also handy like that. You can use your compass just to measure distances. We'll get into all this later, but I just wanted to share these super basic tips on how to use your geometry tools. Again, number one thing is make sure that this needle is very secure in your paper. If it moves around, it's going to be hard for you to go back to your original drawing. You have your tip very secure in here and then always grabbing from this part and never from one of the arms. If you were to use one of the arms, you could tilt it, you can mess up the aperture like that. Those are the basic tips and now let's actually start drawing. 4. Art Supplies: To draw Sacred Geometry or just geometry in general, you don't really need that much. For this class, I'm going to share some technical tools that we're going to use and then I also share with you some just like variations or fun things that you can do to actually make art with your geometry. We're going to start out just with some plain white paper. I like to use drawing paper, especially when I'm sketching or just like trying to figure out all these shapes through my personal process or just through exploration. This is just some white paper and it's actually Canson drawing paper. There's so many brands, all different kinds of paper that you can use, but I like this because it's pretty thick, it's heavy. You can use it for colored pencils, you can use it for sketching. You can even use like some markers. This is kind of like what I'm going to be using to demonstrate how to draw the different shapes with you. I also have a couple of different papers that you can use for drawing. You can use mixed media paper, something like this. This is a lot bigger. I usually like to work in 12 by 9 inches in general. This one's just a little bit bigger. It's all about personal preference really, but just to show you some different types of paper. FYI do not use watercolors on mixed media or drawing paper pretty much ever. This is not meant to handle that amount of water. It's more for drawing, for sketching, maybe even gouache colored pencils. Definitely not watercolor though. These are the two types of paper I like for drawing and I'll show you in a bit some different kinds of paper that you can actually use when you're making your artwork. But for now what I really want to dive deep into is your geometry supplies. Just going to open this up to have a white background here and basically there's only two things that you're going to need to draw Sacred Geometry. One is a compass, and one is a ruler or straight edge. There are definitely different types of compasses. I'll demonstrate in the next video how to use these and the differences, but I just took some out so that you can see what they look like. As I said, you need a straight edge for straight lines. Even if you don't have a ruler, some people even use the backside of a notebook or something like that or a card, but I think it's really useful to have the proper tools, especially because geometry is so much about accuracy. Then you don't need this, but if you have a square like this instead of a ruler, this is totally fine as well. There's different types of campuses. Some of them have a lead point like these here, which have a little like a pencil on the bottom and then some of them, you can exchange different drawing tools, like this one here. Right now I'm using a pen. Maybe you can use different colored pencils, and that's basically your choice. Again, we'll dive deeper into it as we move along. Basically, I mean, all you really need is a piece of paper, a compass, and some sort of straight edge. That's all you need to learn how to draw these shapes. It's a lot simpler than it might seem, and now I'm just going to share some extras with you. Just pretty much like drawing tools, designed tools, painting tools. These are the ones that I like to use. Don't feel like you need to have all of this to take this class, but it'll be fun once you really start getting into embellishing your art or playing around with the geometric shapes. Usually when I would be drawing geometry, I would be using a pencil, but especially for demonstration purposes, I'm going to be using, sometimes I'll use maybe some markers to shade in different areas or these different pens. These are little fine liner pens. It doesn't have to be this brand or anything, but it'll be really helpful so that you can actually see what I'm doing as I'm drawing the shapes. Just a couple of fun tips for your actual tracing and drawing the geometric shapes. As we move along, you'll see when I start to use these. Then as I mentioned before, so this class is kind of divided into a little bit of a theory technical drawing, and then you're free to use any medium you want. If you are feeling like you want to paint with watercolor, if you've taken more of my classes, that probably means that you've already dive deep into watercolor and actually your final project is going to be totally free, like you can use any medium that you prefer. I have a little different mediums to share with you here. You can use colored pencils. I really like Prismacolor Premier. I've definitely tried out different brands too, but it's all about personal preference. I really like these. You need a really nice sharpener and you're also going to need a pencil. You'll need this throughout just like the entire geometric process. A brand that I really like is Blackwing Palomino. These pencils are amazing. You don't have to use this, but I know that you guys sometimes like to know about what I'm using and personal preference and stuff so I really liked this pencil. I have these colored pencils here. These are really fun for sketching. You can use these on your mixed media paper, on your drawing paper. You can also use watercolors. For example, I have this watercolor paper. You guys have seen me use this before in different classes. Again, this Canson XL line is really good, especially for practice stuff. It doesn't have much texture even though it is a cold press paper. As you can see, it's actually not that textured, which in my personal experience is a little bit better for Sacred Geometry or geometry in general, because there's so much precision