Procreate Mandalas: Draw, Paint, and Shade a Mandala on your iPad

1. Intro: [Music] Hi, I'm Karen. In this class we'll be trying mandalas in Procreate, on the iPad. Mandalas are so relaxing to draw. And with Procreate you can make mandalas quite fast and pretty easily. Here's what we'll cover in class. First, we'll practice drawing some petal shapes, blind embellishments and petal embellishments. This class includes a PDF with lots of different shapes and embellishments first to practice together. it also includes four guides that we will be using in Procreate throughout the lessons. I'll show you my workflow for creating a perfectly symmetrical eight point mandala and I'll also show you how to incorporate perfect circles in your mandalas. Then we'll add color to our mandalas in several ways. We'll change the background color and the line color. We'll change the inner background and we will color inside the lines. Then we'll add depth and dimension to our mandalas by adding shading. I'll show you how to easily switch to a different colorway and how to find color palettes and tweak the colors to your liking. I'll guide you through a simpler and smaller mandala first. And then we'll draw a detailed and intricate mandala together as well. This class is packed with time-saving tips, tricks, techniques, and workflows to make drawing mandala's easy, smooth, and surprisingly fast so that you can relax and flow and enjoy the process. Not only will you create unique and colorful mandalas in this class but you can also apply what you learn to other procreate drawing styles as well. This is a step-by-step class, it's suitable for beginners. And it's also great for anyone who's interested in drawing mandalas using Procreate. Even if you've never used Procreate before, you'll be able to follow along and I'm always here to help, if you need me. All you need is an iPad, the Procreate app, and the compatible stylus, like the Apple pencil. I hope you'll join me and I already can't wait to see your creations. Let's dive right in. 2. Your Project & Resources: Your project for this class is to draw Mandela in Procreate, color it in using two-color ways, and add shading using the techniques demonstrated in class. If this seems like a lot right now, don't worry about it. I'll walk you through the process step-by-step in the upcoming lessons. Now, let's go over the resources included in this class. There's one PDF, and four PNGs. You can't access the resource files from the Skillshare App at the moment of recording this video. In order to get these resources, you need to open up Skillshare from a browser. From Chrome or Safari, open up this class's page in a browser, and underneath the class video, you'll see about, reviews, discussions, and projects and resources. Tap on Projects and Resources, and the resource files will be right here on the right. Now let's take a look at these files. The first one is a PDF of the petal shapes, line embellishments and pedal embellishments that we'll be practicing together in the next three lessons. You can print this out or just have it visible on another screen if you'd like. But you don't have to. You can just follow along with the video demonstrations in the upcoming lessons. That's the PDF. The next four resources are guides. What you need to do with each of these is to tap on a link, and this will open the image in a new browser tab, tap and hold and let go, and Save Image. Let's do the same for the rest of them. Now, if we go to the photos app, will see these four images that we just saved. If you open the image and it looks black, don't worry about it. That's just because it has a transparent background. Save the four PNG guide images to your photos now, before proceeding to the next lesson, because we will be using them. 3. Petals: In this lesson, we're going to practice drawing some basic petal shapes. Let's open up the procreate app, and tap on this plus, to create a new Canvas, and tap on this plus, to create a new custom Canvas. We can rename this Canvas to Mandalas, and define the width and the height to be 4,000 by 4,000 pixels. Tap on ''Create''. Now we can pinch with two fingers to zoom in, zoom out, and we can rotate the Canvas. Let's choose black. I'm tapping the color over here, and double tapping near the bottom, which will snap to the true black. Let's choose a brush. We're going to go to the calligraphy category, and choose the mono line brush. This brush is really great for Mandalas because it's got a uniform line thickness and it's completely opaque and it's also streamlined. The line is smoothed out for us. Now I tap with two fingers to undo, tap with three fingers to redo. I can control the thickness of the line over here. Now, what we're going to do, is tap on the Settings menu, add, insert a photo and find the photo that says petals onto the top. That's going to place it for us in the center of the Canvas, which is exactly where we want it, and tap this arrow, to keep it there. If we look at our layers, we've got this layer called layer one. If I show and hide the layer, you can see that the image was added to this layer.Let's rename this layer to guide. Let's add another layer above it. Now we're going to do is draw our petals on these guidelines. We're going to refer to the samples PDF in the class, and we're going to draw these petals. You could draw the petals like this, but they're not going to be symmetrical along the center line and Procreate can help you with that. Let me show you how. You tap on the "Settings menu", "Canvas", "Turn on drawing guide", "Edit Drawing guide", "Symmetry", and "Options". Now in the options you see that vertical is selected and that's what we want. Then click on" Done". What this did was it added this vertical line in our Canvas and now whatever we draw here will be reflected on the other side. Now if you look at your layers, you're going to see that layer two has this word underneath. It says Assisted and if you tap on the layer, you can see that drawing assist is checked. If I tap on drawing assist it no longer says assisted and whatever I draw is no longer reflected.I want to keep drawing assist on so I can tap on that and it's assisted again. Now you've got that symmetry between the two sides. Now we can go ahead and draw our petals. I like to use a line thickness that's somewhere around 30 percent or so so that the line is not too thin. Or you can choose whichever line thickness you like. I'm going to zoom in pretty close to make it easier for me to put my pen on the vertical symmetry line. I'm going to draw the shapes from the samples PDF. Now if you didn't place your pen exactly at the symmetry line. You got something like this or something like this. What I usually do, is tap with two fingers to undo and do it again, until I'm happy with it but if you don't want to do that, you could also set your eraser to also be the mono line brush under the calligraphy category. Then carefully use a smaller brush size and carefully clean that up. Also, if you didn't like the shape, you can just undo and try again. That's one petal shape. Let's do the next one from the sheet. It's the same except it goes back and goes out and back in. The third petal is the same as the first, except it's got a fancy Taj Mahal shaped top. You can always undo, if you want to try maybe a longer top. The fourth petal is like the third petal, except it goes back in at the bottom. You've got the Taj top and then it goes back in. The next petal is the same as this one except that it has a neck at the bottom. Taj Mahal goes out, goes back in, and then it has this neck at the bottom. The last one is a bit tricky because you want to have your line going at a 90 degree angle, to the symmetry line. It might take a few tries. You can also make it taller and narrower, or shorter and wider. You can play around with that, with this petal and with all of the petal shapes. You can stretch them out any way you like. Now that we've got this column of petals completed, what we can do is duplicate the guide layer, by swiping left and tapping on duplicate and merging the "Petals Layer" with this duplicated guide layer. We do that by tapping the "Top Layer" and tapping on "Merge Down". Let me undo that. Another way to merge the two layers is by pinching them together, which I sometimes find difficult to do. Now I'm going to rename this, to petals one. This is our first column of petals. I'm going to tap this arrow and move it aside, so that I still have my pretty petals, but I can still work with my guide at the center here, like we did with the first column. I'm going to add a new layer, above the guide layer, and we're going to draw our second set of petals. Looking at our samples PDF, our second set of petals is like this. I forgot to turn on assisted for this new layer, so I didn't get any symmetry going on, so I have to tap on the layer, tap on Drawing Assist, you got that assisted word, and then whatever I draw will be reflected. This petal is a lot like this one, except it has a few bounces in it and we can make it with even smaller bounces like this. Now you can see that my bounces have created this triangular shape. You can also make it a little bit more rounded. Going out and then back in. This next petal is the same except the points are going in the other direction. This next one is a lot like this one with a ball on top. The next one is the same as the previous one except it's got that Taj Mahal top and you can play around with the proportions here. For example, I can make this tiny and this one big or the other way around. This next one is really fun. It's got that Taj Mahal top, stops before it reaches the line and then goes in the other direction like that, a bit like a mushroom. We've got our second column of petals complete. We do the same thing. We duplicate the guide layer, we tap on the Petals layer and merge it down. Rename this layer to petals two, tap on the arrow and move this aside. Now we're ready to add a new layer above our guide. Tap that layer and enable drawing assist to get the symmetry and we're going to draw our final column of petals. This petal is a lot like this one, except it's wavy. This next one is a lot like this one but with stretched out arm. To me it looks a lot like a coral shape or fingers. This next one is just a triangle so you can just free hand your triangle. Your line is not going to be perfectly straight but it's going to be straight. Or what you could do is draw the line wait, and what Procreate will do is it'll make your line perfectly straight if you want to do that. I don't use perfectly straight lines in this class, but you are free to do that. You can also make your lines with points, wait, with your pen down, and you've got your perfectly straight lines. You can play around with that as much as you like. Or in this case, I'm just going to make it a little bit curved like that. This next one is like this one except that it has another bulge before the neck goes in. You have your Taj Mahal top bulge and then back in. This next one is like a combination of this one and this one. It's like this one, but with elongated fingers. Some of these will be easier to draw nicely on the first go and some of them will take several tries, at least for me. This last one is a tulip shape. I'm going down from the top, just like we did in the first one. Going up a little bit to the side and back down. Now that we've practiced making these petals, I hope you feel more confident to draw a petal starting at the symmetry line and you also have this sampling of petals to always draw from if you need some ideas for drawing petals in your Mandalas. Another thing I'd like for you to take away from this lesson is that anything can be a petal. You start at the center line and let your line wander and there's your petal. 