Mindful Mandalas: Botanical Doodling For Self-Care

1. Welcome!: Spending time outdoors in nature is great for our physical and mental health. It also offers us an infinite library of inspiration. And the opportunity to slow down, follow our curiosity, and notice little details we can so easily overlook. Hi, I'm Mel. I'm an artist and educator. In recent years, my practice has led me to explore the connection between art making and well being. In this class, I'm going to invite you to step away from your computer and come outside with me, where we'll explore the natural world together together, inspiration for our art making. Whether you have access to a tiny window box or a huge botanical garden, we'll mindfully observe the shapes and patterns we find in nature. And I'll show you how to translate them into simple doodles and patterns which will act as starting points for mandala drawings inspired by nature. Now these are not the symmetrical and mathematically accurate mandalas you may associate with this term. We will be embracing nature's imperfections, its wonkiness, and its beauty to create a series of personal and unique mandalas inspired by your natural surroundings. This class is for everyone. You don't need any prior experience either with drawing or with mindfulness. I'll cover everything you need to know. By the end of this class, you'll have a series of three experimental mandalas, as well as a toolbox of mindful drawing techniques and a framework to continue the practice beyond this class if it's something which you'd like to take forward. If you're ready, let's dive in. 2. Class Overview: First, I want to explain how I'll be using the term mandala in this class because it might be a little different from your own experience and expectations. If you Google the term Mandala, you'll likely be shown a lot of images like this. Which consist of very intricate and accurately rendered patterns. Which are symmetrical and radiate from a central point. Literally translated, the term mandala means circle. And the circle is representative of many things. Wholeness, cycles, unity, truth, harmony, simplicity, the self, the universe, a spiritual journey, and the foundation of all life. It's a pretty impressive list. There are many more nuanced meanings of the term mandala. Or circles spanning various contexts including religion, politics, art, science, and architecture. These intricate geometric designs are one way of visualizing a mandala. But I would like us to be a little more broad in our interpretation of what a mandala can look like, and take it right back to its simplest form, the circle. You have taken any of my other art making for self care classes, you will know that I love to use circles. They are an incredible shape to work with in mindful artmaking because of their physical and symbolic properties. We've just discussed some of the symbolic properties of circles, But in terms of their physical shape, they work beautifully for mindful artmaking because of their continuous rounded shape, the absence of any sharp edges or harsh angles allows us to create a lovely continuous flow of movement and unbroken attention. And this is what makes them perfect for mindful art making. I want to make it very clear before we begin that I am not a mental health practitioner. My art practice has evolved to explore the connection between mindfulness and art making as a tool for self care. I have personally benefited from integrating these techniques into my practice. I love to share them with others so that they can explore these tools too. If you are struggling with your mental health, I would highly encourage you to seek out the professional help that you need. This class is not intended as a replacement for that support. In this class, I would like us to gather our botanical inspiration from real references, not from Google or Pinterest, but from your garden, your local park, your walk to work, or even your collection of pot plants, by closely observing all the botanical shapes and patterns in your own surroundings. We can use these to inform the design of our mandalas. They will be much more personal to you, but even more crucially, my hope is that in practicing this approach to mindfully observing your environment, you can take this amazing self care tool with you into your everyday life. Beyond this class, whether it's for art making or something else. Once we have gathered our inspiration, I will show you exactly how to extract shapes, textures, and patterns from it to create your own botanical doodle library. This is going to be the foundation from which all our mandalas are developed. We will then explore three different approaches to creating a mandala, each with a different compositional structure. Within each compositional structure, there are limitless possibilities for how to approach the drawing To make it unique to you. My intention is to give you a framework which you can use and adapt. You could create the same Mandala type 100 times over, but never create the exact same thing. I want to give you the tools to develop this into your own ongoing practice if that is something which interests you. I do understand though, that if you are new to drawing or you haven't drawn in a long time, it can feel very intimidating to begin with. For each mandala style. I will be showing you one example, drawing from start to finish, which you can follow along with and draw alongside me if you prefer to learn In that way. These draw along demonstrations will be in a separate video. After I have introduced each mandala's compositional style, feel free to. Those draw along videos if you are confident creating your own design. By the end of this class, you will have an inspiration image bank, a botanical doodle library, and three different experimental Mandala drawings inspired by your natural surroundings. More importantly, you will have a framework which you can take beyond the class to continue creating your own experimental botanical mandalas. In addition, I'll be sharing some of my favorite mindful observation and drawing techniques with you as we go through the course. You'll also be developing some new mindfulness techniques too. This class is suitable for complete beginners. You don't need any prior experience either with drawing or with mindfulness meditation or mindful art making. I'll cover everything you need to know. To go alongside this class. I have created a class resource PDF for you to download, which contains a summary of the three different compositional mandala styles. A selection of example photos from my own inspiration Image bank, a botanical doodle library worksheet, circle templates, and some composition practice circles to support you as you work through the class. If drawing these botanical inspired mandalas is something you really enjoy and would like to continue it after the class, but you like having that more structured guidance such as the draw along videos. Then you are welcome to visit my website and download my free botanical doodling workbook. This is not needed as part of this class, but is more of an additional resource you may enjoy If you'd like to continue your botanical doodling journey for your class project, you are most welcome to share any part of the process. This could be some photos from our walk outside when we create our Inspiration image bank. You could share your botanical doodle library and feel free to share however many finished mandalas you'd like to. When you are ready to upload your project, hit the Create Project button under the Projects and Resources tab. You could scan or photograph your drawings to include just hit the Image option under the project description box to upload them. You can also add text here to reflect on the process, which is always lovely to add a bit more context to your project. Up at the top, you can give your project a title and add a cover image before you hit Publish. Once you've done that, you can come back any time to edit your project. Lastly, don't forget to take a look around at other student projects to encourage them and of course, to stoke your own creative fires. You can really make someone's day by leaving a positive comment on their project. Don't miss that opportunity to spread some positivity. In the next video, we'll be going through the tools and materials you'll need for this class. When you're ready, I'll see you there. 3. Tools + Materials: The tools and materials you need for this class are super simple. You'll need some paper. It doesn't matter what kind of paper you use. It could be very cheap printer paper or a heavier weight cartridge. Whatever you choose. I would recommend using paper with a smooth surface because some paper, such as cold pressed watercolor paper, has quite a deep texture to it. This can be quite tricky to draw on to with a pen, you won't get such a good result. It can also just feel less nice to draw onto because your pen might snag on the texture or the ink can bleed a little. Try and find something smooth. I'll be using hot pressed watercolor paper, which is a thick 300 GSM that's around 200 pounds cartridge paper. I'll be using a size of around five, or roughly six by 8 ", but you can use whatever size you feel most comfy working with. You'll also need something to draw with ideally a pen, I'm going to be using a simple black fine liner pen. I love these micron pens because the ink is really nice and dark and it's archival quality, which means it's fade resistant and it's also waterproof. You're welcome to use a black pen like I will be, or you could use colored pens if you prefer. I would recommend using just whatever you feel most comfy drawing with. You'll also need a pencil and an eraser for the planning stage of the Mandala drawings. It's helpful if your pencil marks can be easily erased, so it's a good idea to avoid pencils which are too dark. Try to go no darker than a two B. You'll also need either a selection of circular objects to draw around, or if you have one, a compass. Alternatively, I've provided some different sized circle templates in the class resource that you're welcome to use. We're going to be using these to help us create the basic structure of our mandalas. Think about the size in relation to your drawing paper. The largest circle shaped object needs to fit comfortably on your drawing paper with a little bit of space around the edge plus a few smaller size circles would also be helpful to have two. When we go outside to gather inspiration, you'll need a camera or phone handy so that you can record what we find that way. You're also building up your own inspiration image bank to work from. Anytime you're out and about and you spot something interesting, you can record it and keep adding to your image bank over time. In the next video, we're going to venture outside and explore our surroundings to gather inspiration for our mandalas. Grab your camera and join me there when you're ready. 