involved. A little bit of a flatter surface will help you with that, and you can even use colored pencils with this. No problem at all. Then we have some fun things here. You can also draw on black paper. I really like to do this with in-person students. I have two different black papers that I use. One is a drawing paper, and one is actually a black watercolor paper, which is super special. This brand here is Stonehenge Aqua Coldpress Black, and they actually just released a new line of Hotpress paper too. I haven't tried it, but I'll get my hands on that. Tell you about it on social media or something. This kind of paper is really cool because it has the same composition as white watercolor paper would have. You wouldn't want to paint transparent watercolor paints here, but it's really fun with metallic paints or even if you find some like pastel watercolors or just like remedies like that. It's really fun. You can even use colored pencils on here or gouache or something. It's just a bit of a thicker paper and it's just fun. Again, this is all optional. I'm just sharing different tips for embellishing your Sacred Geometry. This again, back to Canson. Canson is like my go-to for basic everyday paper because they have a huge line. It's pretty inexpensive and it's really nice, especially if you're practicing and working out stuff and then going to scan maybe. For example, this paper here is really good for like colored pencils. I just had a little like quote I drew here. Just to share with you that you can use colored pencils for this. Definitely do not paint on this. It's drawing paper, so it won't handle the amount of water that we use in watercolor, for example. Pretty important to always check out what each paper is for. Again, you definitely do not need all of this. I'm just sharing personal preferences, some fun tips. Maybe if you want to try this out, you can definitely do that. These are different types of paper as we have our colored pencils, we have our geometry tools, and then just a quick share here, you can also use, for example, these are little metallic watercolors. You guys know I like hydrocolor a bunch, and my collection just keeps growing, which is really fun. For example, these are metallic watercolors, and there's all kinds of like shimmers and color shifting stuff, it's really fun. If you're into it, you can use these to embellish watercolor paintings, or even painting like the geometric shapes directly on your black watercolor paper, for example, that looks super cool. Then as always, I just have my go-to watercolors. This is my Sennelier pan set. These are also like my everyday watercolors and as you've probably taken more of my classes before, you might know that I like to mix in some, maybe I'll have some liquid watercolor paints in here or even tubes, so I like to mix and match. But this is what it looks like. This is what my set would look like on a daily basis. Then obviously you're going to need your brushes, your water, same as always. If you haven't taken a watercolor class with me, this is definitely not the course that you should be starting out with. Go back and watch the foundational watercolor classes and then we always just need an eraser, there's going to be a lot of guidelines and stuff like that that will be having to erase. I really like Faber-Castell erasers for this kind of stuff. This is pretty much what you're going to need for this class. Again, all of this stuff like the actual art supplies are optional and totally up to you. Whatever medium that you enjoy painting with or drawing with, you can use that. What this class is going to really focus on is the geometry tools and the drawing. So it's a bit more of a technical class and then at the end you'll be exploring on your own. That's it for this lesson. In the next lesson, I'm just going to give you some basic tips to actually use your compass and your ruler. 5. Vesica Piscis: Drawing instructions : The Vesica Piscis is the true starting point of Sacred Geometry. This may seem like a very simple drawing, but it's really important and it's really what gets the entire Sacred Geometry grid into motion. What's really going to happen here is that our circle is going to duplicate itself and that moment when we have that original source duplicating itself, we start to gain movement lines. There's tons of interpretation that can go along with this. For now, I'm going to stick with the technical aspect and I'm going to teach you how to draw your very first Vesica Piscis. The first thing that I like to do whenever I draw any geometric shape is actually have a little bit of symmetry in order within my drawings. Again, you don't necessarily have to do this, but it's just a little tip that I like to use when drawing these shapes. What I'm going to do is I'm just going to measure the half point of my paper. I'm just going to move this down a little, I'll go back to the center in a bit. There's a lot of precision that goes into this, I have to get pretty close to the paper. I see that this paper is nine inches wide, so I'm just going to do a little marking here, 4.5 and do that again at the bottom. It's just to make sure that we're dividing our paper in half with just a straight line and this case I am using pencil because I'm actually even going to erase this later on. I'm actually going to even do very soft. Remember this is just a guide. It's not part of the drawing is just a guide to help me have a straight geometric shape here. Now that we have the half point here, this line that divides in the middle. We're going to grab our compass and again, I'm using a pen here so that you can see more clearly on camera. I would usually be using a pencil with this. For filming purposes, I will try to make this as visible as possible. Again, I'm just going to adjust this a little bit here and make sure this is really tight, and then right at this moment, it doesn't matter what aperture you have, just make sure that you don't move it from now on. I'm going to keep it at this distance here. It's big enough so that you can see what I'm doing and right now what you're going to do is grab your needlepoint and place that slightly higher than the middle of your page. It's exactly