4. Line Embellishments: Now that we've practiced some petal shapes, we're going to practice some line embellishments. Now we aren't going to practice our line embellishments along a straight line. But the ultimate purpose of line embellishments is to embellish the outside of petals, the inside of petals, and along any other lines as we'll see in later lessons. Let's go back to our gallery and tap on the "Plus" to create a new canvas. Now we don't have to redefine the four thousand by four thousand pixel canvas because we already did that last time and we named it Mandalas. If we just tap here, we'll get that four thousand by four thousand pixel canvas. We'll go to settings, add, insert a photo, and find this one that says line embellishments on top and tap the "Arrow" to keep it there. Although you can practice your line embellishments without any symmetry, I want us to get used to making these embellishments with the symmetry on. So we'll go to settings, canvas, turn on drawing guide, edit drawing guide, symmetry, and we get that vertical line and done. We'll be referring to the samples PDF where there are some sample line embellishments for us to practice together. We can just draw on this layer or add another layer above it if we would like to separate between the guide and embellishments, just make sure to turn drawing assist on. This first one is really simple. It's just the line that follows whatever it is, it's embellishing. The next one is just a bunch of dots so you can change up the size of your dots if you'd like. You can change up the spacing between the dots. You can have one dot at the center, which is a little bit tricky to do sometimes, and then dots along the sides. Or you can have a dot on either side of the symmetry line and then space out the rest of your dots. The next line embellishment is also based on a line, but I'm going to give myself a little bit of room between the line and whatever it is that it's embellishing. Then I'm going use a bit of a larger brush size to draw larger circles along this line. Again, you can have that center circle here or if you prefer, you can just draw the circles on either side of the symmetry line. This next one is a bunch of short lines standing on top of the guideline. This next one is alternating longer and shorter lines. I usually choose a longer line at the center and that can be tricky. But if you put your pen at the center and wait, and then put your pen along with symmetry line, you'll get pretty much a straight line that's not too thick and then alternate long and short. These next ones are based on scallops. Just like we use scallops for our petals, or this rounded shape for our petals, we can use them for our line embellishments. They can be like these or they can be flatter and longer like this or they can be taller like these. Even though they're all the same basic shape, they give a different look to whatever it is you're embellishing. This next one is fun. The scalps are wavy and they're angled sideways. You can play around with how wavy they are, how long they are, and how angled they are. You could also maybe add something in the center. This next one is a zigzag line that forms triangles. You can see that I started here, but I could have also started like this. This next one is also similar to one of the petals that we drew. You could start at the center like this and add some more of them next to it or you could start on either side of the line. This next one is just a bunch of circles that are touching each other. I don't mind that the circles aren't perfect. I think it's pretty, it's hand-drawn, but if you do want to draw a perfect circle, you just draw the circle, wait until it says ellipse created edit shape, tap on "Edit Shape" and turn it into a circle and there is your perfect circle. But I don't think it has the same life as the hand-drawn ones. The next one is a wavy line. Again, you want to start at a 90 degree angle to your symmetry line so that you don't get any kinks at the symmetry line and just draw a wavy line. If you're not happy with it, just undo and try again. This final one is like scallops, but in the opposite direction like this. These are just a few line embellishments that you can use to add some beauty and some interests to your Mandalas. We will be using them in future lessons. But I think it's good to have these both as a reference that you can go back to and as a practice sheet if you'd like to try other ideas and add them. You could do what we did last time by duplicating the guide and merging these two layers together and moving this aside and trying some other line embellishments of your own. 5. Petal Embellishments: So we practice some petal shapes and some line embellishments. And now the last thing we're going to practice, which I think is a lot of fun, is embellishing the inside of petals. So let's go back to the gallery and create a new canvas, 4,000 by 4,000 pixels. Tap on settings, add, insert a photo and find this photo, which is a column of empty petals for us to embellish the insides of. In this lesson we're going to refer to the samples PDF and we're going to embellish petals. Just like the example in the samples PDF. You're welcome to follow along and do each one just as I'm doing it or if you'd like, you're very welcome to try your own embellishments for petals. I'm going to duplicate this layer so that I have a copy of it for my other columns of petal embellishments. I'm going to embellish directly onto this layer. The reason for that is so that I can use the color drop properly. So let's refer to this page in the samples PDF, and let's draw the embellishments as we see them in that PDF. So I'm going to turn on symmetry, canvas, turn on drawing guide, edit drawing guide, and symmetry, and done. Now whatever we draw here, will be reflected and this first one looks a bit like a leaf so I'm starting along the symmetry line. I'm waiting to get that straight line and then letting go. I'm just drawing these diagonal lines on either side. This next one I really love, I think it looks really pretty. It's just a line that starts here, ends here, and flares out. And then one that's a bit further out and further out. If you'd like, you can fill in this space in black so you can always color in with your brush, I can change the brush size and color it in like this, or instead what you could do is use color drops. So I'm dragging the color into here and dropping it and it will fill in the whole space. Maybe it didn't fill in this bit over here, which I can fix with my brush. Now let me undo the filling in, If when you use color drops, something like this happens where it's really not filling in properly and you also have this gap, what you need to do is to use the color drop. Don't lift your pen yet and slide to the right until the color drop threshold is high enough. It'll fill more of the shape. For this next one, I'm going to draw a petal shape in the center and some petals next to it. It's sometimes easier to work with zoomed in and sometimes easier to work more zoomed out. Maybe I'll fix this little mistake over here and again, I'm using color drop to fill in the negative space. This next one is like this one, but the petals are upside down. I made the first petal reach all the way down and the next petals don't reach as far down. I'm using color drop to fill in the negative space. This next one also uses petals, but they're spaced further apart. Then this next one, the petals start at the center and then go out towards the side. In this next one, I'm outlining at a distance from the outer line of the petal. Then outlining at a distance from the center of symmetry line and closing up this shape and again using colored drop to fill it in. In this next one, I'm starting my line pretty far away and then bringing it closer over here. You could also do that with a little bit of a corner like this and then I'm just going to add stripes. So there's our first column of petal embellishments complete. We're going to use this arrow to move it aside. We'll duplicate this bottom layer and make a second column of petal embellishments on it. Just make sure to turn on drawing assist. This one is a bit more complex. I've got this point over here that I'm going to fill in and then I'm going to just draw a bunch of scallops along the edge. This is an example of using a line embellishment like we did in the previous lesson along the inside of the petal. I'm going to pile another row of scallops on top of that. Then I'm going to draw a line that outlines this last row of petals. I'm going to use color drop to fill in this ship. So by combining different ideas and splitting up the petal in different ways, you can get a ton of different designs. In this next one, I start with a line down the center. Wait until it's a straight line and I didn't start with the center, so I'm going to redo that. Then I'm going to add lines going further and further away like this. This next one is one of our line embellishments, it's just a bunch of dots that are following the inside of the petal. For this next one, I'm going to turn off drawing assist because I don't want any symmetry inside of here and I'm going to use a larger brush size. I'm just going to randomly scatter some dots inside of this shape. Let's turn drawing assist back on. For this next one, I'm going to draw lines like