Having fun with a mandala

Having fun with a mandala - student project

I have loved Palehorsedesign's style since watching the timlapse of the dragon illustration, he is what made me buy a wacom. Now to be able to learn that style straight from the man himself is pretty awesome. I tried out the neuro beats background music on spotify whilst drawing and found the time flew by. Here is where I am at with my illustration at the moment. It was a lot of fun to do and looks so complex but with duplicating sections it is easy to build up the design, I am looking forward to developing it further.

Having fun with a mandala - image 1 - student project

As a further update for tonight, I reduced the size of the mandala and started creating another outer layer, finished up, showed my wife and she pointed out I had drawn a penis in the negative space!

Having fun with a mandala - image 2 - student project

A few minor corrections and the penis is now removed!

Having fun with a mandala - image 3 - student project

Ok, I finally got a chance to get onto the linework section of things. I did initally have trouble with the wacom changing the opactity of the brush despite my settings being the same as Chris' but I noticed I had a button turned on in the top bar of photoshop which is "always use pressure for opacity' and this was overriding everything else. Once I turned this off the rest was easy. It was tricky getting smooth and consistent lines but I guess that will come with practice, the lines towards the end were getting smoother. Here's the finished linework, looking forward to starting on the colouring tomorrow.

Having fun with a mandala - image 4 - student project

Here is the next stage with the colours added in, will be adding the gradients to it shortly.

Having fun with a mandala - image 5 - student project

So I started on the shading today and it was slow going, I found it quite frustrating at first. I think I was focusing too much on getting the highlights in the right places so I just relaxed and gave it a go and it was really good fun. I think I enjoyed this part the most as it really changes from the flat colours to having a sense of depth to it. I have only shaded a small section but here's my progress for tonight:

Having fun with a mandala - image 6 - student project

I have now completed the shading part, here is the final mandala.

Having fun with a mandala - image 7 - student project

I'm really pleased with the outcome, I think it turned out really well with nice rich, vibrant colours. I really enjoyed the whole process, especially how it transforms around the shading stage. I think that there are a few things I could improve on like the joins between the sections and making some of the gradients a bit smoother but I will leave that for mandala version 2.