on my line here and you're going to remember to make sure that needle is really secure in here and then continue to draw your circle. Again, sometimes I like to flip the paper around to help my hand move more seamlessly like that. You have your very first circle here. This is a perfect circle and the circle, as you saw in the beginning video where I did those slideshow for you with a bit of a symbolism and stuff. The circle represents so many things and once we duplicate this circle, an intersection is born and this intersection has so much meaning to it and it's also the starting point of the entire Sacred Geometry system. It's a big deal even though it seems quite simple but Sacred Geometry is actually pretty simple, just as nature is. But when we begin to observe, learn how spaces nest and grow within each other is when it becomes really powerful. Now for your actual Vesica Piscis moment, make sure your needlepoint is exactly on the circumference of your circle, and right now what I'm using is this guide that I have here, this pencil guide is actually helping me to have a centered drawing. That's all it is. You don't even need to use it for instruction purposes, that's what I'm doing. You will notice that a good way to make sure that you haven't shifted any of your aperture here is that you're drawing tool should be exactly right at the middle point of where you began drawing your first circle. Going around here. I like to flip my paper a bit to help me out and make a really perfect circle. It all depends on what you feel comfortable using your hands and that's it. This is a Vesica Piscis. This is your very first shape in Sacred Geometry. It seems very simple, but once you start learning how the entire system works, you'll see how powerful it is and how important this simple shape is here and also there's tons and tons of interpretations and different uses for this specific drawing here. A few that come to mind right now is how you get the first almond shape, which is this one in here. It's also the base for the human eye and basically, it's embedded. You're embedding the instructions for the rest of the Sacred Geometry system. There are many different metaphors. Also for this simple shape here, it's the symbol of the divine feminine, it represents the womb of a universe. The shape you see here. It's also a shape for the human eye, which I'll demonstrate how to draw in the next video, and you'll find it in different religious symbolism. You can even see, find the little fish here with the, if you were to cut out just this part here. It's also called the mandala in religious symbolism. It also represents a crescent moon. If you flip it like this and if you cut out this area, you will have a perfect moon as well. It's also famously known to be how the shape of a lens is formed, etc. As you begin to dive deep into Sacred Geometry, you'll begin to learn all of these different symbols and also numbers and there's a lot that you can dive deep into this. My purpose for you in this class is to make Sacred Geometry really simple and help you on your creative path and just open your eyes to a little bit of everything that you can have happen with these simple shapes. That's it. This is how you draw your Vesica Piscis. Go ahead and do this. I've had a bit of a practice with it, I've seen students maybe have a little bit of trouble making it very precise, or I think you'll be fine though it's a very simple shape. Go ahead and draw your first Vesica Piscis, and I'll see you in the next video for creative interpretation. 6. Variations: Explore within the shape: The Vesica Piscis is pretty much at the center of all other shapes in the universe. The more you explore sacred geometry, the more you will find this to be true. As I said before, this is the first step in a series of overlapping circles that initiates this expansive form, it's basically a drawing system. So the really interesting part about sacred geometry and what makes it sacred for us artists is, all the exploration and variations that you can find within these pretty much simple shapes from the beginning. So your creative mission is going to be to begin to play and explore within these shapes. I'm going to get you started by demonstrating just a few of the things that you can do with this simple shape. But my real goal, like the real purpose here is for you to take on this creative mission, and make it your own. Really just begin to expand your mind, begin to use the tools and begin to discover different shapes within the shapes. So I'm just going to get you started with this exploration, all these variations. Remember that sacred geometry nests and expands. So it'll be really fun for you to start to just using again, same tools. It's your straight edge and your compass and see all the different variations that you can find. So the very first one that I'm going to teach you. I have some Vesica Piscis that I already drew out here just to get us going in this exploration. The first thing that you're going to notice is that this looks pretty much like a human eye. But we're missing a circle in the middle. So what you're going to do is actually, I have this middle line here, this guide that I drew initially to indicate the half of my page, and then I'm going to grab this ruler. Remember I told you that sometimes like too use this smaller ruler because it's really easy to move around, especially when I'm drawing shorter lines. So you're going to measure from this intersection to this intersection. Be very careful about this in geometry, every single millimeter, it has to be very precise. So I'm just going to draw a line here in the middle. This actually gives us the perfect center for another circle that we're going to draw here. So we're going to shorten the aperture of our compass. So we're going to place this point in here, super firm, and then I'm going to grab, I'm going to move my drawing tool all the way so that it's exactly at this point here. If you would flip it around, it would be exactly at this point here. So what we're going to do now is draw another circle within the almond shape of our Vesica Piscis. This here is how you trace that perfect human eye shape. So there's a bunch of