4. Gathering Inspiration: In this video, we're going to venture outside and gather some inspiration, Which we'll record by taking photos. So that we're starting to build up a gorgeous inspiration image bank. We'll then use these images and extract some shapes, patterns, and textures from them to create botanical doodles. It's these doodles which will be the foundation of our Mandala drawings later. We can also use the opportunity of going outside and taking in our environment, Tap into some mindfulness practices as we observe, which I'll explain as we go. Don't forget to bring your camera or phone with you so that you can take some photos of what we find. If you live in a city, I would encourage you to try your best to find some green spaces. You can usually find a park or public garden even in a really built up city. Even tiny areas of planting or grassy areas could be in your neighborhood which you haven't noticed before. Alternatively, you could try visiting a plant store or a florist, or you may have a window box with some plants growing. Or maybe you have a friend with an amazing collection of pot plants. And you could use those as inspiration. Be creative with how you might be able to access some botanical inspiration. Firsthand, I'm going to be showing you what I find in my own neighborhood in this video and taking photos of those things, which I'll share with you in the class resource. You're also welcome to borrow from my backyard. Okay? So let's go. When searching for a spot to work from, just allow your curiosity to guide you to a place which looks inviting and interesting. It doesn't need to have a ton of variety. But for the start of our exploration, I'd invite you to settle into one spot for a couple of minutes. You can sit or stand whatever feels most natural. We're going to start with a simple, mindful awareness exercise. You can follow along with this, even if you're indoors, working from your collection of pot plants. Just adapt the pumps I'm going to give you to suit your own surroundings. If you feel comfy and they're able to just close your eyes, take a couple of really deep breaths and allow your other senses to take over in processing your surroundings. Can you feel the breeze on your skin? Maybe it's raining. So you can feel the raindrops hitting the top of your head. Can you feel the texture of grass or maybe soil under your fingers? Tune into the part of your body which is in contact with the ground. What does that sensation feel like? What can you hear? Is it quiet or really noisy? Can you hear birds singing? Or maybe there's a lot of traffic nearby. Maybe you can hear music playing on a radio somewhere. Can you smell anything? Maybe you can smell the plants nearby. Or maybe there's a smell of freshly cut grass. Or maybe you're near a really delicious smelling restaurant. You won't be tasting the plants of course, but can you taste anything currently? Do you have a hot drink beside you or maybe you've just been chewing some gum? Your sense of taste, although it seems irrelevant in this instance, may still offer up some sensory input here. So tune into it if you can. If you've had them closed, now open your eyes. What can you see around you? Try to keep your eye line close to you. To begin with, noticing all the shapes, colors, and textures, choose one thing to explore, like a flower or leaf, and let's take a closer look at it. What does the texture of your object feel like? Is it smooth or rough? Does it feel cold or is it warm from having been in the sun? How would you describe its shape? Does it have a scent? Are there any markings on it? Or maybe little holes from where insects have nibbled it? Imagine you have never seen this object before, and you're describing it to someone who can't see it. How would you describe it? Once you've used all your senses to explore this object, you can take some photographs of it to use as part of your inspiration image bank, take several photos from different angles. Each one might give you something different and interesting to work from. Once you have explored this first object, move on to find another. Now this could be in a different spot, or you might be surrounded by a ton of interesting shapes and textures right where you are. And this is why practicing mindfulness in how we observe things can be such a powerful tool. Because it really opens our eyes to just how much inspiration we can be surrounded by without even realizing it. I'm going to take you on a little mindful walk now and I'll show you what I find. All right, I spent about 20 minutes out here exploring and I found tons more inspiration here than I imagined. And I've got loads of photos for my inspiration image bank. I want you to consider this mindful way of gathering inspiration, an ongoing process, a way for you to continue exploring your environment whilst building a library of resources you can use for your art. If you don't feel that you have gathered all that much in one sitting, it doesn't matter if you keep doing this. You will build up a fantastic library of images to work with as well as practicing mindfulness on a regular basis, which is an amazing self care tool in itself. In the next video, we'll take a look at the inspiration we've gathered back in the studio. And I'll show you how to extract patterns and shapes from our references which we can use to start our botanical doodle library. See there. 5. Building A Botanical Doodle Library: In this video, I'm going to show you how to use your references and extract shapes and patterns from them to begin a botanical doodle library. One of the biggest barriers to us creating is often knowing where to start, what shapes we want to use, or the marks we want to make. If we have a library of our own botanical doodles, it gives us a resource to break down that barrier of getting started. We don't get stuck looking for inspiration or sucked into a rabbit hole of comparison. When we look for that inspiration externally, we can create our own. I want this class to equip you with all the tools you need to continue with your botanical doodling way after you've worked through the class. And the botanical doodle library is going to be an important part of that framework. Once you have started a botanical doodle library, you may enjoy taking it with you on your mindful walks in order to be able to sketch and doodle straight from your botanical references without using the photographs. And this can make a really gorgeous way to develop the practice too. You can really structure your library, however suits you and the way you like to work best. If you like to work in Sketchbooks, you could dedicate a whole sketchbook to creating your botanical doodle library. It may be that you enjoy taking a free form approach to just drawing as many different botanical doodles onto a page as you can. Or you may enjoy categorizing your doodles into different sections. For example, flowers, leaves, smaller filler shapes and patterns, and so on. I've provided a worksheet for us to use to create our doodled library with, which is in the class resource PDF. But feel free to do things your own way. One of the great things about doodling is that there is no wrong way to do it. There is no pressure here to feel as though you're doing things the right way. The other great thing about doodling from these references is that there are so many different ways we can interpret them. This not only gives us a lot of variety and elements to work with, but it also allows us to express ourselves creatively by the way we choose to interpret the reference. Let's look at a few examples together in detail. I've actually printed out some of the photos from my inspiration image bank just so that you can see how I'm extracting some of the visual things from a variety of the photos. I'm going to be looking at these three references. I've got a dandelion head, a leaf that I really liked, and a daisy style flower that I really liked as well. I'm going to start by looking at the dandelion head, like fluffy seed pod. I feel like there are so many ways of interpreting this reference. The spherical shape of the seed head is really strong. I'm going to work with some circular shapes to see if I can create some marks which help to communicate the texture and shape. But in a more simplified way. Working in pen on my botanical doodle library just so that it shows up better for you on camera. But you can work in pencil or whatever material you like to work with. There's a solid part in the