Layering Your Colors

Layering your colors is another way to express your artistic eye when coloring a mandala.

Layer your colors, one on top of another, to attain depth and dimension. Layering is merely adding one color on top of another color over and over again. Use as many colors as you wish.

Start out by stroking your first color lightly. Heavy pressure at the beginning builds a waxy surface that will resist further applications.  Layering is a simple matter of lightly applying one color after another, and takes some patience.  Try cross hatching, which is stroking your color first in one direction and then going back over the same area stroking the opposite direction.  The key really is to build up the colors slowly to get the blend you prefer.

You will be able to finally blend colors by using a lighter color to press down heavily on top of  your layered colors,. You can also purchase special colorless blending pencils, which help to bring out the vibrancy and depth of colors. Practice your blending on a separate piece of paper if you are unsure of your outcome.

Experiment and most importantly, have fun! Also remember, if the tools you’re using are mediocre the results will be less satisfying. I recommend watercolor pencils for their bright colors and greater versatility.  Try
Prismacolor Colored Pencils available from Dick Blick.

Mandalas from Plastic Bags

I recently found a great article at Green Muze about an artist who creates mandalas from plastic bags.

Born in New York City in 1960, Virginia Fleck began making artwork as a child. She studied at Portland School of Art and The School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The artist now lives and works in Austin, Texas.

Her work has been exhibited at Art Forum Berlin, Pulse Miami, Pulse New York, and Arte Fiera in Bologna, Italy. Fleck receives commissions for both temporary and permanent public art projects throughout the United States, and her work appears in many public and private collections.

Intricately crafted, large scale works reminiscent of quilt making, each mandala is construct with discarded plastic bags that have been carefully cut and taped piece by piece into the design . “The cutting can get very sophisticated. I use many quilt making tools such as rotary cutters, shaped cutting templates, and circle cutters. I also use a beam compass for drawing large circles, various Exacto knives and a reducing glass (the opposite of a magnifying glass) for viewing and assessing the large highly patterned mandalas while they are in progress.” says Fleck.

Fleck’s mandalas are as layered with meaning as they are with color and material. The resulting works, each crafted from thousands of used plastic bags featuring familiar logos and slogans, can be both funny and unsettling. In contrast to the traditional Tibetan sand mandala’s impermanence, Fleck’s mandalas are created from non-biodegradable plastic shopping bags. Her work makes an interesting commentary on ecological awareness at the same time it divulges the concealed beauty of the materials we nonchalantly dispose of everyday.

When asked how long it takes to create one of her mandalas, Fleck says, “It could take as little as 2 weeks but sometimes it takes 2 months depending on the complexity. I usually have 3 or 4 mandalas under construction at once. This way when I get to a stopping point with one piece I can just move on to another. I like to keep working.”

Read the full article at: Green Muze

Artists website: Virginia Fleck