different fun things that you can do here. You could also go ahead and draw even a smaller circle here for a pupil, you could maybe draw two rims on this side and it could be like a tiger eye. There's all fun things that you can do. You can even expand your compass, so go back to that center point here. Then you can open up your compass again and make sure that it's exactly at this point here, at the outer edge of one of your larger circumferences. So we go ahead here and start drawing around. Again, notice how I really like use my paper movement here to help me out. This is another level to the Vesica Piscis. It's part of what I was saying before about nesting and growing. All you really need to do is explore within these shapes. So something else that you can do here, I'm just playing around right now. This is part of the exploration, is to know you can have fun with this and say, "Well, maybe it would be interesting if I traced from here to here and maybe use this line here too." You can just have fun, explore, and you're starting to create some really interesting shapes for drawing actually. I don't know, I'm just playing around now. Maybe you can draw dots at some of your intersection. This is all just really artistic exploration. So it's about you having fun, expanding your mind, really, letting the shapes tell you what to do next. Once you see more complex drawings, artwork, you'll notice that it all starts out from this point and then it just expands and grows from here. That's one example. Another example is, it's actually pretty similar. We're going to do the same steps again, where we find our center point and we're going to actually trace that same exact eye in the middle with a circle around it. But I'll show you something else that you can find within the shape. So again, I'm just going to grab my drawing tool here, which I'm using this black pen to demonstrate for you. Right now, what I'm actually going to do is, you'll understand why I'm doing this in a bit. I'm going to use a pencil right now. Because all these pencil markings at this moment, you will see how we will just take some of this into consideration and then erase other lines for this specific shape. So again, just repeating this. I have that human eye, needle in the same point just opening up. I have my circle. Doing an outer circle now. So at this point they look pretty similar. But what happens if I start to select certain lines that I want to be using and instead of using the entire drawing system. So the first area that I'm going to select is the entire outer circumference. Just making sure that I'm precise here. Drawing this outer circle. Now what I'm going to do, this is where it gets really interesting, is I am going to just choose a certain area to highlight here. Just so you don't get lost, what I want to do is select this area of my circle, and I'll draw it nicely. So see how it's just half the circumference here, and then have a circumference down here. It'll all make sense once you actually trace these lines. So you go back to the original circumference here. This is the middle point of this circle here and then you close the aperture, so it's exactly the same as the original circle. What I'm going to do is only trace this side here, and then I'm going to go. It's almost like an S form, you can see. Then I'm going to go here. You can see it's half a circle here, half a circle here. Then I'm going to close the shape by closing the aperture again. The inner circle, the eye, to be very mindful of what I'm doing here. It's going to connect like this, and like this. We've created this really fun spiral shape. What you want to do in these cases, you see that I have this pencil outline here. Even in this case this one is totally dry now. Pens obviously take less time to dry than watercolor would, but you still have to be a little bit careful. You don't want to smudge your pen. So then you go ahead and just erase all your guides and it'll give you a really clean drawing. Just having this really simple shape is so inspiring and you start to think of everything that you can do when using watercolors or colored pencils or metallic paints or even textures. Remember that this class, I'm not necessarily teaching your painting techniques, it's more about the drawings. So if you want inspiration for, let's say like the mosaic class, go and take that or watercolor textures, I have just really more than a dozen watercolor classes too where you can find inspiration on different ways to fill out your drawings. Then again, it's really up to you. The medium is your choice, it's all about your mission as an artist, your creative exploration. So I'm just carefully erasing here, I don't really want to smudge drawing that I did. So we've created this really cool spiral shape here. If you wanted just to demonstrate the duality of the nature here, I'm just going to grab a quick marker. Just to show you these two opposite sides what they look like. As you can see, this would be a really fun shape, for example, if you're into shading, I can imagine it right now. It just starts to get your imagination going and I might start to think maybe some shading in here like a fun gradient on each side, intersecting with one or the other. It just starts to really get you going and all of these shapes, that's what they're meant for. It's meant to expand your creative mind. The cool thing about sacred geometry and I really talked a lot about this in my book, Creative Drawing: Symbols and Sacred Geometry is how you're always using both sides of your brain. On one side you have this very analytical and precise and you need to get the measurements right and you're going for perfection, for symmetry all this, and then on the other hand, your creative brain is always on fire here. You're always using it because what makes sacred geometry special for artists is this exploration mode that you start to go into when you have your perfection as a base, and then you just start to play and explore. It's a great way to just dive deep into any kinds of supplies that you want to try out, all that. The shapes are pretty simple, but they're super powerful and there's so much meaning behind each of these shapes. I'm