middle, so I'm going to try that. You'll notice there are a few little prompts on the botanical doodle library worksheet which can be just helpful to get you going. I think sometimes it just takes the first three or four little doodles that you can take from an object and then you'll find that lots more ideas will start flowing later. The first prompt here is to draw the silhouette of your object, which I've got. But I think I might try just creating a wobbly, fluffy looking texture. Block it in, I guess these are all silhouettes. Next prompt is simplify your object into a geometric shape and draw it a few different ways. Again, I've started doing that. The simplified geometric shape is the circle. Let's try a circle with the solid part inside. Maybe a double circle with some parallel lines which suggest that fluffy texture. The next prompt is try altering the simplified shape of your object, make it wider, narrower, all et cetera. Let's try a few different kinds of circles. Remember, you don't need these doodles to look realistically like the object we're working from. We're using them as inspiration, which that's the really important part. But then you can really use your own imagination and creative license to push and pull those shapes and play with them and make new shapes and patterns from it. Don't be afraid to really tweak and change from your original reference. There's another prompt here to draw a detail from your object. Try enlarging repeating a mirror, it I might try really zooming in on one of the actual seeds with the fluffy bit on top to see if I can sort of extract that. Okay, the next prompt says make marks to represent the texture of your object, so I'm going to see if I can make it look a bit fluffy. Next prompt says, how might you represent your object as a linear doodle. Now what I mean by that is if you were trying to create a shape or pattern in a row or a line, how might you do that from this object? You can think of a few ways. One would be maybe just to use the stem, or we could join circles together. I've created a few things which you could say visually resemble my reference. But you can also play with the reference as pure inspiration for creating marks and patterns. And textures don't feel constrained by what it looks like. For example, if I wanted to create a linear shape inspired by this dandy line head, maybe I can use some shapes like this. I've actually created a sort of wavy line, and then I've taken an element that I created up here and sort of repeated it along the line. So you can see that I'm starting to sort of take some of the doodles that I have already made and then tweak and change them and add other things to them just to make them kind of new. So that I'm really creating quite a broad kind of catalogue of doodles connected to this one object. When you're creating your doodles for your doodle library, don't overthink anything you are doing. If you have an idea for how to interpret something, just include it. There are no wrong doodles. The more ideas we have for how to interpret this, the more options we're going to have to develop them into larger pieces later, The more the merrier. I'm going to move on to my second reference now, which is this leaf, which I've got a few different angles of in my photographs here. I'm going to do the same thing. I'm just adding all of my doodles onto the one sheet. I quite like to have everything mixed up. But if you prefer to keep your doodles categorized, you could always start a new sheet for each object. If that's something that appeals to you. Don't be afraid to tweak and change the shape of your original reference to create a lot of different variations on the one shape, particularly if it's relatively simple. This is particularly helpful to do with leaves because they do come in such a huge range of shapes that you can produce quite a range of doodles just by making some very small and simple tweaks, like changing the position of the broadest part of the leaf, making it more squashed or more stretched in shape. If you have a reference with very little texture, just explore different patterns and ways to make marks which can add some interest to the shape. Remember, we're not trying to make accurate drawings of your references here. We're using them as starting points for doodles. They can look really quite different. Okay, I feel like I've got quite a few responses to my leaf reference. I'm going to try this flower now. Tracing your reference can be a great way of extracting some of the shapes and patterns from it. Whether you trace the whole thing or just trace part of it like a detail. Sometimes tracing around a shape can give you a result you weren't expecting. It's really worth giving that approach a go. As I've simplified my daisy flower shape into a geometric shape, it's actually looking very much like the dandelion head because they're both circles. If you simplify them right down, it's interesting that my doodles are starting to look the same for both those objects. It's nice that I do have some different angles of this flow. That's why it's really nice to have a selection of photos of the same reference. I can also think about representing the side view of it as well, which is nice. All right, now it's your turn to create your botanical doodle library. I've included a scan of mine in the class resource so that you can have a closer look at how I've interpreted these three different references. If you might find that helpful when you are interpreting your own, I would recommend that you really thoroughly explore 3-5 of your references in order to give you a really nice range of starting points to work from. As we begin to work these up into larger drawings, you want to have enough doodles to have filled up the worksheet, or the equivalent to that, if you're working in a different format. In the next video, we'll be exploring our first Mandala style. Pause the video if you need to as you work on your botanical doodle library. Then join me in the next video when you're ready. 6. Mandala 1: Grounding: Our first mandala composition style is one which I call a grounding Mandala. Visually, this means we're going to be completely filling our circle shape. There are a few ways we can approach this, which I'll talk you through in a moment. Creating a sense of grounding can be a really helpful mindful art making tool to use when you just want to get out of your head and be more present in the here and now. It also makes a fantastic first mandala for the class because hopefully it will help us to arrive and be present and ready to create. There are a lot of different ways you can set about filling your circle. I'm going to run through a few different examples which might help you to decide how you want to approach yours. You could fill the circle with one repeating doodle. Although this seems a simple approach, it can look really stunning. Also, repeating the same physical shape over and over can be incredibly relaxing. Of course, whatever you choose to fill your circle with could be any number of things from your botanical doodle library. It could be a large shape you developed from a flower, or it could be a texture you extracted from the grass. Or a line you took from a curled leaf, which you can repeat and adapt to keep filling up the circle. There is also a decision to be made here as to whether you want to repeat that one doodle randomly or whether you want the placement of the doodles to be more organized, like in lines, for example. As though you were writing. You could also vary the size of your one doodle if you are aiming for a more random looking approach. Varying the size of your doodle will help the overall effect feel more natural and organic. You can also decide whether you want your doodles to be touching and completely filling the circle, or perhaps with a little space in between. If you do have space in between your doodles, something which can look really beautiful is to color the background in which will really make your drawings pop. Another approach is to fill the circle with a collection of different doodles, almost like creating a circular garden. It could be that you just have a handful of different doodles which you keep repeating, or you could make each one completely unique. Something which can be really nice to use in this style is having a collection of larger botanical doodles, particularly those based on flowers, which make it feel like a bouquet. Then you can fill the spaces in between with smaller flowers, doodles, leaves, or repeating patterns and textures. If you take this approach, my top tip is to use an odd number of large elements. Three or five work best. This helps to create more balance in the composition. Odd numbers tend to look more natural together. I'll be walking you through an example like this in the draw along video, coming up next if you like the idea of this style, but feel daunted by creating it, don't worry, I'll walk you through it step by step. Here are a few examples which might help to inspire how you'd like to approach this particular drawing. But my advice would be to take a good look at your botanical doodle library. See if there's just something there that you feel intuitively drawn to and go with that. In the class resource, I have provided some small mandala composition practice circles. These can be really helpful for sketching out some rough ideas before you begin working on a larger drawing. There are limitless possibilities for how you could approach this drawing. Don't overthink it too much. Remember, you can make as many drawings as you like. This could be something you want to adopt in your ongoing drawing practice. Having loads of ideas is great, because next