this but instead of drawing them with straight lines, I'm going to draw them with a row of dots like this. Sometimes it's easier to start at the center and space out your dots. You can have them larger or smaller. In this next one I have a long line in the center and waiting for it to be straight line, and then I have lines going shorter and shorter like this. This next one I think is really pretty so we have this curved line like a curtain and then we have another curved line down here. So we've split our petal into four areas and this area, I'm going to fill in in black. These two areas, I'm going to fill in with stripes, and this one I'm going to leave blank. You can reuse this idea and think of other ways to split up your petals into sub shapes and embellish each shape separately. This next one is fun, we're not going to stop the symmetry line. We're going to draw a line that keeps going. Then to embellish the bottom of the petal, we're going to draw some tall scallops like this. So there's our second column of petals completed. We can move it aside and work on our third column of petals. Again, I'm duplicating this lower layer with empty petals and turning on drawing assist. So in this one I'm just outlining the petal again and again from the inside. Then this next one, I'm just outlining once and filling it in, and you can maybe make this outline shaped a little bit differently than the petal. This next one, I'm going to add a straight line down here if you want it perfectly straight, just wait and let go. Then I'm adding some curved lines like this and then I'm adding stripes inside each of these. In this next one, I'm going to use one of the line embellishments we practiced in the previous lesson. For the rest of the shape, I'm going to draw an upside down flower like this. I'm going to draw a leaf shape and then another one, and finally a center one. This next one, I'm going to draw another one of the line embellishments from the previous lesson, but this time on the outside of the pedal. For the inside I'm going to draw these wonky scallops. This next one is a lot like this one, but we're going to color it a little bit differently. I'm going to color in the center one and then this one over here, and then this outer one. It's the same idea, but it looks a little bit more dramatic. This next one, I'm going to curve my line like this to meet at a point and another one, and then draw two more of these. I can embellish the inside with dots. In this last one, I'm going to outline the outside of my pedal and then fill it with stripes. For the inside, I'm going to do what I did here. But I'm going to pack it completely with scallops and I'm going to use a bit of a thicker line. That's our third column complete. We can move it aside, duplicate this layer, turn on drawing assist, and let's move on to our fourth column. I'm going to draw a leaf in the center and then a slanted leaf on the side. For this negative space, I'm going to fill it in with some spaced apart ovals. This next one I think is really cool. There is a line down the center. Learning procreate, helped me draw that line. Then some more straight lines going out. Then some stripes that curve this way. It ends up looking a little bit like spider web. In this next one, I'm going to draw some curved shapes like this. I'm going to fill this first one in black and this next one, I'm going to add scallops on top of it, and I'm going to do that again. So another curve, fill it in black and another curve with scallops on top. See sometimes my scallops at the center get bunched up, so I just undo and maybe start at the center and try again. Finally I'm going to add another curve at the bottom and fill in this whole space. This next one is like this one, except it's totally filled in with these lines. Maybe let's make them a bit thicker. Then this next one, I'm just smoothing out the connection between the pedal and the line that it's sitting on. I really like doing this because it accentuates the pedal and add some interest to it. It's not just a straight line. For the center, you can choose whatever embellishment. I choose something like this. For this next one, I'm using one of our line embellishments and I'm drawing scallops on the outside, but I'm alternating tall and short scallops. I'm also outlining these scallops. That's another one of our line embellishments. For the inside, I chose a simple design, just a straight line at the center, and then a few other straight lines and circles at the tips. This next one is really simple. It's just flat scallops along the outer edge. I'm going to leave the inside blank. This next one is taller and stretched out scallops, that point upward. We've got one column to go. Let's move this aside. I'm not going to duplicate this layer, I'm just going to work directly on top of it. Turn on drawing assist and let's try this really cool one. I curve out like this and back down and then I repeat on top of that. Curve out and back down before the tip. I'm going to fill in the negative space. For this next one, I'm also going to turn off drawing assist. I'm just going to draw these curled lines inside the shape. For this next one, I'm going to turn driving assist back on and I'm going to use a thicker line and drag the pencil across like this, and then add some filler lines in the empty shapes. For this next one, I'm going to use a more delicate and thinner line. I'm just going to curve a line down like this, curve and another one like this, and another one like this. On each of these lines, I'm going to draw circles just like we did with the line embellishments. This next one is another of our line embellishments. It's circles that are packed next to each other along the inside of the pedal. I'm actually going to use a finer line for this. Then dot inside each circle. If you'd like, you can also color in all of these spaces, but I'm going to leave them empty. This next one is similar to this one except we're going to leave drawing assist on and use a bolder line and just draw these curls. For this next one, I'm going to outline my pedal, so I'm going to start closer and then end further away over here. I'm going to embellish the inside of this line with triangles that are spaced apart and they start off larger and they get smaller as they move up the line. I'm using the eraser to fix this point a little bit. For this final one, I'm just going to do tall scallops that are facing sideways. Can you believe we just embellished petals in 40 different ways. There are a lot more ways you can embellish petals just by mixing it up and using different lines, dividing the pedal differently. I hope this exercise gave you this bank of ideas that you can always draw from. It also gave you the confidence with your pen so that you can come up with ideas of your own on the fly as you're drawing. 6. 8-Point Symmetry Workflow: In this lesson, we'll set up a Template Canvas which we can reuse over and over for creating mandalas. I'll also show you my workflow for creating perfectly symmetrical eight-point mandalas. The workflow might seem a bit tricky at first because there are a few steps to it, but don't worry about it. Just try it a few times, and I'm sure you'll get the hang of it. Let's tap on the Plus to create a new Canvas and create a 4,000 by 4,000 pixel Canvas. We'll go to Settings, Add, Insert a Photo and find this one from the Class Resources, and tap on Fit to Screen. Then we go to our Layers, tap on the N and lower the opacity down to about 15 percent or however much you'd like, so that the lines aren't too dark. Rename this layer to Guide, and lock the layer by swiping left and tapping on Lock so you don't accidentally draw on it. Then we're going to go to Settings, Canvas, turn on Drawing Guide, Edit Drawing Guide, and tap on Symmetry options, and select Radial, and done. Now, let's create another layer above the Guide layer and turn on Drawing Assist for this layer. We can draw half of a petal, and we'll get four full petals. Now, how do you go from four petals to eight petals? What you do is you swipe down with three fingers, copy and paste, rotate 45 degrees and then you have these two layers, one is the rotated layer, and one is the original layer. You can merge these layers together. Now, I'm going to Clear this layer and Rename it to Lines. I'm going to create another layer above the Lines layer and Rename it to D for duplicate, and turn on Drawing Assist. I'll explain why I have this D layer up here in a bit. Now, I can go back to our gallery and tap on where it says Untitled Artwork, and rename this to Eight-Point Mandala Template. Now, whenever I want to create a new mandala, what I do is swipe left, and Duplicate and then I can rename this one. Now, I can open up this copy and draw my mandala here. Now, I'm going to show you my workflow for creating eight-point mandalas that are perfectly symmetrical in Procreate. I'm going to open up my Layers and Duplicate the D layer. That creates another D layer underneath it, and I'm going to tap this layer. The only reason I keep duplicating the D layer is because when I duplicate it, I already have Assisted turned on. If you prefer, you can just add another layer and turn Drawing Assist on instead of duplicating the D layer. But I find it faster to just duplicate the D layer.. I've duplicated it, and I'm tapping on the lower one. Now, I'm going to draw my petal. I know that these blue lines are like mirrors, where whatever I draw is going to be reflected on the other side. These gray lines, I'll show you in a bit what they are for. We're going to draw a petal, starting from here, and ending here or here, wherever you like, along this gray line. It doesn't matter what shape of petal you draw. Let's do something simple like this. Now, we have our four points or four petals, swipe down with three fingers, copy-paste, rotate 45 degrees, and I have my eight petals. Now, I go back here, and I merge these three layers together: The Inserted Image, the one that was rotated 45 degrees, the original one, and the lines. Now, I'm going to Duplicate the D layer and tap on this layer, and I can add a second layer of petals. Now, I don't want my petals to be on top of these petals, I want them to be offset over here. What I do is I pretend that I have a blue symmetry guide along with gray line. I draw a half of my petal, swipe down with three fingers, copy-paste, rotate 45 degrees, and now I have the other half of each of my petals. Again, merge the three layers, duplicate this layer, and tap on the lower D layer. Now, I can repeat. I can create another