going to go ahead and show you a couple more different variations to get you going. But what I want you to upload in your class project is a few of the variations that you made, and it's also going to be fun for you to see what different students have come up with, and it'll maybe spark ideas and you can create this really cool library of Vesica Piscis. I don't want to spoil it too much for you because I'll show you a couple of more different things that you can do with this. But in the end it's really about you playing around and you discovering and maybe adding more lines, erasing more lines, connecting different dots. Let's continue with this, I'm just going to find my other drawings that I created here as a base. Another really fun thing that you can do is actually duplicate the Vesica Piscis. For example, here I have the basic shape, but what happens if I just continue drawing the Vesica Piscis towards the bottom. What we're going to do is almost like a quadruple version of this. Here I am going to continue where I left off. Again, placing that needle point in there really firmly and drawing a second Vesica Piscis right here. That's already a different shape in itself. Just for fun, I'm going to make it one step further here. Once you have a different shape like this, this could be the shape in itself and I can already start to see different fun things that I could make here. One thing that I like to do is add some inner or outer rims. What I'm going to do is actually just take the exact same center points that I was using before and just open up the aperture just a little bit here. You can be very precise with this and start measuring and making it be a very specific measurement. Here, pretty much all that I did was just create an outer rim for each one of these circles, and you just go back to the center point of each circle and it starts to create this really cool intersecting shape. They can almost be like rings, if you decided to let say, erase one of these sides and you can make it like they're interlocking. You can just play around and have all kinds of fun experiments with this. Another thing that you can start to do is let's say that you would like to begin, you can create diamond shapes within each one of these. I'm going to go ahead and trace from the intersection of each of the almond shapes. I'm going to create a line like that, and again here, and again here. What you can do is maybe start connecting dots here so that you can have this interesting diamond shape within each one of these circles. It's all about really getting your imagination going, observing, playing around with the shapes, see how you can connect the intersections in different ways. All these designs again, has this really cool mystical feel to it, but that's because within all of these shapes, there's so much meaning embedded into all of them. Even that looks pretty cool, just like that. You could also go ahead and close the diamond shaped like this, so you'll have three diamond shapes within your quadrupled Vesica Piscis. It's all about getting that precision right and just being mindful of your tools. Here's another example of what a simple Vesica Piscis you can do if you just start playing around with your compass, with your straight edge, connecting lines, etc. You could go on forever here. You can even continue doing rims and make this very expansive thing, or you can go inward. Remember the phrase that I really like is geometry just like nature, it grows in nests. It becomes very interesting when you start to just play around with all of this and just see where it takes you. Here, for example, another way that it can grow is I have a smaller Vesica Piscis here and what I'm going to do is start by creating a circle around the smaller Vesica Piscis. Here I just had a small Vesica Piscis, I created a circle around it. Then what you can do is actually place your needle at the edge of the circumference here and open it up to this larger circle and we're going to work our way around this here. Then we're going to do the same thing on the other side. We're placing our needle on this edge of the circumference and you'll see that it'll meet our smaller circle, and we actually just created another Vesica Piscis within the circle that we already had. You could do this forever and ever and ever and have it expand and expand and expand almost like a fractal image, where within each shape is the different shape over and over and over again. We can even continue to go on here. My page won't be long enough for us to go on forever, but just a quick little example of where this can take us. If I had a larger piece of paper, I could go ahead and once again open up the aperture all the way here and create another circle and it can be this very cool, expensive thing. What we can do though is take it one step inward and create a smaller circle here. Going back into the center point and adjusting the aperture, have a little baby circle in here. You can continue. Again, the phrase is always like how it nests and grows. All these shapes fit within each other and they can also expand out of each other. These are just a few examples of what you can do with this simple Vesica Piscis shape. Go ahead and explore it for yourself. I find it helpful to actually maybe draw out for in the beginning and just have that ready, that way you can start to expand and grow and just see what comes out of all of these shapes. This is going to be part of your class project. What I want you to do is to actually upload a few different variations of different shapes that you found within the Vesica Piscis. First it's going to be just using an outline like this and then later on you can start to actually explore your creative mission, which is actually adding art, more art, art supplies, drawing, painting, etc, into the shape. 