time you find yourself wondering what to draw, you've got a plan right here. With each mandala style, I will be suggesting a mindful practice which pairs well with it for our grounding mandala. I'd like us to explore a grounding technique you can practice whilst drawing. If you often find that your mind is very busy and you get caught up in your thoughts a lot. As we all do, grounding techniques can help us to just bring ourselves back into the present moment by bringing our awareness to the physical, which is usually linked to at least one of our senses. The mindful awareness exercise we did earlier outdoors is one example of a grounding technique. Another grounding technique you can try as you draw is to either silently or out loud. Whichever you find most helpful, narrate exactly what you are drawing as you draw it. For example, I'm now sketching a very light circle in pencil. And now I'm going to choose which pen I'm going to draw with. Now I'm starting to draw some curved shapes inside my circle, et cetera. You get the idea. The really important part here is to keep your narration non judgmental and not attached to emotion. We would not want to say something like, I've drawn a really terrible leaf, for example. Just describe exactly what is happening, almost as though you are documenting it for someone else. If you find it really difficult to detach from the judgment that can creep into the drawing process, try to describe things like the weight of your pen, the color of the ink, or the sounds the pen makes on the paper as you draw. The point of doing this is that in hyper focusing on the process and documenting it like this, it really helps to get us out of our head and back into the present moment. Give it a try. Okay, now we know our first mandala composition type. We can use our botanical doodle library to create our first mandala drawing. Don't forget to use those mandala composition practice circles to help you plan your mandala before you start drawing. In the next video, I'll be walking you through a grounding mandala example from start to finish in a draw along video. If you'd like to follow along with me, then join me there. Or if you're happy to get started on your own version, feel free to skip that video and join me again in the following one as we explore our second Mandala style. 7. Mandala 1 Draw-Along | PART 1: Welcome to the first of three draw along videos. In this video, I'm going to walk you through how I would approach a grounding mandala. Now, parts of the demo will be sped up to make it easier to watch. So please feel free to pause the video when you need to. Take your time, rewatch or watch it, and then follow along. However works best for you, I'm going to start by sketching a few ideas onto my mandala composition practice circles. I'd like to approach this grounding mandala by using some larger floral elements in it to create the appearance of a kind of bouquet of flowers and leaves. Again, I'm going to sketch just with pen. This is a rough working out sheet. It's only just so that it shows up better for you on camera. But feel free to do it in pencil if you'd like to. Let's have a look. I'm thinking about maybe these doodles, maybe 1235. These could be either something based from my dandelion head or based on my daisy. I'm not going to bother putting textures and things in. It's really just to work out the composition. Don't worry about making these composition practice sketches too neat or working on them for too long. It's really just to figure out where to position your elements and also maybe which elements you want to use. I'm just going to try a few alternatives and do it pretty quickly just so that I can pick the one that I want to work with. Let's try one of those big daisies like this shape here. And maybe something a bit smaller, I think because these are so much bigger, I probably can only really fit three. Now I'm trying an idea where I've got lots of different types of flowers in one, The ones that I've done so far, I've got maybe one or sometimes two types of flower with some smaller elements. But it might be interesting to try a design that's just got lots and lots of different kind of flowers and doodles. I've just created a few quick sketches to figure out how I'd like to compose my mandala. I've tried a few different things, some of them have only got one type of doodling that's repeated. So that's got like one flower plus some leaves, and that one is just one shape that's filling the whole circle. Some of them have got more. There's two in this one, and this one has got lows and loads of different types. I think the design that I'm most pulled towards today is this one here that's got two different types of doodles in it, something similar to this daisy, and there are three of those large ones plus some elements that are a bit like this or this. I've got two of those doodles that are quite similar based on both the daisy and the dandelion head, which can sort of fit in between them. So I quite like the fact that there's sort of two different types of flower in there, and then I can fill the spaces up with some leaves. So I think I'm going to go with this as my design. Now, I'll lightly sketch a circle shape on my drawing paper to give me the structure of my mandala. Now don't forget, we're planning to erase the pencil lines later. So try and keep them nice and light. So I'm going to draw around this circular object, which is about the right size because it's just a little bit smaller than my drawing paper. So I've got both my composition plan and my botanical doodle library out so that I can keep referring to them as I draw. So you can see the way that I've sketched this in my composition practice circle is to have three of those kind of large ish, kind of daisy shapes. So I might just see if there's something that I can draw around which will help me to get the roughly the right size. I'm just going to use one of my smaller circular objects to just roughly place where those are. Obviously, they're not going to be perfect circles because I'm going to be making them more kind of. Daisy like if you like. But I just want to get the starting point there. I'm just creating a border around that first circle because I want that to daisy to be the largest one. Actually, I feel as though the position of this lower one just needs altering a little bit because it's a bit directly underneath that top one. I'd prefer it to be a bit more over to the right. I'm just going to re sketch that. This is why it's great to sketch things out in pencil first so that we know that we can be happy with the overall balance of shapes and things. I can also possibly start to sketch in where some of those smaller shapes are going to be. I'll just use this to create some positions for them. Now they might end up being slightly different in size because I would prefer them all to be slightly different so that they have a bit more of an organic feel and an organic look to them. But just putting in some, what I might call placeholder circles there where I know the flowers are going to go is just going to help me to make sure that I'm kind of fitting in the amount that I want to fit in. So I'm going to do some slightly smaller ones as well, which I'm just going to freehand. It's always best to start with your largest elements first and then fill the gaps with the smaller doodles and patterns. It just makes it much, much easier than trying to do it the opposite way around. You can see that I've just added in some of these smaller freehand circles around my larger ones. I can also start to think about leaf shapes as well. I'm going to have a mixture of tiny leaves and some slightly bigger leaves. The reason why it's good to do this before you start inking your design and doodling is sometimes you want things to overlap. For example, this really large daisy here, there's going to be a center in it which will be maybe something around that size. Maybe I want there to be a big leaf here and it might actually overlap with one of the other flowers. That's something that's useful to consider is the main positioning of everything before you actually start drawing with pen. It can be really nice to have some of your botanical elements just breaking out of the circle shape. This creates a really lovely, organic feel to the whole thing. Particularly if you block in the circle, which will really make your doodles pop. You don't need to draw in all the details in your sketch. For example, if I'm filling in some of these circles with parallel lines, I won't sketch all those in the sketch is really just to help me make sure that I've got all the main elements positioned where I'm happy with. 8. Mandala 1 Draw-Along | PART 2: I'm now going to switch to my pen and start inking my mandala. As I begin this, I'm going to incorporate the mindful technique of narrating my process. I'm doing this anyway, because I'm creating the drawing as a demonstration. So I've been talking through what I'm doing, but I'm going to get a bit more intentional with it. Now the thinking part is done because I've now got the rough sketch. Now I don't need to think about where I'm drawing different things. This is where it's often quite easy for our mind to check out of what we're doing and be somewhere else. Narrating our drawing can help to encourage it to stay present. Now I'm taking the pendelid off and I'm going to start with my daisy shape. I'm going to just pay attention to how I've drawn it on my botanical doodle library. I'd like it to be really quite big. I'm going to start with the middle and I'm just drawing circles. I'm going to fill that circle shape with as many circles as I can fit in there. I'm still drawing circles, Drawing them