layer of petals in whatever shape I like. You can make them as tall as you like or as wide as you like. Swipe down with three fingers, copy-paste, rotate 45 degrees, merge the three layers, Duplicate the D layer, and tap on the lower D layer. You don't just have to pile on petals and petals. You can also add line embellishments. For example, I'm going to add an embellishment starting at this blue line and ending up this gray line, knowing that Procreate will fill in the rest. Let's do just the simple outline like this, I'm stopping at this gray line. Swipe down with three fingers, copy-paste, rotate 45 degrees, and I have that outline all the way around. Merge the layers, duplicate the D layer and tap on the lower D layer. Just as we use this method for creating eight points of petals and also for creating a line embellishments all the way around, we can use this workflow for creating petal embellishments. For example, let's embellish this petal, let's say with the leaf embellishment. I've only embellished half of the petal, swipe down with three fingers, copy and paste, rotate 45, and I have that full embellishment all the way around. I merge my three layers, duplicate the D layer, and select the lower D layer. I can keep going on and on and create a mandala as large and as complex as we like using this workflow. Here is a summary of the workflow that I just showed you. If you'd like to have it for reference, you can take a screenshot now, or you can find this summary in the sample's PDF. 7. Circles: Now we know how to make perfectly symmetrical petals, and line embellishments, and petal embellishments. But how do we make a perfect circle that's also perfectly centered? We might want to have a circle at the center of our mandala or maybe around here. You might want to use a thicker line or a thinner line. How would I do that in procreate? Unfortunately, there is no direct way to draw a perfect circle and then center align it perfectly in your Canvas. These are the workarounds that I found. One thing you can do is just draw an imperfect circle as best you can. Choose the brush size that you want to use and draw along one of these gray guides as closely as you can, erase any overlaps and there's your imperfect circle, which looks pretty good. Let me erase that and show you a different method. What I would do is create a new layer that isn't assisted, choose my brush size and draw a circle where I want it to be, all the way around and it's okay if it's a little bit wonky. Close it up, wait till it says ellipse created and then let go, and then tap on Edit Shape, and tap on circle. Now this is a perfect circle, but it's not perfectly centered. If you have a circle that isn't perfectly centered, you might have problems where when you draw your petals, some of them are going to be sitting on the lines, some of them aren't going to be sitting on the lines, some of them are going to go over the line in some art. That's why I like to center my circle as best as I can. What I do is I create a new assisted layer above the circle layer, and I change my color up to something that I can easily see like this, bright pink and I add a marking up here that touches the circle. Now I can look and see where my circle is compared to this marking. Now the marking is center aligned because of the symmetry, and now I can do my best to move the circle to be perfectly centered according to these marks. I tap on the circle layer, tap on this arrow, and I can nudge the layer by just tapping on the sides or I can move it like this. As I'm moving it, I can also hold the arrow and zoom in, zoom out if it helps me see a little bit better and do the best you can to center it. It's not going to be perfect, but it'll be close enough and now if I want to have this circle not overlap the petals, I would turn on drawing assist for the circle, choose my eraser and erase wherever I need to. Then I delete my pink guides, and I merge the circle down into the lines layer. Now, I have a perfect circle that's pretty close to being perfectly centered. 8. Mandala Lines: In this lesson, we'll be putting together everything we've learned so far and drawing a mandala. You're welcome to draw the mandala exactly the same as mine, but I would encourage you to be spontaneous with your lines and make them up as you go along. When I copy my own work, for example, in order to recreate it for a video tutorial, it feels very different from just drawing without any limitations, but you can choose whichever approach works for you. As always, I start by duplicating my eight-point mandala template. I rename the copy to mandala just to be tidy and I open up this canvas and we can start drawing our mandala. I'm using a bit of a larger brush size and I'm creating a new layer without drawing assist enabled in order to draw a circle. I'm doing exactly what we did in the circle's lesson. Edit shape, circle, switch to a layer that has drawing assist on and to a pink color and add these guides that will help me center the circle. I switch back to the circle layer, tap on the arrow and do my best to center it according to the pink guides. Once I'm happy with it, I tap on the arrow to keep it there. I clear the pink guides and I merge the circle layer down into the line's layer. Duplicate the D layer and select the D layer underneath it so I can make my first layer of petals above the circle. I often draw a line and if I'm not happy with it, I undo it and draw it again. Once I'm happy with my petals and I want to duplicate them to get eight petals, I swipe down with three fingers, copy and paste, rotate 45 degrees, merge the three layers, duplicate the D layer and select the lower D layer. At this point I decided to embellish the inside of the circle, but I could just as well have chosen to add another layer of petals or add line embellishments or peddle embellishments. It's totally up to you. At this point, I thought I would add an outline around my leaves and after merging down, I stayed in the lines layer and used color drop in order to fill in these shapes. Then I continued to duplicate the D layer and select the lower d layer. I zoomed out in order to see my mandala at a glance and decide what to do next. You might remember this leaf embellishment from the petal embellishments lesson. I like to zoom out and get faraway view of my mandala before proceeding and asking myself where I want to go and what lines I want to draw. In this case, I decided to add a line embellishment around my petals using a thinner brush size. It's a little bit more delicate and not as bold as the petals underneath. Again, you can see me zooming out in order to ask myself what I want to do next. For this next petal layer, I decided to do the fancy Taj Mahal petal and I, on purpose went over the line. Because if I try to stop exactly at the lines, sometimes the line gets a little bit crooked and I just erase any excess, especially when the line is very bold. I usually go over the line and then erase the edge of it. Here you can see that I was thinking maybe I should add some scallops at the bottom and then I just changed my mind. I decided to add these teardrop designs instead. You can see that it takes me a few tries sometimes to get the shape right and to be happy with the way it looks. I also go back and fix some lines where I need to. I wanted to fill this in, but color drop doesn't work here because there are several layers that define this closed area. I needed to manually close the area myself or use color drop on the lines layer after merging it. Here I'm just closing up the area myself in this layer and then using color drop to fill it in and using my brush to fill in the places that color drop didn't reach. We've got a circle in the center and two layers of petals. I'm going to keep this mandala pretty small because I want it to be pretty fast to draw this mandala. This mandala took me less than 10 minutes to do so I only have three layers of petals with some line embellishments and petal embellishments and a circle in the center. I encourage you to draw a smaller mandala so that you can follow along with the next lessons a lot more quickly because we're going to be coloring in in different ways. We're also going to be shading our mandala. It goes by faster when your mandala is smaller. But in the end, I'm going to show you a much more intricate and detailed mandala. I chose to embellish my last layer of petals with this upside down flower shape. I decided I'd add another little embellishment, just some dots along the previous layer of petals and also these circles inside the embellishment of the previous petals. For a final touch, I decided to add these little embellishments inside of the leaves in the center of the mandala. I do like to jump around. I don't really work methodically. I don't do all of the petals and then all of the embellishments. Here's my finished mandala. This is the mandala I'm going to be working with in the next lessons and if you drew a different mandala, it's going to work just fine for following along with the next lessons. We're going to be experimenting with adding colors in many different ways to our mandala and also adding shading to the mandala to make it look more three-dimensional and make it pop. 9. Background and Line Color: In this lesson, I'm going to show you how to change the color of your lines and the color of your background. First, let's start by removing these visual distractions. Let's hide the Guide Layer, and let's also turn off the Drawing Guide, so we just see our lines and our background. In order to change the background color, I tap on the Layers, tap down here where it says Background Color, and choose whichever background color I like. Now, I'll show you two ways to change the color of your lines. The first way is to tap on the lines layer, and tap on Alpha Lock. Now, let's choose a different color, and draw on the Lines Layer. It's only going to let me draw where there are already non-transparent pixels; so it's only going to let me draw over the black. What I can do when the layer's alpha locked is tap on the layer and Fill Layer, and it'll only fill the non-transparent pixels, so it's effectively changing the color of the lines. If you want a different color, you just choose another color and fill layer. Now, I'll show you a second way to change the color of your lines. Let's put it back to the way it was by choosing the black, filling the layer with black, and turning off Alpha Lock. Since I'm done drawing the lines and I don't want to accidentally mess up the lines layer, I like to lock the