7. Final Project: Your creative mission: Now that you know how to draw a Vesica Piscis shape and also you've begun to explore all the different interpretations and meanings and also you begin to discover different ways that you can play around with this shape, your final project and what would I really want you to upload to this class is basically your personal creative mission and that is to explore within the Vesica Piscis and create a work of art that is completely yours, all your own, feel free to play around. This is one of the very first paintings that got me started on my creative geometry journey. I really wanted to share it with you today and just talk it out a little bit more and then I'll show you another example that I did. So you can see all the different ways that you can actually make art using Sacred Geometry. In this case, this class specifically you're going to be creating a Vesica Piscis. What you'll see is in general, the shape is pretty simple. The Vesica Piscis, remember the rims that I showed you in the little exploration exercise, and I have also some organic drawing in here, which is the lotus flower. I played around with some moon that I also used with my compass. Then I have a little bit of free-hand drawing here, which I have these mountains. I have some stars that I traced here. There's a lot of play with different transparencies. For example, you can see this with this ocher paint here or the starlight here. It's all about different transparencies that you can use with watercolor opacity. All of that is in my very beginner course, modern watercolor techniques, which it's all just different ways to use these simple watercolor techniques. I really wanted to share this with you. This is one of the very first pieces that got me really set on this entire Sacred Geometry journey. I have a really fun place in my heart written. I really wanted to share it with you because what I want you to do is I don't need you to try to paint something in my style necessarily. But I wanted to show you me and myself as an artist what I have discovered. I actually drew this specifically for this class to share with you just different ways that you can actually make Sacred Geometry pieces yourself. This is also Vesica Piscis based. It's actually similar to one of the last demonstration that I showed you when we were playing around with variations with our Vesica Piscis. What I did here was basically just grow and expand and trace more circles around the Vesica Piscis. I didn't use watercolor with this. For Sacred Geometry, it's actually really fun to sketch out on black paper for me. That's one of the things that I've had a lot of fun with my in-person students with is also there is this mysterious field to it. This is the black paper that I shared with you in the supplies video. It's just drawing paper. It's Canson XL. You can see here. It's not like any super special pencils or anything. It's just Prismacolor Premier pencils. They work really well over black paper like this. This has absolutely no water in it. It's only drawing. It's just some very simple little gradients and stuff, but you just have to invest a little bit of time into it. This took me a few days to finish. I just drew over and over again the gradients, played around with my color palette, etc. This is another very magical and mystical approach to Sacred Geometry using the Vesica Piscis. I wanted to show you two different versions of this and ways that it's inspired me. What I really want from you is for you to upload to the class project different drawings that you've found derived through the Vesica Piscis with as simple exploration process and then your final project, which is going to be your creative interpretations. Using whatever medium you like, you can use gouache, you can use watercolors, you can use colored pencils. It's really up to you. You can even use ink, really whatever the point is here for you to actually play around with color, with shape, with forms, and come up with something unique of your own and really have fun in this process which is so transformative. I explained a little bit about how you're working with both side of your brains with all this precision. The really cool thing about drawing Sacred Geometry is that there's so much beauty in it because perfection equals truth and truth equals beauty. That's what makes it so powerful. By drawing these shapes, you are working with mathematics and there's all kind of things behind it that you might not realize that you're doing in the moment. But as you continue to draw these shapes over and over, you'll begin to notice just how transformational the entire process is. I'm really excited to see what you make here. Your final project is going to be to create your creative interpretation. This is your creative mission. Whatever supplies, medium that you want to use is totally free. Whatever it is that is calling you, use that. The important thing here is that you use the Vesica Piscis as your base and then expand upon that. Sacred Geometry is truly transformational. You are using all parts of your brain that you may not even realize that you're doing. Then once you start with your creative mission, you'll see how all these creative side starts to flourish and you'll be really, truly inspired to create some magical, fantastic art based on this. Upload your exploration phase, which is where you start to play around with the actual Vesica Piscis shape just as an exercise with just a pen or a pencil. Then also upload a work of art that you create using the Vesica Piscis. Whatever you want to use, you can use colored pencil, you can use gouache, you can use watercolor, acrylics, you can use even pastel, just maybe even graphite pencil. Whatever it is that you want to use as your creative medium, use that. Just make sure that you really have fun exploring. Don't be afraid of the shape. Don't be afraid to play around with your compass, with your straight edge. Have fun with this, and I really can't wait to see what you make. I'll be waiting for you in the project gallery. Any questions that you might have, feel free to post them into the discussion board. Also make sure to pick up my book, creative drawing symbols and Sacred Geometry, where we dive really deep into all this, and I have some fun little tutorials over there for you as well. For now you have all the tools that you need to create some fantastic Sacred Geometry art. This is going to get you started on a really beautiful path of creating these special, special drawing. Thank you so much for taking this class and I can't wait