in a row, and they're starting to form an outline of a circle filling in the middle of the circle. Now with smaller circles, this part of the flower is the bit that's got the pollen in it. Now I'm going to start doing the petals. I'm going to start from the circles and do a really big sweeping mark. And I'm going to go to the opposite side and do another one there. I'm going to do the sort of 90 degree angles next. Just because when I work in a circle, that often tends to be how I like to fill it out evenly is to go, rather than just going all the way around in one. I like to evenly draw my circles, drawing another petal. Now now I'm starting to fill in the gaps in between with more petals. So it's like a really nice big daisy. My petals are slightly different lengths, but that's okay. In reality, they're not all exactly the same. I am making them all slightly different to each other, They won't be completely even now. I'm going to do my second daisy. I'm going to repeat exactly the same process that I've just done. Now I'm drawing circles and moving my pen around in a big circle made of lots of little circles. There's a lot of circles in this class. Now. I'm filling the center of my daisy a bit more randomly with those small circles. Now I will draw the petals in the same way that I did before. You will find when you are narrating your process, you'll find that you'll just naturally stop. Because it's not really usual for us to keep talking all the time without stopping. Don't worry. If you do find that you've not said anything for a while, it might be that when you have stopped, you might notice that your mind has wandered off somewhere. Which if that's the case, it's quite an interesting experiment to notice that actually, if you do start narrating your process again, does it help to bring you back into the drawing and just stop your mind from going elsewhere? Definitely works for me. Technique that I do often use. I don't often do it out loud though. I usually do it just internally and silently in my mind. I just find that it really helps me to stay present and find the whole process much more relaxing. Now I'm moving on to the third big flower. I'm going to do the same technique. I'm drawing circles, rod in a big circle and now I'm going to fill that circle. Now that the flowers are completed, I'm going to draw the leaves. Now I'm going to start drawing in some of my circular, more simplified elements like this. These are mostly going underneath the bigger flowers. I can just really carefully draw them as if they're underneath. Again, they have this fanning out shape. I'm going to be doing parallel lines. Now I'm drawing lots of lines. Going from the center out to the edge. And this flower is overlapping over the edge of my main circle. If you're repeating something again and again, it can become trickier in a way to narrate what you're doing. So don't be afraid to just say I'm drawing another one and now I'm drawing another one and now I'm drawing another one. Because over the course of your drawing, that will really help you to stay present with it. This side is mostly done. I feel as though I'd quite like to sort of start filling that in now. Rather than just completely coloring it in black. I might actually do small circles in the background and then color around them just to give a bit more interest and texture. But you can always just do it completely plain if that is more appealing, if you're following along with me. It does take a bit longer to color around circles rather than just blocking it all in. But I do like the effect of it. It creates the appearance of maybe tinier leaves and botanical elements. Because there are so many different shapes and things in here that it's nice to try and give the drawing that bit of variety. You'll start to see as you start coloring in. If you're coloring in the background that it's really making the drawings pop out from the background, draws more attention to the detail that you've got in your doodles. Okay. So I think I'm fairly happy with how that's looking now. So I'm going to say that one is finished and I've just very carefully erased the pencil lines just so that I can check to see if there's any bits that I just need to go back and touch up. But I'm pretty happy with it. Now it's your turn. So if you haven't already started your drawing, pause the video here and start your Mandala drawing. In the next video, we'll be exploring our second mandala style together. Join me there when you're ready. 9. Mandala 2: Cycles: Second Mandala Composition style is based around the idea of cycles. Visually, this means we are going to be creating our design around the edge of the circle shape, leaving a hole in the center. Cycles are at the root of the circular nature of life. Nature and the botanical world provide us with incredible visual examples of cycles from the changing of the seasons through to the life cycle of a plant. These can all help to remind us of the nature of life's impermanence. And this is a concept which can be particularly helpful to reflect on in times of stress. There are a few ways you can approach this Mandala style. And again, I would encourage you to take a look at your botanical doodle library. Just pick out some elements to work with which you feel drawn to. Here are some ideas for how you might enjoy composing this drawing. You could introduce a second smaller circle inside your large circle and treat this as a shape which you could fill with one or several botanical doodles, much like the first mandala style, just with a hole in the center. This could lead you to consider creating a more organic wreath style design with intertwining branches, leaves, and floral elements. Or even just with a very simple repeating shape, it could be a simplified wreath drawing. Another approach could be to begin from either the outer or inner circle naturally and organically, allow your doodles to grow outward or inward. This can be a nice midway idea between a more rigid structure and a more organic wreath style design. Here are a few examples which might help to inspire how you'd like to approach this particular drawing. Use those small composition practice circles to play with some designs and sketch out a few composition ideas inspired by your botanical doodle library. Before you begin, don't overthink this. Just go with the idea for the composition which most appeals to you and you feel drawn to in this moment. You can always plan out several to use for another time. If we consider breathing as a cycle, can tune into it as we draw, which can make an excellent mindful drawing practice. If you feel comfy, try breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth. This can really help us to feel the breath cycle more fully. Breathing just a little more slowly and deeply can also help to physically calm us. But this is really important. Don't force yourself to breathe in a particular way which feels unnatural, because it can end up making you feel a bit tense or even a bit out of breath. Just try a couple of deep breaths like this. If you can notice how the sensations feel in your body, and then allow your breathing to return to normal, whatever that means to you. But just keep noticing your breath as it's going in and out from your body. Try and track where the breath is in your body, whether it's currently in your nose or further into your chest. Also notice how deeply it's traveling into your body before it begins its journey back out again. Sometimes if I've been stressed, I've checked in with my breathing and just notice that it's really high up in my body. Just going through my nose and throat and not really fully into my chest. And I've even noticed certain times where I've been holding my breath when I've been tense. Just paying attention to your breathing can help to release some of this tension. And doing it as you're drawing this cyclical mandala can be a great opportunity to connect with your breath. Another way that I've found my breath has interacted with the process of doodling is that sometimes there's an opportunity to sync what you're drawing with your breathing. For example, if you are creating a drawing which has a lot of repeating marks or shapes, sometimes you may find that the rhythm aligns. An inhale may be the same length of time as it takes to draw a particular doodle, for example, then another with an exhale. This won't always work because it does depend on what you're drawing. But it's something you might enjoy trying out as you work through your mandala drawing. Okay. It's your turn to give this second mandala style a try. Don't forget to use those mandala composition practice circles to help you plan your mandala before you start drawing. In the next video, I'll be walking you through a cyclical mandala example. So if you would like to follow along with me, then join me there. Or if you would prefer to get started on your own version straightaway, feel free to skip that video and join me again as we explore our third mandala style. 