Lines Layer by "Swiping Left" and tapping on Lock. In order to change the color of the lines, I add another layer above the Lines Layer, tap on that layer, and tap on Clipping Mask; this adds a downward facing arrow, which means that this layer is a Clipping mask on this layer. Now, let me choose a different color, and now whatever I draw on this clipping mask layer will only appear where there are nontransparent pixels on the lines layer. You can see that the full scribble was drawn in the Clipping Mask layer, so if I turn off the Clipping Mask setting for this layer, you can see the full scribble. If I turn Clipping Mask back on, it's going to clip to the layer below it, so it's only going to draw on the black lines. Now, I can fill this layer with whatever color I like, and it'll color just the lines. I prefer this second method for changing the line color because your lines layer is locked and protected, and also because the color and the lines are in separate layers. Now, you don't have to just change your lines to a solid color. For example, let's choose a different color; I'm going to choose this dark blue. Let's choose a Textured Brush, I'm going go to the Artistic Category and choose the Hartz brush, but you can try whatever other brush you like. I'm just going to stamp to add some texture. You can add as many colors as you like using whatever brushes, and whatever textures you like, to color the lines. What you can see here is that I have both the red and the blue on this one layer. What I would recommend instead is to separate each color to its own layer. Let's tap and hold over the red to choose this color, and let's "Fill The Layer" to basically undo all of our blue markings, and let's add another layer above this layer, and make it a Clipping Mask as well. We'll choose our blue color, or whichever color you like, and add our texture in this new Clipping Mask layer. Now, I have my red in one layer and my blue in another layer, if I want to change this blue to something else, like this yellow, I just need to "Alpha Lock" this layer, and fill this layer. By separating your colors into different layers, you have the option to replace only that color without having to redo the texture. Just like I changed the color of the texture, I could also change this red color; I'm going to choose this dark blue, and tap on this layer, and tap on Fill Layer. I can play around with the colors as much as I like until I find a color combination that I'm happy with. It sometimes takes some time to find a nice color combination that works. For example, here this yellow is not showing very well against this light blue background. Give yourself some time to experiment with color combinations, and I'll also show you in our future lesson, some more tips about choosing colors that work together. Let's delete this layer and clear this layer, and I'll show you something else you could try. You could turn on Drawing Assist for the Clipping Mask layer. I'm going to choose this pink color, and whatever I draw is going to be reflected symmetrically. For example, I can choose this Soft Brush under the Airbrushing category, and I can create this radial gradient effect. I chose pretty light colors; let me change the background to a darker color so that you can see this better. You can add more layers of color, and experiment with different color combinations, using this method. What you could also do is use a smaller brush size and add accents of color in specific smaller areas. Maybe I'll choose this pink, and add it to the tip of this leaf embellishment, and I could also color these flowers a little bit in pink. These are just some ways that you can use to add color to your Mandalas, by changing the background color and changing the color of your lines. 10. Inner Background: So we've changed the background color and we've changed the line color in several different ways. But let's say I want the background color inside the mandala to be different from this outer background color. So let me show you how I would do that. First I'm just going to put things back to the way they were. So I'm going to change the background color to white by double tapping in this area. I'm going to change the line color back to black by clearing the clipping mask layer. Now I'm going to select the Line Spire and tap on the selection tool up here, make sure it's set to automatic. Tap in this background area and slide right, in order to raise the selection threshold to as far as it would go without it turning the Mandala blue as well. That way it's selecting all of this outer area. Now I'm going to tap on "invert", which selects all of this inner area instead. Now I add a layer below the line layer and choose whatever color and tap on fill layer. So now I've got this background color inside the Mandala and a different background color outside the Mandala, which I can control just like we did before over here. If I want to change this pink color, I could do as I did before. I could alpha lock the layer and fill the layer with a different color. Instead I could add a layer above it and make it into a clipping mask. Whatever I draw in this layer will only appear on this inner background layer. So let's choose one of the text tool brushes. So I'm going to go to artistic and choose the Aurora brush. The cool thing about this brush is that it's slightly changes color as you use it. So it's a pretty cool effect. Now if you'd like, you can tap on the end of this clipping mask layer and lower the opacity to make the colors a little bit less intense. You could also change the mode of this clipping mask layer. So right now it's set to normal, but you can play around with the other modes and see how the colors change accordingly. It will depend on the colors in the clipping mask layer and also on the colors in the layer below it. There is another way to play around with the colors. Tap on adjustments and then on hue saturation and brightness. By moving these sliders here, you're changing the colors of the current layer. It takes a bit of trial and error, but it's fun to play around with this and see what you get. Just like we did when we colored in our lines, we could also make this clipping mask layer symmetrical. So let's clear the layer and turn drawing assist on. Again, we get that symmetry for our marks. So let's try what we did in the previous lesson using the soft brush. So I'm going to go to airbrushing and choose the soft brush. I'm going to make that radial gradient effect just like we did for the lines in the previous lesson. Just like we did for the lines, I could choose whatever color I like and set my brush size to be a bit smaller and add that color just on the tip of the pedal embellishment here or wherever I like. So those are a few other techniques that you could use to add color to your Mandalas. 11. Coloring In: In this lesson, we'll be coloring in our Mandala inside the lines and we'll do so in a way that will make it easy for us to switch up the colors of the Mandela and to have a different background color for each of our color ways. If you want to save the work you've been doing so far, you can just hide the coloring in layers or what I'm going to do instead is go to the gallery, swipe left and duplicate my canvas and then I have a saved copy of my work. Now I'm going to open up this copy and delete a few layers. I'm going to delete these two layers, and also this clipping mask layer. I'm going to show the guide layer and I'm going to change the background color back to white. Now I'm going to duplicate the D-Layer, rename it to coloring in and drag this layer below the lines layer. Now you can choose whichever color you like. I'm going to choose this blue and if I try to use color drop to fill in the shapes, that's not going to work because the lines that we want to fill in are on a different layer. What we do is tap on the lines layer and tap on reference and now the lines layer becomes a reference layer. If we go back to our coloring in-layer, color drop will now work according to the lines layer. Now let's say I want to color in every other stripe here in blue. I can just use color drop to do that. When you use color drop, makes sure it's filling in the shape completely. Sometimes if you're color drop threshold is too low, it's not going to fill the shape all the way and you're going to see these gaps. Slide right with your pen and set your color drop threshold to as high as it would go without flooding outside the shape and now it's filling in this shape nicely. I'm just going to fill in this leaf and I find it convenient to drag my drawing closer to the color circle to make my color drop trips shorter. Now I filled in these four leaves and I don't have to fill in these other ones. I can just swipe down with three fingers, copy and paste, rotate 45 degrees, and merge these two layers together. Now let's say I want to add another color. I'm going to choose some sort of a pink color. Now you could color in with the pink color on the same layer, as the blue color, and basically have all of your colors in one layer. But that will limit you. It will make it harder for you to tweak and switch up your colors later on. Although you can keep all of your colors in one layer, I prefer to separate each color to its own layer. Let me undo back to when there was only one color in this layer and I'm going to rename this layer to C1, which stands for color one and I'm only going to use three colors for coloring in this Mandala. I'm going to duplicate the D-layer twice and I'm going to rename these two layers to C2 and C3. Then I'm going to drag both of these layers below the lines layer and now with one of these layers selected, I'm going to swipe right on the others and tap on group. I'm going to rename this group to coloring in. All of my color layers are going to be inside of this group and now if I want to color in with pink, I'm going to switch to this layer, and switch to my pink color, and color in. Just as we did before, I can swipe down with three fingers, copy and paste, rotate 45 degrees and merge the two layers. Now let's say I want to go back to coloring in with the blue. What I could do, is tap with my finger and hold to change the active color to blue and switch to the blue layer or what I could do instead, let's switch back to the pink, is find the blue color that you just used over here in the color history or instead, you could define a color palette. Let's do that. Let's go to palettes, tap on the plus to create a new untitled palette and we can rename it over here if we like, and tap over