My experience with Watercolours and Mandalas

Earlier today  (03-10-10) I was lucky to have a try at watercolour mandala painting, something I was looking forward to but also quite nervous about, At the last moment before leaving home I was feeling that nervous I almost didn't go, I took a deep breath and told myself this was a once in a lifetime chance for me to do this and went and am so glad I did  I thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience

The afternoon started with an introduction from Tatiania Overduin who is from Australia, she told us a little about herself and about her watercoloured mandala painting,

We had a powerpoint slideshow about the history of mandalas how they originated from Buddist traditons and the Sanscrit meaning "making one's circular mark on paper"  and were shown various ones from back in time
A lot of the mandalas are geometrical designs / paintings, what we did was "painting from within" our circle could be divided into 2 halves or into 4  it was a spiritual, reflective painting session to meditative music.

The Mandala is a form of creative meditation, an outer representation of the inner self, sometimes you may understand your personal mandala other times you may question your choice of symbols, expressions & colours.

We began our work in a calm environment listening to meditative music travelling our own journey in our minds and letting it flow through to our brushes and onto our paper

As some of you know I have been experiencing difficult times this past year or so and I have to admit I was a bit "scared" of how my painting would turn out, I was quite pleased with the result, to me it showed how I am and have been feeling.

We had some inspirational Bible texts to look at, from these and combined with the music and our feelings  hopefully we would draw some inspiration
The Bible text I was drawn to was
Deuteronomy 2:7
The Lord your God has blessed you in all the work of your hands. He has watched over your journey through this vast desert.These forty years the Lord your God has been with you, and you have not lacked anything
Deuteronomy 2:6-8

I looked at the circle I had drawn for my painting and how I was feeling also thinking of  parts of the Bible text " The Lord your God has blessed you in all the work of your hands. This shows in my love of crafting  and how it helps me   and also  "He has watched over your journey through this vast desert" from the dark times I have experienced this past year I have sometimes felt as though I have been "wandering around lost" not knowing where I was going on my life journey or which path I was  to go down next where were the happy times?   I decided to let my paintbrush take me on that journey and see what happened

Here is my painting  I called it Wandering around lost

Some of you will know I quite often say  My painting looks like a 3 year old could do better and I will forgive you for thinking the same when you first saw my painting here.
After I try to explain it I hope you will see it in the same or similar light I see it
As I said earlier our circle could be divided into 2 halves or into 4  I chose 2 halves which I called past and present
The brown area at the bottom is my dark sad time, moving up to the burning orangish section was my anger and hurt coming out, branching out to the sides were more calmer quieter happier times moving up to the top half to the reddish shades is where I am now  to me the red seems a strong colour, where I am finding the strength to make important life decisions moving out to the outer edges are paler pinks which show me calmness / happiness just on the horizon and that there are good times to come.

If you look closely at the centre of the painting you should be able to see what looks like a little girl this was not intentionally painted in and seemed strange how it appeared. I was happy as a small child then as I got older and various things happened in my life I became unhappy within myself, and just seemed to plod along pleasing others and not caring / bothering about myself  I now feel I want to change this I want to find "me" again and be happy with myself

I hope from that you can now see my painting in a similar light to me

Megan came with me, she really enjoyed the session as well and did a painting, she started off with a geometrical practice sheet - I love the colours she chose for this and how she painted it I have told her I am going to frame it and have it on the wall :)

This is her practice sheet

This is Megans watercolour mandala painting

She called it Meadow

 
She explained her "meadow" painting to me saying that she did a flower because she likes flowers and the green field and blue sky was her feeling happy,  the black edge to the flower was when she was feeling sad with losing her grandparents.