10. Mandala 2 Draw-Along | PART 1: Welcome to the second of our three draw along videos, and in this video I'm going to walk you through a cyclical mandala. Parts of the demo will be sped up, so don't forget to pause the video whenever you need to. I'm going to start by sketching a few more ideas onto my mandala composition practice circles. I'd like to approach this cyclical mandala a little bit like a wreath, but perhaps a little more simplified. So I'm going to use some intertwining linear elements with some kind of leaf and flower doodles attached to them. So I'm going to have my botanical doodle library next to me as well. Just so that I can remember exactly what kind of are the main shapes that I'm working with. Think about a sort of flowy kind of thinking about maybe a couple of largish elements. Maybe the shape of this one is sort of more concentrated in one area. In a way, maybe something a bit more simplified would be interesting. Maybe even something very simple with just some leaf designs would be nice as well. It's quite handy to go back and revisit the parts of my botanical doodle library where I drew a few things which were representing my object as a linear doodle because that can be quite nice to think about going around the outside of the circle creating that cycling shape. So I could try some of these slightly more, um, abstract doodles and patterns as well, which might be really nice, quite like the idea of doing something very simple. But the actual doodle I might make more interesting and complex. Maybe something like this one where it's got a few circles and then a center to it. If you imagine that each, each circle would have a bit more detail to it. So that's a more simplified version, quite like this scalloped edge that came from the leaf that I photographed. So I might try using that. I've got a few different designs here and ideas based on a few different ways of approaching this kind of cyclical mandalaa, Ranging from quite organic and with lots of different flower styles in it, to very simplified and very sparse. This one here is just like a layer of leaves up to quite thick and bushy. There's quite a range, the one that I feel kind of drawn to to give a try today, I think is something a bit like this one where it's kind of fairly built up and bushy and there's kind of a few different types of flowers and leaves in there, so it feels quite organic, like a kind of real flower arrangement wreath. So I think I'm going to try something like that. So next I'll lightly sketch a circle shape on my drawing paper to give me the structure. So to help me with the overall structure, I'm going to use two circles. I'm going to use one of sort of larger circle and one that's a little bit smaller on the inside. I'm pressing slightly harder with my pencil than I normally would, just so that it shows up on camera. Because sometimes pencil lines can disappear a little bit, I'll see that one might be a bit too big. Let's try something a bit smaller that looks better. I'd like to create this design, not completely, even all the way around the circle, you can see the way I've sketched it, it's a bit more sparse over on this one side. I'm actually going to move my circle so that it's not completely central within the first circle to help give me that structure, having that shape is going to help me to know where to position my intertwining branches and floral elements. But within that, the shapes can be quite organic. As with the first mandala style, they can go over the edges of those circles. But it just really helps to have that structure before you start drawing. Because especially when you're drawing quite organic and with lots of repeating shapes, it can be quite hard to keep track of the overall shape and structure that you're going for. It's really helpful to have that pencil structure there. So I'm going to start to create some gently waving, linear shapes to act as the branches, because these are going to form the basis of my reef. I'm just going to create something not perfectly circular but a little bit more organic, and I'm going to have more than one of those. I think next I can start thinking about the position of where some of my largest elements will be. I will probably use my circle templates just to help me get those positions roughly where I think they're going to work best. It's a slightly asymmetrical design, so I've got a few bigger elements kind of arranged on this side. Again, I'm going to work with that rule of using odd numbers just because it tends to make things look more natural and organic. And even even when things are random, you want it to look random but still kind of evenly spread and balance. I think I'm going to use just three of the sort of really big elements, and then I'll add in lots of smaller ones in between as well. I'd quite like to add another floral doodle shape, because in my sketch, I've only really got two different types of shapes in there. And I quite like this shape, which I did in this design, which is based on something like one of my daisy ones. So I'm going to add in a few things like that as well. Top tip. If you're working with a wreath design like this, it can be really nice to have a little bit of asymmetry. Sometimes an area where the wreath is a little full, maybe it's got some larger botanical elements and you could even have some part of the wreath where it doesn't actually even totally kind of meet. Or there's a little gap. Visually, it still looks like a continuous cycle. And that can be a really nice way to play with that kind of circular design. With style, designs are great because they can work beautifully. Either quite sparse with just a handful of botanical elements, or you can make them kind of really, really full and bushy. So with this one it's pretty full. And I guess I'm trying to kind of put a lot of different botanical elements in there, but you could make yours much more simple if that is something that appeals to you. 11. Mandala 2 Draw-Along | PART 2: I'm now going to start inking my mandala. And as I do this, I'm going to incorporate the mindful technique that we discussed of checking in with my breathing. I'm going to start by just taking a couple of deep breath before I start in through the nose and out through the mouth. I can already feel that this is a much deeper level of breathing than I have been doing. I think my breathing has been quite shallow. I'm actually an incredibly camera shy person. I find it really takes me outside my comfort zone to be in front of a camera. I think that probably explains why my breathing has been so shallow. But yeah, just that too deep breath. It just felt I could literally feel my body relaxing as I start drawing Where there's an opportunity to, I'm going to see if there is some, an opportunity to draw in sync with my breathing. If that crops out, there's quite a few different elements to draw. It may be tricky to do that in some way because there's not as much repetition of the same shape. If I was drawing a design a bit more like this, where the, that design is made up of exactly the same shape that's repeated. I might be able to tune in a bit more and try and sync the rhythm of my breathing with the drawing of the shapes. But I'll see where an opportunity comes up if that works, finding that the breathing kind of rhythm is working a bit with drawing the petals of these bigger flowers. As I'm drawing one petal, I'm kind of slowing down how I'm drawing it, but I'm finding that it is kind of syncing with the length of one breath cycle in and out, which is quite nice. Sometimes it can be quite nice to actually slow down your drawing, cause sometimes we tend to rush. Actually, going slowly can be a really nice thing to try as well. Just adding in these little lines to the petals of this flower. Like I did with these doodles that I created from the daisy design, I think it just helps to make it pop out a bit. It looks a bit more three D, which I quite like. I'm going to repeat the same flower as I've just done, but this one is behind the first one. I'm using that same technique that I did before with the first mandala, of doing opposite side petals first a bit like a clock. So it's 12.6 and then 3.9 And I'll sort of work my way round just to make everything look. Even now I've done that first layer of petals, I'm doing another layer in between. So I'm just drawing the tips of them. And then I'll create that sort of texture by doing some lines from the center. I've got one more of these larger flowers, so I'm going to do that next. I always think it's a good idea to start with your kind of largest elements that you want to be the standout doodles in your design. And then the smaller ones just fit around those where you want them to. Every now and then, I'm just being a bit more conscious of my breathing even though I'm not really finding as many opportunities now to sync my breathing with the drawing, I'm just trying to breathe a bit deeper and a bit slower. It's very noticeable, I find it really helps me to physically feel much calmer. Even just one or two deep breaths has quite a big impact. Okay, so I've drawn in my three larger floral elements. So now I'm going to start approaching some of these kind of medium sized flowers. I'm intentionally doing the flowers before I do the branches, because I want the flowers to be in front of the branches. But I have got those branches drawn in in pencils so I know where they're going. But I'd just prefer, yeah, for the flowers and leaves to sort of take center stage. It may even be that the branches don't really notice that much by the time that I've drawn in all of the other shapes, I'm making these circular doodles sort based on this design. But I've just added kind of row of parallel lines around the edge just to give it a little bit more sort of detail. So you'll notice this dod there's a few different sizes and I can fit more detail in if it's bigger, but if it's smaller, I'm leaving out one of the rings. So I'm just using my judgment to decide how many. Rings it has. Then when I do some really small ones, the filler shapes, I'm just going to switch it to something like this. That's the circle with a filled in bit in the middle. I think just having that variety, it gives you a bit more flexibility because it's not always possible to fit all that detail into a much smaller size. It can be frustrating if you can't fit it all in, just adapting as I