here. Now our new palette appears down here. Now we can tap on this color to make it the active color and add it to the palette. You can delete a color from the palette by tapping and holding and then tapping on delete and you can rearrange the colors in the palette by tapping and holding and dragging the color. I'm going to use this color as my third color and these three colors will be on layers C1, C2, and C3 respectively. Whenever I switch to a different color, I also switch to its respective layer. I'm going to color in a little bit with the blue. In small areas like this, you can just use your pen instead of color drop if you prefer. Now I'm going to switch to the C3 layer and switch to the third color and color in a few of these shapes. Now I switch to the pink layer and to the pink color and color in a few more of these shapes. Finally, I'll switch back to the blue and fill in these shapes and we are done coloring in our Mandala. Now let's say you want to change one of your colors either now or at an earlier stage. What you could do is select the layer with the color you'd like to change and tap on adjustments and on hue saturation and brightness, and play around with these settings until you like the color. This is a great way to find color combinations you like, by starting off with a few colors and then tweaking them to your liking. Another thing you can do instead is Alpha lock the layer, choose a color that you'd like to use instead, and fill the layer. Play around with your colors until you're happy with them. We've colored in the Mandala in one color way. Now let's color it in, in another color way. For example, with a bunch of greens. I'm going to duplicate this group. Rename the first group to color way one, and rename the second group to color way two and now I'm going to Alpha lock each of these layers, and I'm going to choose three greens. I've already created a palette with three greens, but you can choose which other greens you like and now I'm going to select one layer, and one green, and tap on fill layer. Now I'm going to select the second green and the second layer and fill layer, and same for the third green and the third layer. You can see it takes just a few seconds to completely change the color way of your Mandala since you've separated each color to its own layer. Now let's hide the guide layer and let's add a different background color to each color way. I'm going to add a layer and put it below the color layers in the color way group and same thing for this other color way group. Now I tap on the background color and choose a color I like for this color way. Once I find the color I like, I tap and hold with my finger to make this the active color and I fill the layer. Let's rename this layer to background. Now we can hide this group and do the same thing for the second color way. I like to choose the background color this way because you can see the background color change in real time and you can go through a lot of different colors in a short period of time, as opposed to choosing a color and filling the layer and then trying again with a different color. Once you're happy with it, tap with your finger and hold to select the color, and fill in this background layer and I'm going to rename it to background as well. Now we have two color ways, one in blue, pink and cream, and one with these greens and each color way has its own background color. 12. Shading: In this lesson we're going to add shading to our mandala. We're going to go from this to this, and we can apply the shading to our color ways as well. We can go from this to this. I've hidden the color way layers for now and I have the guide layer visible and I have the background color set to white. I'm also going to make the lines layer no longer a reference layer. So I tap on the lines layer, tap on reference and now this layer is no longer a reference layer. We're going to start by duplicating the D layer and tap on the lower D layer, and we're going to add shading to this center circle. Let's choose a color that's easy to see like this pink. Make sure you're using the monoline brush. Now we're going to outline the circle. Make sure that your pink line doesn't go outside the shape like this. Because then you'll have a white gap in your shading. It's okay not to reach all the way to the edge of the shape like I'm doing here. But just don't go over the line. Once you've outlined your shape you can use color dropped to fill it in. Now I'm going to duplicate this layer and change it to black. The fastest way to change it to black is to tap on adjustments, hue, saturation and brightness and bring the brightness all the way down. Now we're going to blur this black layer. So tap on adjustments, Gaussian blur, and slide to adjust the amount of blur. I slide left and right and set the blur to around 20 percent. You can experiment with values between 10 and 30 percent or so. Now I'm going to hide the pink layer and you can see that I have some black on the inside of the circle that I need to erase. I want to keep just the faded out black shading that's outside the shape. In order to erase the part that's inside the circle. I tap on the pink layer, tap on select and that selects this inner area that I need to erase. Then I tap on this layer and tap on clear, which clears only the selection. Now we have this nice faded out shading all the way around. Let me hide it and show it so you can see it better. That's basically how you add shading and you can repeat this process for as many layers as you like. What I like to do though is to do them all at once. I'm going to delete these layers to show you how I would do it all at once. I have four shapes that I want to shade in this mandala. I'm going to duplicate the D layer four times. I'm going to tap on the first one and swipe right on the rest of them and tap on group and rename this group to masks. Now I'm going to rename each mask layer; 1,2,3 and 4, just to be tidy. Now I'm going to create a mask on each layer. The first mask is going to be the same as what we did before. I'm just going to outline the circle. Remember not to go outside the shape and use color dropped to fill it in. That's our first mask and I can hide it so that it doesn't get in the way. Now I tap on the second layer and I only need to outline between this line and this Grey line and procreate will outline the rest for me. I'm going to outline all the way up to here. In order to outline the rest, I swipe down with three fingers, copy and paste, rotate 45 degrees and merge the two layers together and then use color drop to fill in the shape. That's the second mask done. The same for the third mask. I hide this layer, outline just between this Grey line and this line, swipe down, copy and paste, rotate 45 degrees, merge the two layers and then fill in the shape. That's the third mask done. Now for our fourth mask, I need to outline the whole mandala. I could outline it just like we did before like this. But you don't have to do that. Let me undo it and show you. I tap on the line’s layer, tap on the selection tool, and tap outside the shape. I slide the selection threshold up as high as it would go without also selecting inside the mandala. Then I tap on invert to select the inside of the mandala, switch back to this layer and fill layer. Now I have my filled-in mask that's not going over the line. That's why we raise the selection threshold quite high. We've created our four mask layers and now we need to create our shading layers. I duplicate this whole group and rename this group to shading. Now I'm going to hide the masks group and I'm going to show each of the layers in the shading group and change each of them to black. I tap on the first one, go to adjustments, hue saturation and brightness, and bring the brightness all the way down. I repeat this process for each of the shading layers. Now we need to apply Gaussian blur to each of our shading layers. I tap on adjustments Gaussian blur and set it to 20 percent or so. Then I select the next layer and repeat for all of the shading layers. Now we need to erase the color that's inside the shapes. Let's tap on the fourth mask layer, tap on select, tap on the fourth shading layer and clear. We repeat the same process for the rest of the shading layers. We are done adding shading to our mandala. Let's hide the guide layer and let's also hide the drawing guide so that we can see our beautifully shaded mandala. Here's how it looks without the shading and with the shading. I think shading adds a lot of dimension to your mandala, and it's pretty fast to do if you streamline it the way I demonstrated in this lesson. If you'd like your shading to be a bit more subtle, what you could do is tap on the end next to the shading layer, and bringing the opacity down. I'm going to bring the opacity down to 50 percent or so and repeat for each of the shading layers. Now there is still some shading but it's a bit more subtle. Another thing you could try is to use a lower value of Gaussian blur the next time you create your shading layers. In this one I've used Gaussian blur at 30 percent, 20 percent, and 10 percent. Play around with these and see which you like best. 13. Detailed Mandala: Lines: Now we're going to put together everything we've learned so far and draw a large and detailed Mandala. Will add shading to our Mandala and we'll color it in using several color ways. I'll be sharing some more tips, tricks, and techniques as I go, and I'll walk you through my thought process. I hope you find this helpful for when you draw your own mandalas. In this lesson, we'll be drawing the lines. To begin trying a new Mandala, I duplicate the eight point Mandala template, and rename this copy to Large Mandala. Then I tap on this canvas to begin drawing. I'm going to set the color to black and instead of using the mono line brush from the calligraphy category, I go to the inking category and choose the studio pen brush. The cool thing about this brush is that it goes from thin to thick according to the pressure you apply. If you want to be able to get really wide lines, use the larger brush size, and if you want a more subtle variation in your line width and for your lines to stay thinner, use a smaller brush size. You decide if you like this effect, and if you feel comfortable using a pressure sensitive brush, or maybe instead you prefer to keep using the mono line brush. The lines will have a slightly different character, but both of these brushes work well for drawing Mandalas. The studio pen brush is not ideal for drawing circles though, because you