Mandalas of Circles and Hexagons

This week I'm part of an online mandala-making class from Julie Gibbons Creative. I've found that mandalas suit me quite well as something that I enjoy drawing enough to really sit down and spend the time practicing/improving my very eensy drawing skills. It helps that this particular lesson, drawing circles and hexagons within them, uses a compass and ruler, so that I don't have to rely on my own spatial reasoning skills to make pleasing, regular patterns.

And who doesn't love playing with a compass?

Here's mine. The lesson included instruction on placing the adjacent circles, so I could use their intersections to make my hexagons and rectangles.

This was actually Syd's first time really playing with a compass. She got the hang of it quickly, and also enjoyed placing the circles and making patterns.

The lesson also included tips on how to paint with watercolors without having the colors bleed into each other. This was new information to me (I also learned how to correctly use bobby pins this week; it's been a good one for learning new skills!), and Syd and I both found that the technique worked perfectly.

Ravenclaw colors, on account of I'm a nerd.

I'm not so into the "magical" power of the mandala (this is shallow of me, but I tend to veer far away from self-reflection and all other emoting of the feels), but I'm finding it really, really fun to doodle them, so yay for a new hobby!

Ooh, and it's just occurred to me that I could pretend that mandala-doodling IS me doing the magical self-reflecting on the feels! When people begin to talk about their meditating and guided reflection and other weird stuff that I don't understand why I'm always around when people talk about, I'll just say, self-importantly, "Hmm? Oh, I have a practice drawing mandalas. It's quite powerful actually. Very circular... and... hexagonal. Yes, very self-reflective, don't you know?

And that's me just nailed down conversation at all of this year's holiday parties, so double yay.