go. Next, I want to start to add in some of the shapes that I created that were like this fan shape, which were based on looking at the daisy from its side. I'm going to add those next. Okay, so I've done most of those kind of fan shaped flowers. I've got a few that I added in, which are just kind of based on this sort of silhouette of the daisy that I did on my botanical doodle library. So I'm going to add those in and then see where I've got to. I've got most of my botanical doodles now drawn in, so I'm going to see where that sort of wiggly stem part is and where that's visible. I'll draw that in and then I can start also doing some leaves in all the gaps. At the moment, I'm really just trying to fill any gaps with just little leaves. This is where that pencil structure is really helpful because I'm trying to work within that shape and really try and fill it with botanical elements as much as possible because I wanted it to feel quite dense. I'm just adding little leaves. The what I'm going to do now is actually rub out the pencil marks so that I can take a clearer look at how things are. Because sometimes it's hard to see, whilst there's still pencil marks there, if there are any gaps and then I will see if I think it's finished, I've just rub the pencil marks out. I'm just going to add a few tiny, tiny, tiny elements which are just going to be solid little dots, just so that they can fill areas like here. For example, it feels as though this circular element is a bit on its own. I feel as though having some little dots there near it would just help it to feel a bit more finished then where I feel as though the shape just needs a bit of finishing off. I'll just add some of those little dots in. They just look like tiny, tiny flowers. Okay. I think I'm fairly happy with how that one is looking. Now, I'm going to say that this one is finished. If you haven't already started it or you just need a little extra time, then pause the video here to work on your Mandala drawing. In the next video, we'll be exploring our third mandala style together. Join me there when you're ready. 12. Mandala 3: Growth: Our third Mandala style is one which embodies the idea of growth visually. There is a little more structure here as the idea is to consider the circle beginning as a seed in the center. And the structure growing out from that point. A little like the rings of a tree. Reflecting on the idea of growth can of course, reconnect us with our subject here in thinking about nature and the plants we have been inspired by in creating our doodles. But it's also an opportunity for us to reflect inward and consider our own personal growth, where we've come from and where we may be headed. There are a lot of ways you could interpret this idea of growth. Here are a few ideas. You could repeat the same doodle over and over, beginning at a point and growing organically from it. This could be from the center of the circle, or maybe it's slightly off center, and it could grow evenly. Or in a more organic or sporadic way, you could create a more rigid structure of concentric circles which you could fill with different types of doodles, either randomly or more formally arranged could touch, or maybe there could be space between them to accentuate the different layers. Your layers don't necessarily need to be circles either. Could you create a row of leaves followed by a row of flowers, for example? You may find it helpful to use the structure of concentric circles to help you place your different elements. But you can be really creative with what exactly those layers look like and the shapes they create. Here are a few examples which might help to inspire how you'd like to approach this particular drawing. But my advice would be to take a good look at your botanical doodle library and see if there's just something there that you feel intuitively drawn to. And go with that. Before you begin to draw, try out a few different approaches on your mandala composition practice circles just to be sure you're happy with the approach before you begin drawing. You don't need to spend long on this or make it look beautiful. It's just to give you an idea and a structure to work from, which will definitely result in a less stressful experience as you start drawing in the same way as a plant grows and flourishes given the rights care, we too can grow if we can access and appreciate the things which nourish us for our growth mandala. I'm going to invite you to reflect on what you can connect within your life, which you feel helps to support, nourish you and helps you to grow. These things don't need to be huge. They can be tiny, seemingly insignificant joys like the way the sun creates light patterns on your bedroom wall in the morning, or the sound your cat makes when he's really happy, or maybe the smell of coffee in the morning. These may be little tiny moments which tend to get lost in the everyday business of life. But as you draw, try to reflect on what these little things are for you. If it helps, you could make a list alongside your drawing, or you can just keep it in your head when we begin to pay attention to and notice the things which create these tiny moments of joy in our lives. It allows us to become more mindful when those moments happen and brings us back into the present moment to fully appreciate them. Give this a try and see if you become more aware when they next happen. All right? It's your turn now to try out a growth mandala and give that little exercise a try as you draw too. In the next video, I'll be demonstrating an example for how you could approach this drawing. Feel free to come along with me or skip ahead to the following video if you prefer. 13. Mandala 3 Draw-Along | PART 1: Welcome to our final draw along video. In this video, we'll be creating together a growth mandala. Just a reminder that parts of the demo will be sped up. So don't forget to pause the video whenever you need to. I'm going to start with a little planning by sketching a few ideas onto my Mandala Composition Practice Circles worksheet. One idea that I quite like is to create something fairly structured, so there would be, say, doodles in alternate rings around a central point that they grow out from the middle. Another idea that I quite like is to do something organic like this. I'm not going to draw the whole thing because it'll take ages if I'm doing tiny marks like this. But what I will do is think about the shape that, that might, I like the idea of it being not entirely finished circle. It's growing from the central point, but it's a slightly incomplete circle. Simple. The two mandalas that I've drawn already have been fairly complex with a lot of elements in. I quite like the idea of really simplifying this one. I quite like to try maybe using a leaf shape just because I've done a lot of flowers quite like this simple leaf shape and it can grow. I guess in a similar idea to this one, it could be that there's a part of the shape missing. I quite like that effect. It feels really organic which suits that botanical theme. Like the simplicity of the leaf shape as well, it's nice to focus on that rather than more complex flower patterns. Those leaves would be overlapping each other. I'm not going to draw the whole thing in, but get this idea from that. Another idea would be to do something. Maybe that's a bit more like a traditional mandala style. Maybe starting in the center with something. It might not necessarily be this shape of flower, but just thinking about starting in the center and then using all the different sort of doodles in rows around the outside, which could make a really nice design. There may be more rows than this. I'm just sketching it in very loosely and roughly to give a idea like this, really simple idea which came from the dandelion head to create that fluffy texture. That a simple idea, but it could make effective design to actually just create something like that from the center out. Maybe it would even have a little center point like those dandelion heads do, actually. On a larger scale, this could be really impactful, I think. Now let's see what other doodles am I feeling inspired by? Possibly could take some of these linear ideas and make them into circles. I guess it's a bit like the second mandala style in it's a bit wreath like, but maybe there could be several of them in rows. That could be really nice. Again, I think it would probably have more layers. I'm representing here in this sketch, I just want to get the idea down on paper. It could be something like that, but maybe it'll be expanding out a little bit more. Another thing that is nice to explore, possibly these ones here have a slightly more off centered approach, but I think it could be nice to. Maybe explore that idea of the growth coming from the very center of the circle. The growth coming from a slightly different point could be a really nice thing. There would be an opportunity to do something quite nice with that. It almost feels quite three dimensional. Then I could fill these little rows with more botanical doodles. Maybe one would be leaf shapes, but each time they're pointing towards that as the center rather than in the center, being in the middle of the circle, this creates quite a different effect, which I think could be really nice. I think what I'm feeling quite drawn to is actually to do something very simple for this mandala. I feel like I'd like to use a leaf shape just because I've used mostly floral elements so far. I'm really quite liking the impact that this simple leaf shape repeated. I quite like that idea of not necessarily completing the circle as well. It can take on its own path and its own format. So I think I'm going to try something like that for the way I've chosen to approach this particular mandala. I don't really need any more of a sketch than just a circle outline to work to, because the doodles are going to be quite organic in the way that they work within the circle. All I need to do in terms of planning is to have an outside circle and a point where the shapes will start growing from. It can be quite a nice effect to leave some parts of the circle slightly incomplete. It isn't totally filled in. If you take that approach, it's a good idea to lightly sketch in the general shape you're aiming to create with your doodles, just so you can make sure that you end up with that overall effect. Because it's quite easy to get carried away when you're just working with one simple repeating doodle. I'm, let's give myself the circle outline then. I think I'm going to think about the circle being slightly incomplete on opposite sides, perhaps, maybe something like this. I feel as though I'm going to start my shapes from somewhere around here. It might be that it takes on a slightly different shape to what I've sketched, depending on how I feel it's looking. But it's useful just to have that structure as a starting point. 