Concept

For this project, I wanted figure out how to balance shapes in a design and play around with colours to add extra elements. I decided to use a peacock as my design source as not only do they have beautiful colours in their feathers, when they open their train it resembles a mandala. A created a board on Pinterest to take note of the colours and shapes which I could adapt to my design.

Sketch

Once I was happy with my research, I moved to sketching and planning out my idea. I choose to combine elements of floral shapes with the feather shapes found on a peacock's train. I created a layout of the mandala to work out how much space I had to play with and to figure out how the shapes would work in each piece and beside each other. I played with creating different shapes by overlaying circles and squares. 

Illustrator Design

When I finished my sketch and I moved to Adobe Illustrator. I divided the mandala design into four circles. This helped to figured out which shapes work best in each section of the design. I translated some shapes I had created from my original sketch and had some fun creating new shapes to help several sections work better. I worked with tones of white, black and grey to help me focus on the layout.

Adding Elements

Once I was happy with my illustrator mandala design, I started to added colour. I went back to my original research and choose my colour palette from the feathers of the peacock. I played around with colour combinations to create a balance and harmony in my design. I added strokes and gradients to add some extra details. When I filled in all the shapes, I moved on to create the body of the peacock by overlaying circles. I then positioned the peacock in front of the mandala and created a pattern of the completed design.

I had a lot of fun in the process of creating the mandala design and a big thank you to Helen for teaching me some new skills. I'd love to hear some feedback, so please let me know what you think.