get this strange looking meeting point. So if you want to draw a circle at any point in your Mandala, I would recommend switching to the mono line brush just for drawing the circle. So let's begin drawing our Mandala. As always, I start by duplicating the D layer and selecting the lower D layer. I draw a pedal shape, swipe down with three fingers, copy and paste, rotate 45 degrees, and merge the three layers. I duplicate the D layer, and I keep going just like we did in previous lessons. Throughout this whole demonstration, you'll see me trying some designs and then deciding to redo them or change them. For me, that's part of the process. I try not to be overly critical though, so that I don't feel stuck, and I'm still flowing and enjoying the process. Here I was having a bit of difficulty with color drop. It was flooding outside the shape that I was trying to fill in. So I reduced the color drop threshold a little bit, and that solved the problem, and for tiny shapes like this one, I often just fill them in with my pen. So I've broken down the pedal into smaller shapes, and now I can decide how to embellish each smaller shape. You can use fine and detailed embellishments or bolder and simpler embellishments. It's totally up to you and it can change from one Mandala to the next. Another thing I do a lot is zoom out and pause for a moment to decide what I'd like to do next. So, whenever you're out of ideas, don't panic. Just give yourself a moment and eventually something will come to you. An empty space that needs an embellishment will catch your eye, or you might decide to add a new layer, pedals or to add a line embellishment around what you've drawn so far. Here, I've accidentally drawn the lines layer, instead of on the duplicated D layer, and I noticed that because when I rotated 45 degrees, the whole thing rotated. So what I usually do in this case is just to undo what I did, and redraw it on the duplicated D layer. I'm adding a simple line embellishment, and I'm styling it a bit using a thick and thin line that doesn't exactly follow the pedal that its outlining. You can see me pause to get procreate, to draw a perfectly straight line here. In some cases this comes in really handy. I wasn't too happy with the spacing between the lines and my embellishment, so I undid them and redid them to my liking, and I added a leaf embellishment in these shapes over here, just like we did in the practice lesson and in the smaller Mandala from previous lessons. Even if you repeat the same embellishments in different Mandalas, they'll still end up looking different and unique. It's really helpful to zoom out, pause, and look at your Mandala at a glance before you decide what you want to do next. Here I decided to draw a squiggly line and erase the bit that overlapped the previous pedals to get this random quirky pedal shape. I tried a few ideas for embellishing this pedal and I wasn't happy with them, so I undid them and tried something else until I was happy with what I got. It took me a few tries here to fit a row of scallops up until the center symmetry line. Sometimes when you want evenly spaced scallops, you're going to have to redo them until you're happy with how they fit along the line. I like repeating the same motif more than once. It can reinforce the design and make it look more cohesive. So you don't always have to come up with different embellishment ideas. Try reusing the same idea over and over for a more cohesive look. Now I decided to add a circle. So, I created a new layer with drawing assist off, and I switched to the mono line brush and chose a thicker line width. Then I roughly drew the circle, waited and tapped on Edit Shape, and then on Circle. Then I switch to this layer that has drawing assist on, and to a pink color and added these markings that help me center align the circle. I go back to the circle layer, tap on the arrow and nudge the circle until it seems to be centered according to the pink marks. Once I was happy with it, I cleared the pink marks, and I made new marks right along the circle's edge in order to make sure that the circle is centered, and it seemed to be centered, so I cleared the pink marks, but if it weren't I would nudge the circle a little bit more. Now I wanted to erase the parts of the circle that were overlapping the drawing. So, I started erasing, and then I realized the drawing assist wasn't on for the circle layer. So, I undid my erasing, and turned on drawing assist for the circle layer, and then when I erased one overlapping part of the circle, it erased all of the overlaps all the way around in one go. Then I merge the circle layer down into the lines layer, and I switched back to the studio pen brush. Here for example, I decided I would fix the meeting point between the petals using the eraser. Here, I forgot again that I was on the line's layer, and I drew this whole flower with circles around it. I only realized it when I rotated 45 degrees and saw the whole Mandala rotating. The reason I don't like to rotate the whole line's layer, is that it makes the lines thicker and not as smooth, so I preferred to undo this embellishment and re-do it in a duplicated D layer. I know it can be a bummer to re-do something you just did, but oftentimes the design comes out a lot smoother and nicer, because you're doing it a second time. I try to make a habit of duplicating the D layer and selecting the lower D layer, immediately after merging the three layers, so I don't make this mistake as often, but it still happens sometimes. At this point, I recall the specific Mandala that I drew a few days back, that I wanted to draw some ideas from. I feel that this Mandala has a bit more of a traditional classic look, not so much of a freestyle modern look. So I took a look at it and made a mental note of some of the ornaments and embellishments in it, and then I can draw ideas from this Mandala and incorporate them in the Mandala I'm drawing now. So if you're feeling stuck, you can always go back to your previous work, or search Instagram or Google for Mandalas, and draw few ideas and motifs from them that you can use in your Mandalas. It's not about copying your own work or copying other people's work, but rather about seeing shapes, motifs, embellishments, and patterns, and putting them together in a completely different way and making them your own. You can always refer back to the samples PDF, and the embellishments that you practiced in the beginning of this class. I do like to flow and draw without stopping and thinking and planning too much. But, sometimes it helps me get unstuck to take a look at something I previously drew. I'm not copying from it exactly, but I'm letting it remind me of ideas that have slipped my mind, and that I could use now. So for example, I remembered I could use these tear drop shapes to embellish this petal and honestly, this embellishment slipped my mind until I looked at the Mandala, that I showed you a moment ago. I also added circles at the tips of the teardrop shape similar to what I did in the previous Mandala. The Mandala I took a look at, was pretty heavy with scallop line embellishments and I felt like going with that as well in this Mandala. I also forgot about this line embellishment which I decided to incorporate here. At this point, I decided to add another circle, so I create a new layer with drawing assist off, I draw the circle roughly where I want it to be, and follow the same steps as before to center it perfectly. So adding the pink marks a second time helps fine tune the position of the circle and make it as centered as possible. I erase the overlap, and I even hide the line's layer this time to make sure I didn't miss any spots. Then I show the lines layer, switch back to the lower D layer, and switch back to the studio pen. Make sure to take a break if you need to at any point. You don't have to draw the whole Mandala in one sitting. After a refreshing break, drawing is a lot more enjoyable and relaxing, and there's really no rush. I decided to add this line embellishment all the way around to give the Mandala some breathing room, so the petals don't seem as tightly packed one on top of the other and I use the eraser to refine and clean up the points here, rather than redrawing them. I really like using these bold black and white stripes as a petal embellishment. After completing them, I decided to repeat this embellishment on a smaller scale, in a different part of the Mandala. While I was there, I saw this small empty space, which I thought would benefit from a few dots. Here you can see me draw a center petal and then two side petals, which is another thing I recommend you try as well. I'm outlining everything I've drawn so far using a thinner line and using this line embellishment, which we did in the practice lesson. By spacing out the lines and leaving some blank areas, I'm adding some breathing room in the Mandala, and also, some contrast between the more detailed areas, and the emptier areas in the drawing and I'm adding some stripes along this space here. Stripes are really fun to color in using two alternating colors. Here I'm filling the inner corners with black. I can see that I'm running out of space here, so I decided to make one final layer of petals. At first, I thought I would embellish them using a leaf design, but then I decided against it. I tried something else which I wasn't too happy with, and finally, I tried this and I liked it, so I went with it. This is the finished line work for the Mandala. Now that I know that the line's layer is completed, I locked the line's layer so that I don't accidentally draw on it. 14. Detailed Mandala: Shading: In this lesson, we're going to add shading to our mandala. You can decide after drawing the lines whether you want to color them in first or add shading first. This time, I'm going to start with the shading. In the previous shading lesson, we created all of the mask layers first and then created all of the shading layers. So in this lesson, I'm going to show you how I would do them one-by-one. I start by duplicating the D-layer and tapping on the lower D-layer. I choose a shape and I mask it out using a pink color or any color that's easy to see against the black and white. Here, I'm just cleaning it up a little bit to make sure that I didn't go outside the lines, so that I don't get any gaps in the shading. Then, I duplicate this layer, change it to black, and blur to around 20 percent. Just as we did in the previous shading lesson, I hide the pink mask layer, select it, tap on the black shading layer and clear, and