Getting Caught Up!

Here is my second of 100 mandalas:

The suggestion was to use a black background, so I covered a page in my book of mandalas with black gesso, then drew some circles on it lightly with pencil. I pulled out three different white pens and just had fun with it. It was so relaxing! And, I love how it turned out!

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We headed to Mississauga, Ontario for the weekend of January 17th to celebrate Blair's youngest brother's (Neil's) 50th birthday (which was actually in December). What could be more Canadian than eating poutine at a hockey game (Mississauga Steelheads vs Owen Sound Attack)?

So good!

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My friend, and the person who introduced me to mandalas, Kathleen Horne, has started a Mandala Club at Expressive Arts Florida, held once a month, and, of course, I decided to go. My first visit was in December, and my mom went with me. This was very special for me, as I wanted her to meet Kathleen, plus I wanted her to share the experience of being creative with me. It took me a lot longer than the time at the Mandala Club meeting to complete the mandala that I started there, but I did finish it within a couple of days, and my mom took it home with her.

In January, at the Mandala Club meeting, I felt the need to work with collage, so I searched through the many catalogues, and such, that Expressive Arts Florida has available, and cut out pictures and words that jumped out at me. Here is the final result of that effort (which I did complete during that meeting):

I guess this would be my 3rd of 100 mandalas!

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Even though I'm in the middle of numerous (way too many to count) online classes and I should be focusing on these, I sometimes find myself just wanting to get messy, and I am currently creating these random pages in my Intentions Journal. This journal was started last year, but since I didn't come close to filling up all of the pages, I am going to continue with the same book for this year. The first two of these pages that I created for 2015 were:

In looking at them right now, I just realized that both of these images actually reflect my word for 2015: ACTION. The first one has the words "Let's Go" collaged onto the image and it's background is very colorful and "active," and when I created the second one, I felt the urge to add the sideways tails to the ends of each point of the mandalas, in order to give the feeling that they were twirling. How cool is that!

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Besides the 100 mandalas challenge, I also signed up for a program called Mandala Magic 2015, hosted by Julie Gibbons. I want to learn more about the creation of mandalas and determine why I am so drawn to them. This program also uses The Mandala Workbook by Susanne Fincher (like the 100 mandalas challenge group does), which was another reason that I was drawn to it.

I began by doing some of the exercises from Stage 1 of the workbook. For example, I drew the following image with a chalk pastel, using my non-dominant (left) hand, and just going around in a circle for five minutes. It was meditative, but my arm got tired too quickly! 

Love the purple!

For another exercise from the workbook, I made a spider web mandala on black paper. First, I drew the lines going through the center out to the edges of the mandala. Then, beginning at the center, I drew one line, from the inside out, from line to line, building my web just like a spider would. This took quite a while and was also very meditative. I do love white on black!

Then, I began Julie Gibbon's Mandala Magic 2015. The first exercise that she suggests is an Intentions Setting Exercise. One side of the journal was to be a "self-image" within a mandala, and the second side was to be used to list out some intention statements. This was what I created:

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Another online program that I registered for last year was called Spectrum 2014, hosted by the artist Hali Karla. As the year went on, I got further and further behind, and by the end I was down to reading the offerings, watching the videos provided, and listening to the audios provided. I wasn't doing any more of the artwork, but just trying to absorb what was being shared. This week, however, as I was listening to a lesson called "Release and Reclaim," led by Jes Gordon, I felt the need to put something down on paper. This set of videos dealt with focusing on something that was bothering us, in our bodies, and to put it down on paper so we can work at learning how to deal with, or eliminate, the issue. Over the years, I've had some issues with heartburn and indigestion, so that was my focus in this image.

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Another class that I recently signed up for is Supplies Me! with Jane Davenport. My supplies keep growing, and I feel like I don't know how to make the best use of all of them, so I thought that this might be a helpful class to take. I've taken other classes from Jane, and I like her approach to instruction, so I signed up. I've just completed the first class, where she talks about the various journals that she recommends (or doesn't!), including altered books and handmade ones. Since she raved so much about the Strathmore hardbound mixed media journals, and since they had some at my local Michael's, I decided to get a small one to use for this class. At the end of this section, Jane shared her approach to warming up for being creative, and I followed along, creating my first page in my new journal. 

This is the second time in a week that an owl has appeared to me in my work. (The other one is still a work-in-progress.) I must research what exactly it is that an owl represents.

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Finally, I would like to share with you an artist that I stumbled across who's work I greatly admire: Elspeth Mclean. I love adding dots to my images, and she is an expert at this process. Check out a couple of her videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apeEdFVPdXE and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdyXcB2HJpg. OMG! I love her work, and the second one, which was just posted on December 25, 2014, especially appeals to me, especially since her "Dotillism Painting" is being done on a Flower of Life Mandala. So beautiful. You can also check out her website (http://www.elspethmclean.com) to see some of her other paintings!