to see what you make. 8. BONUS: Symbols, Construction of Regular Pentagon by A. Durer: I'm going to demonstrate a little bonus video here, which is really cool because we're going to dive a little bit deeper into symbolism and how pretty much every shape can be derived from the vesica pisces. You'll see how powerful this shape is. I talked about circles in my intro video when you guys started out taking this course. We talked a lot about circle, the meaning behind the circle, why it's so important and powerful. Now we're going to dive a little bit deeper into different symbols and what they mean. I'm going to show you this through the vesica pisces. I actually learned this little sequence from Alex Grey, who you might know is an amazing artist, and his wife Alison Grey. They are both super into sacred geometry as most artists are. A lot of the art that you see out there has sacred geometry grids in the background, like even as a guide. The more you explore your memorial, you'll begin to see how it's really embedded into everything. I'm going to start with this little demonstration here to show you how we're deriving different shapes that you'll see in everyday life maybe in nature as well, in symbolism, and how they can all come from this simple shape here. We have a simple vesica pisces here traced out. The first thing that I'm going to do is this vesica pisces allows me to trace a vertical line here, just by meeting the two intersections. Just throwing that out there. Again, you've seen this before where we'll be able to draw another circle again with that eye shape. What you are going to do is be very mindful here and find the exact center and trace another circle. As you can see here, it's off by just a slight millimeter. We're going to try to make it work anyways, but I'm human too like we will all be making some mistakes when we're tracing our shapes. Just try to keep it as precise as possible. Because if you don't, it might throw your entire grid off. Just a little comment about that here. What I'm going to do is actually, I'll use another pen here so I don't have to keep lifting it up from here. Now what we're going to do is actually trace our first shape that we can find within the vesica pisces. The first shape that we'll find is actually our triangle. All we have to do is trace this middle point here, which is the center of our circle, and find this intersection up here and this way, we will have traced a perfect triangle. Now triangles have a lot of meaning and symbolism to them. One of the interpretations that is most popular is how the base of the triangle is your mind and then the way that the angles dive up like that is almost like it's your mind looking up towards the heavens and this symbolizes the spirit. Many times you will see the triangle being used to symbolize the spirit of the human. You can go super deep into this and start talking about the Number 3 numerology, etc. But my focus in general when I teach sacred geometry is to keep it pretty simple, pretty art-based, and then you can begin to look for different interpretations yourself. These are just some very simple, interesting facts that come up when searching symbolism related to geometry. Another interesting shape that we can derive from here is actually the square. The square you will see that, I might even use another color pen to make this easier for you to see. To find a square within the vesicle pisces, all you have to do is go to the edge, it's the intersection of your cross point and this inner circle that we did with the eyes helping us out to find those exact points. Again, trying to be pretty precise here. Remember to always hold your ruler firmly for your straight edge. Again, some people don't even use a ruler. I've even seen people trace geometry with some oracle card or something like that. You just need a straight edge because we haven't really been using measurements if you've noticed. It's more about having that straight line. The square is a really interesting shape because as I shared in the intro presentation that we did for this class, we talked a lot about the circle and how you can find it in nature over and over again. It's the most present shape that's found in the entirety of nature. But the square, on the other hand, it rarely appears in nature as I did some research. I think it's just in a couple of spots and true nature, for example, it can be found in the eye of a lobster like the shape traced out, but not much after that. What it really represents is the building blocks of humanity. It exists more in the material world, not much in the nature or spiritual world. It represents humans in some sort. It represents our existence. It's evidence of humans existing because it's meant to represent building blocks. If you see that's how we construct buildings and bricks and stuff. It represents civilization, matter, and body in some form. The squares are really interesting subject and then it turns into a diamond. It's like this endless grid that can lock into each other and then you can create a smaller square within the square. It's a really interesting shape actually, and it represents building blocks pretty much. After the square, what we're going to do now is, we're going to find our trinity, which can be represented if we expand our vesica pisces into a third circle here. What I'm going to do is grab this compass and I'm going to find the original aperture that I used for these two circles. Then at the intersection here, where the vesica pisces meets here, we're going to trace a third circle. I'm going to flip the paper around. This is just the way that I feel comfortable tracing. You don't have to flip your paper around every time but I like to. Now we have the trinity and from this trinity shape, you'll be able to find there's a lot of interesting interpretations here. You can even draw a trinity naught from this triple shape here. It represents mind, body, spirit, they're all part of this shape. Then what's interesting here is in my next class, I want to release when after this, where we start to dive deeper into the seed of life, for example, which is the next shape derived from sacred geometry under vesica pisces. It starts to set