14. Mandala 3 Draw-Along | PART 2: I'm going to be able to start with my pen straight away. I'm going to start from my central point and I'm going to use these very simple leaf shapes. I'm not even going to put a second line down the middle or veins or anything. It's literally just an outline where I'm starting to hit that pencil shape where I feel like I want to leave that. I'm just slightly changing the direction of my leaf shapes top tip. If you're creating a very organic looking design like this one tip I would give you is to keep moving your paper at different angles. Also keep switching the bit of the drawing that you're working on every few minutes. This keeps a really nice natural even, but we key organic effect as I've now started to ink my Mandala. I'm just going to grab just an extra piece of paper to have next to me as I'm drawing just to be able to reflect on those little moments of joy that we spoke about in the last video. Just so that I can jot them down as I'm drawing, because this is just one simple shape that I'm repeating over and over again. I think it gives your mind a little bit more space to think. I'm not having to think about what I'm drawing or the composition or what's going to come next. Because it's just the same again and again, it's just changing direction slightly. That I think is sometimes when we can get into a bit of a danger zone in terms of not really being present with our drawing, having like an extra small task to do. In this case, I'm trying to come up with a little list of things that fill me with joy is just enough of a task to give your brain to hopefully just keep it in here and now and not wandering off to somewhere else. Thinking about your to do list and what's for dinner and what you need to get at the shop later. I'm quite enjoying the simplicity of this one. It's a lot more free, I guess the structure is, although it's got a structure to it, it's still very fluid because it's all coming from this point and expanding out. I do really feel as though it is embodying this idea of growth which we're aiming for in this particular mandala. You'll notice as I'm getting to this point where there's going to be a gap. Making the pattern split into two. If you like, imagine if this was water pouring against a surface. That's how it would kind of react. I feel like I quite like to adjust this shape a bit to something a bit more like that. As your drawing is starting to come together, I see there's a flow of the shape and the pattern. I'd like to be able to direct that a bit. I feel like I'd like it to curve. So I'm just going to add those pencil guidelines to just help me with the direction that I want the pattern to go in. Because it's a bit tricky sometimes when you're in the middle of the drawing to take a kind of wider view like that. So just using the pencil marks as guides is quite helpful if you find yourself having just been drawing for a while and you've sort of forgotten about your kind of list of things which bring you joy. It's quite normal. You can get quite into the drawing part. Just try and take a pause every now and then and a deep breath. And just try and think of one more thing to add to your list. So I pretty much filled the circle. Now I'm just adding a few additional bits to these sort of circular bits that are left, just to make them feel a little bit more natural and organic because they are quite sort of circular. So I'm just adding a sort of a bit to the edge of those shapes, just where those leaf shapes feel like they're going in a little bit just to make it feel a bit more natural. I kind of like the idea that this is representative of maybe how a plant might grow and it might sort of growing quite an organic way, but you can kind of see where it started from. That's why I quite like the simplicity of it. Okay, so I think I'm fairly happy with how that's looking. Now I'm going to say that that is finished. I'm going to rub the pencil marks out and then just check that I'm completely happy with it. Okay. So I'm pretty happy with it. Now. I'm going to say that that one is finished. If you haven't already started, or if you need a little more time to finish, pause the video here and you can carry on with your Mandala drawing. In the next video, I'll talk you through a few ideas for next steps you may want to explore. If this is a technique you'd like to delve into further, join me there when you're ready. 15. Next Steps: Congratulations on making it through the class. I hope you have enjoyed the process and have created some drawings which you feel proud of. So where do we go next? I hope this class has given you a framework from which you could continue a creative practice for self care, whether it's continuing to create more mandalas, or perhaps you'll take your botanical doodling in a slightly different direction. I hope that you will use the skills that you've learnt in this class to help support you on your creative path. Here are some ideas for how you could continue or adapt the class. Going forward, you could create more mandalas. The compositional structures we have explored have so much scope for exploration. And the more you add to your photo references and your botanical doodle library, the more ideas you will continue to develop. I'm sure you already have heaps of little sketches on your Mandala composition practice circles, which would be a great place to begin. It may be that there was a specific part of the process you feel you want to develop further. Maybe the gathering inspiration part of the process will lead you to going on to create a huge bank of reference images. Maybe it's the photographing nature part of the process you really loved. Or maybe you'd like to develop your botanical doodle library more and focus on working with your references to create some simplified doodles and drawings. You could try your botanical doodles within different shape structures. How might they work? In squares or triangles, for example? Or maybe you want to incorporate them into something more illustrative. You could begin to explore color within your doodles, either by doodling onto a colored background or you could explore different materials to start adding color to the drawings. If you really enjoyed the mindful approaches to drawing I included in the class, then you might enjoy my other classes on art making for mindfulness and self care. Be sure to check those out and if drawing these botanical inspired mandalas is something you really enjoyed and would like to continue, but you really prefer having that more structured guidance that we had from the draw along videos. Then you are welcome to visit my website and download my free botanical doodling workbook. There is so much scope for you to build on the foundation of skills we have developed in this class. Follow your curiosity and see where your botanical doodles might lead you. 16. Thank You!: Thank you so much for coming on this creative journey with me. I hope that in the process of creating these experimental mandalas, you've made some discoveries about ways you can connect with and gather inspiration from the world around you. Develop your own way of interpreting what you find and express your creativity in the process. If there's one thing you take away from this class, I hope it's the desire and curiosity to be more present and find more joy in the process. With creative endeavors, we are often preoccupied with what the finished article looks like. But I hope you feel as though each step of this process has given you something else which adds up to way more than the finished drawings. I would be thrilled to see your class projects and hear about your process. If you feel comfy, please do share a class project over in the Projects and Resources tab. If you enjoyed the class, please consider leaving me a review. I would appreciate it. If you'd like to stay in touch and hear about my new skillshare classes, then don't forget to give me a follow here on skill share. If you'd like to hear about my other projects, workshops, free resources, tutorials, behind the scenes and other life and fun stuff, then you might enjoy being a part of mail mail my quarterly newsletter. If you share any of the work that you've created during this class on social media, then don't forget to tag me and use the hashtag, mindful mandalas so that I can see your work, which always absolutely makes my day. I love to share your work there too. Thank you so much for joining me and I hope I'll see you in another of my classes soon. Bye for now.