Over the last couple or three days I’ve been playing with mandalas and dots, just purely for fun!
To create the mandala above, I used shimmery, iridescent watercolour paints on black card. The photo really doesn’t capture the shimmery loveliness of the mandala. The mandala measures approx. 8″ x 8″.
This next mandala, again 8″ x 8″, was made using acrylic paints with green card as the substrate. Once I thought the paints were dry, I tried adding some distress inks so that there were shades of green in the background. However, not all of the dots were completely dry and some smeared. Also, the ink coloured the white dots. So, the lesson is to add the shading before doing the dotting!
These four small mandalas (approx. 4″x4″) I added shading using a damp paintbrush and Distress ink. I thought I’d try drawing the design in ink in three of them then adding dots in white and copper to add more/different patterns as well a some shininess.
Oh, the mandala with the teal and red-brown dots had distress ink sponged in the centre. The white acrylic paint wasn’t stained by the ink. These dots had a lot longer to dry than the previous mandala.
For this mandala (approx 8″ x 8″) I first applied some distress inks to white watercolour paper Then I drew the mandala in black ink. Finally, I added dots with gold acrylic paint. You can still see the pencil construction lines as I want to give the gold paint plenty of time to dry before trying to erase the lines.
This final mandala, approx 6″ x 6″, was drawn using black ink on pink card. Once the drawing was complete, distress inks were applied to give different shades of pink/purple. Then dot patterns were applied using white acrylic paint and iridescent watercolour paints.
Angela Porter 