this formation in motion. Sacred geometry is in constant movement. It starts growing and growing and growing from interlocking circles. This trinity here sets that into motion and also what can be derived from this shape here is actually a hexagon. If we take the same aperture here, and the hexagram actually, which is the six-sided star. What we're doing here is just we used the same aperture that we had from this circle, this intersection here, to this point here, and on the other side as well. Here's what we get a hexagon, which is really interesting. A hexagon is a six-sided shape which is super powerful because it's present in one of my favorite forms of nature, which is the honeycomb. Bees are regarded very highly in the sacred geometry world because they actually create this perfect structure using sacred geometry specifically, the hexagon, which is the six-sided shape that's born through this trinity. I'm just connecting these intersections. This is the hexagon which is born from this trinity here. Again there's this expression that's used that it's nature's divine designer. Again, it's very present in the Bs and all hexagons are really cool because they fit perfectly within each other so it creates this perfect grid. Once you have your hexagon shape from this, you can derive the hexagram which is actually the six-pointed star and you will have seen this shape many times especially the Star of David is actually where this shape comes from. What you do is here all you have to do is trace these points here and we will have two perfect triangles, one will be shaping upward and one will be shaping downward and there's also some symbolism to this because usually this upward pointing star represents the heavens, the feminine shape in general and then this downward pointing star represents the earth, the masculine. Through these geometric shapes you'll begin to discover all pretty simple symbolism that doesn't necessarily have a connection to any specific culture but they're just more shapes that are based in nature and general interpretation. If you even would flip this around you would find the Star of David here. Obviously, all of this symbolism you can start to investigate within cultures, within religions, what the symbolism is it's really beautiful. But what's interesting here in general about sacred geometry is that all these symbols are very simple, very basic, very logical and it's no wonder that all cultures have adopted them and use them in their personal cultural symbolism. Now what we can do is actually derive the pentagon and pentagram through this very same shape. What you're going to do here is we're actually going to find these points here. I'm just going to circle them so that you can see where I'm making these connections. This intersection here, this intersection here, and then this intersection up here, which is the third circle with the dividing line. What you're going to do is actually follow this angle here, so with your straight edge place it at this point and then intersect it with this point and you're going to make a marking on this side here same with the other side then we'll have the shape here and this will be the base of your pentagram or your pentagon. We're going to trace these lines here. Now what we're going to do is actually open up our compass to the original size of our circle here I'll just grab this one here so open up the radius just exactly to this point here. This is one of those occasions where I told you that your compass will also indicate distance and then you're going to place your needle exactly at the intersection of this line, you're going to make a little marking here, the line with the circumference and do the same on the other side. This gives us a middle point here and that's where we will trace our pentagon. Again, the pentagon which is the five-sided shape and this is also born through the Trinity because we have these three circles and we connected these two intersections so basically we did have an arrow here and this point here is what was really important. Obviously from the pentagon we get the pentagram, which is the five-point star. All you have to do is connect just here so these points here will give us the five pointed star. One of my favorite interpretations of the pentagram is actually is that it represents the human body. This point up here represents our head, our torso and then the two sides, these two sides are our limbs, our arms and then the bottom one are our legs extremities. Again, if you go into for example paganism or start researching there you will also find tons of different interpretations that have to do with the pentagram. You might find that each point of the star represents a different element, etc. What I'm teaching you here is I'm trying to keep it as simple as possible especially for artists so that you can start to explore this entire creative journey for yourself but again, I mean, this is the tip of the iceberg. Once you start diving deep into this also within the pentagram you will also find the divine proportion which is also known as the golden ratio, etc. There's a lot to look into this and I thought that this little bonus geometric demonstration might be helpful for you to see how in reality, yes, the more you explore the vesicle Pisces the more you will see that pretty much every single shape is derived from the vesicle Pisces. You can continue the grid and then find all different connections within all of these shapes, you will be able to explore this a lot more in my book, Creative Drawing and Symbols in Sacred Geometry. I dive a little bit deeper into this. Here what I really want to see from you is your creative mission, your artistic interpretation, so make sure to post whatever exploration that you've found within your vesicle Pisces and then your creative project which is going to be an artistic version of the vesicle Pisces. I can't wait to see what you guys come up with. Creating sacred geometry can be very simple but it's a very powerful tool. It's extremely meditative and it really does transform you from the inside out. I'm happy to be able to begin sharing this entire beautiful journey with you and I can't wait to see what you make.