that's the first layer of shading done. I love seeing how shading makes this center shape seem to hover above everything else around it. For the next mask layer, I duplicate the D-layer and I mask out this shape. I move the first shading layer below the lines layer and I group the two mask layers and rename the group to masks. I duplicate this second mask layer, drag it next to the shading layer, group them together and rename this group to shading. Now, I can change this one to a shading layer by changing it to black, blurring it to 20 percent, and clearing the inside. I add another layer to the masks group and turn on drawing assist for this layer, and repeat the process. Doing these one-by-one, lets you see the shading as you go along more easily and that helps you decide where you want your next layer of shading to be. So it gives you a bit more control. That's three layers of shading done and I do the same thing for the fourth and the fifth shading layers. There's no set rule about how many shading layers you can add or where you add them, you get to decide whether you want a lot of shading layers or just a few and where you'd like them to be. Experiment with different shading choices and see what feels right to you and what you feel works best. The final layer of shading covers the whole mandala. Just as we did in the previous shading lesson, I tap on the lines layer, select the area outside the mandala, invert the selection and fill the mask layer. Just as before I duplicate it, drag it down to the shading group, change it to black, blur it and clear the inside. We are done adding shading to our mandala. Here's how it looks with and without the shading. 15. Detailed Mandala: Coloring In: Let's color in the Mandala. I thought I would use five colors for this Mandala. I duplicated the D layer five times, and group them together, and renamed the group to color way one. But you can use as many or as few colors as you like. Instead of picking the color is myself, I'm going to import a color palette from an App called Coolers. It costs $3, and it's not a must have, but I find it to be well-worth the money. Let me show you how I use it. I tap on, Explore. I look through the color palettes until I find something I'd like to use. Then I tap on the three dots, export palette, procreate and then save to procreate. This will open up procreate, and if we tap on pallets, will see the palate that we just exported from the Coolors App, at the bottom here. We can set this palette to default and use it right away, so it's super convenient. Here's another way to grab a palette from Coolers for free without buying the App. Open up Chrome, or Safari, or your preferred browser. Go to coolers.co, and search for color palettes. Find one that you like, and take a screenshot by holding down the power button, and the home button simultaneously. Tap on the screen shot, and on done, save the photos. Open up procreate, go to the gallery, tap on photo, and open the screenshot image you just saved. Then create a new pallet, and add each color from the image to the palette. You can grab more pallets from the same screenshot if you'd like. It's not as convenient as using the Coolers App, but it gets the job done. Let's go back to coloring in the Mandala, just like we did for the smaller Mandala a few lessons ago. When the color layers are above the lines layer, the edges of the color don't look really nice as you can see here. I'm going to drag the lines layer above the color way one group, and now the fill color looks a lot smoother. I tried to notice which color is darker, and which is lighter. When I choose how to combine the colors together. Sometimes I want a stronger contrast, and sometimes I want similar colors next to each other. Since one of my colors is white, I sometimes find it helpful to set the background to a different color, for example, to this gray, and that way I can see the uncolored areas in the Mandala more clearly. Whenever I switch up the color, I make sure to also switch to the corresponding color layer. At some point, I decided to change the background color from gray to something else, just so I could see it better, and then I actually like this red. I decided to add it to my color palette. Instead of five colors, I decided to have six colors for this Mandala. Here's a trick you can use to save time. Instead of filling in individual shapes with this last color, duplicate the mask that covers the whole inside of the Mandala. Drag the duplicated layer to the bottom of the color wave one group, and fill it in with this color. This way, whatever shapes you don't fill in with the other colors will be colored in with this last red color. We finished coloring in the Mandala using this color palette. Let's choose a background color. I chose one of the colors from the palette, and made it a little bit lighter. The shading group should be below the lines layer, and above the color weight group. I add a layer for the background color at the bottom of the color way one group and fill it in with the background color, and this way, each color way will have its own background color. I'm going to color in this Mandala using another color way. This will only take a moment since we made sure to put each fill color in a separate layer. I duplicate the color way one group, and I choose another color palette using the Coolers App. I Alpha Lock each of the color layers, and fill each one with a color from the color palette that I just chose. I tried to replace dark colors with dark colors, and light colors with light colors. But you don't have to do that. Since color way one had six colors and the new palette has only five colors, I decided to keep the white, and replace the red color with one of the colors from the new palette. I changed the background color of the second color way to this light green. Then I decided to tweak some of the colors a little bit using adjustments, hue, saturation, and brightness. I like it better this way with the lighter colors, and that's our large, and detailed Mandala done with shading, and in two-color ways. 16. Share Your Project: Now that we've finished drawing our lovely detailed Mandala with shading and in two-color ways, let's export it so that we can upload it to the class project. I'll show you how to publish a class project from the iPad, but you could also do this from a desktop or laptop computer, if you prefer. Perhaps the lines layer, the shading group and the color way to group visible. I'm going to export the visible layers as a flat image.I tap on actions, share and then either JPEG or PNG and save image. I'm going to do the same for color way one.I hide color way two and show color way one and export this as a JPEG as well. I'll also export the mandala with shading and no colors and the lines only without any shading. You could also export the mandala without the shading and with one of the color ways or with a transparent background, whatever you like. Just make sure to export as a PNG , if there are any transparent pixels in the image. Otherwise, JPEG and PNG both work. Once you've exported the images you'd like to share in your class project, open up this class in a browser and tap on projects and resources and on create project. You can give a title to your project and type here where it says start typing.Then tap down here on image, photo library, all photos and let's choose for example, the mandala with the lines only. Tap down here where it says choose image size and change it to large and back. Now the file size is smaller, so it's still large enough, but it'll upload faster. Tap on done and wait for a few moments for the image to appear. Now, let's repeat this process for the rest of the images that we exported from Procreate. You can tap on the side of the first image and press return and write a few words about your project. You can upload as many images as you like in your project. If you created more mandalas, please share them as well. Now let's upload a cover image for the project. If I try to upload one of these square photos as my cover image, it'll be cropped on the top and the bottom. Let me show you how to fix that using Procreate. I open a Procreate, go back to the gallery, tap on photo and find the photo I want to use as the cover image. Then I tap on actions, Canvas, crop and resize and you see here that this is a 4000 by 4000 pixels Canvas. I turn on re-sample Canvas, which allows me to scale down the image. I'm going to make it 2000 by 2000 pixels and done. Now I go back to actions, Canvas, crop and resize and I don't turn on re-sample Canvas. I want to make the canvas a little bit wider, so I pull this aside until this line reaches the end of my background and the same on the other side. I want to make sure that the mandala is centered on the Canvas. I tap on done and I choose this background color to be the active color, I add it to the palette and I set this color as the background color. To export this wider image, I do the same thing. I tap on actions, share, JPEG, and save image. Now, go back to the browser, change the cover image of the project, and tap on this last image. It looks square but it's actually the wider image we just exported. Wait a bit for the image to load, it takes a few moments. Now, the mandala fits inside the frame completely. You can tap on publish to publish your project. I would love to see your finished projects with all the beautiful mandalas that you've drawn in Procreate, and I would really appreciate it if you wrote a few words and shared about the process which you found to be helpful, which you found to be difficult, what surprised you, what you discovered along the way, and if you discovered any new color palettes or embellishments that you especially liked, anything that came up as you were following the class. I appreciate your feedback about the class. If you need any help you can always go to the discussion section of the class, start a conversation or ask a question and I'd be happy to reply. You're welcome to look me up on Instagram @artonthefridge, and you can tag me so that I can see your creations. If you share your mandalas on Instagram, you can use the hashtag artonthefridgemandalas and I'll be sure to check them out. You're also welcome to check out my other classes here on Skillshare if you'd like. I teach mostly about doodling, watercolor and I have another Procreate class as well. You can follow me on Skillshare if you'd like to be notified of my future classes. Thank you so much for taking the class and I look forward to seeing your creation. See you in the next one.