Have you ever wanted to try drawing mandalas? It’s more fun and rewarding than you probably think, and the results are probably better than what you imagine, whether you think you have no drawing skill at all, or you’re a seasoned sketcher.
If you’re after a free and easy way to relax, centre yourself, and practise a bit of mindfulness, it’s hard to go past drawing a mandala. It’s a great way to focus on something, and it’s not the kind of drawing that needs to be ‘correct’. But be warned! you might find it a bit addictive… 😉
Mandalas have deep significance in Hinduism and Buddhism, and represent the universe, from its grandest through to its tiniest sense (mandala is actually Sanskrit for ‘circle’). The act of making mandalas has always been used for focusing attention, for establishing ‘space’ in the mind and spirit, and for meditation. Even destroying mandalas has deep spiritual significance in Tibetan Buddhism, as a way of emphasising how fleeting life is. They’re also incredibly popular as decoration, which makes them perfect for wall art, greeting cards, tattoos, and so on.
Draw your mandala as a gift from you to you
Drawing a mandala can be really fun, relaxing and meditative, so long as you leave your inner critic in its playpen, and treat it as random discovery rather than a piece of performance. Just like zentangling, you start simple, and then take it wherever you and your imagination want to go, and make it as simple or as complex as you want it to be.
Materials
You can make mandalas out of just about anything; from coloured sand (like the Tibetan Buddhist mandalas), to paper, candy, plants, crochet, salt, even people. But for now, let’s stick to good ol’ pen and paper, shall we? You can start with as little as this:
- Plain office paper
- Pencil or black marker
- Coloured markers / art markers of your choice
You can draw your mandalas totally freehand if you like, but if you want them to be super neat, and you feel like you need some more structure to work with, you’ll want these:
- A compass
- A ruler
- A protractor
Another good idea is to use polar graph paper that you can print out and use as a guide. You can either draw directly on the graph paper, or place it under the piece of paper you’re drawing on as a guide.
Setting up your mandala structure
Start with a point in the middle of your paper, and use a ruler and pencil to draw lines through the middle, horizontally and vertically. Next, draw several circles with your compass using that point at the centre of the paper where the lines intersect. Try to draw the circles at various random diameters, rather than a regular pattern:
Now it’s time to think about how many sections you would like in your mandala. Drawing it in quarters is perfectly fine, but let’s go for eighths. Two 45-degree lines going through the same middle point should give you 8 equal sections across the circles.
You should have something that looks like this:
Starting your mandala
The hardest stroke is the first one, so go ahead and jump in by drawing a simple shape from the very centre of your circles, outward to the first circle guideline you drew. Here’s my first set of shapes:
It’s really important to take your time. Enjoy it. Don’t rush it. Draw each line deliberately and neatly. You’ll get a much better result. Also, do one type of line or shape all the way around before starting the next type of line or shape. Resist the temptation to go galavanting off doing a whole segment, and then trying to come back to the centre again; it won’t look as good.
Adding variety and imagination
As you continue drawing your mandala, don’t try to think too hard about it; just let the pen and your imagination go where they want to go. This is such a great example of intuitive drawing.
You can change up the type of shapes that you’re drawing, or stick to a theme, it’s completely up to you. Try circles, triangles, leaves, straight lines, curved lines and spirals…
As the mandala gets bigger, you might like to experiment with longer lines and larger shapes, like these petal shapes that end up overlapping each other:
At any point, you can go back over your mandala and add some thicker lines, and other shapes and details if you like:
Finishing your mandala
Sooner or later you’ll wonder when it’s time to stop! Getting to the edge of the paper is probably far enough, so try to leave a bit of a gap, like you can see here:
How much detail you put in is up to you. Here’s my finished mandala below, just in black marker, and again once I’d gone through it and added some yellow colour:
Try it yourself
I hope you liked seeing this mandala take shape, and I hope it gives you a nudge to try drawing one yourself. Start small, start simple, experiment with shapes and colours, and let it be fun and relaxing! Oh, and if you’re after other ideas for simple ways to get sketching, try these 10 ideas to get you inspired to sketch.