Art Therapy For All - How To Draw Paisley Mandala Workshop

Hello! And, welcome!

Here’s the design we will achieve together by the end of this lecture. Notice the large shapes that will be easy and fun to color in. Nothing should be skinnier than the diameter of your pencil.

And, speaking of pencils, I drew my lines heavily so that they would show on camera. Your lines should be light and only barely visible to you. We don’t want to paint over dirty graphite, or spend any time erasing.

Let’s start by finding the center of our canvas by lightly dragging our pencil from corner to corner. Press a little bit harder when crossing the center to make a faint X.

Place the point of your pencil at the center and draw a large C shape, reaching up towards the top of your canvas.

From the bottom, it’s as if we’re going to make this shape into the number six, but right towards the top, we curve back around to make a funky S shape.

Wait. What? Let’s try that again.

From the center, pull your pencil up to the left, making a large half circle. The front of this shape has a large bulbous bottom, stretching to the right, with a tiny inward facing curve at the top.

Turn your canvas around so the shape you drew is at the bottom.

Let’s do the same shape again. From center, curve out to the left and up towards the top of your paper. Complete the front of the paisley by curving out to the right and up almost to the top, but pull back to make the silly S shape.

Don’t worry if your paisley’s don’t match each other. In nature, we appreciate the imperfections of flowers and leaves. Try to see your artwork as an organic expression of your uniqueness.

Keep rotating the canvas until all four paisleys fill your page. Good job! You did it!

Let’s now draw some suns setting behind our paisley shapes. Nice big arches. Be generous with the size of these shapes so there is plenty of space to color in. Finish four arches between each paisley. Then we can move on.

Let’s add a wide stripe above our setting suns. We want to add detail to this space, so make sure you're giving at least a quarter of an inch or more. Once we add color and outline with black, all of the spaces will shrink. Go all the way around, until you’ve done this four times.

We’re going to hone in now on the back of every paisley. Start on the arch you just made, pull the pencil up to make a leaf shape. Stop at a point for a breather, and pull back down to reach the back of the paisley shape.

Reach up, back down. Up, back down. We’re going to do that four times, connecting the back of every paisley shape to the rainbow arches in between.

Visualize your shape before drawing. See it is wide at the bottom, pointy at the top. Imagine how the objects we are drawing are layered on each other.

On the front of the paisley, inside of our little S curve, we’re going to reach up, pulling our pencil into a bulbous tear drop shape, coming back down to where we started. We’ll do a second one right behind this.

Now, let’s draw this same shape disconnected from the mandala shape. Same concept, up and around to create a round tear drop shape, coming back to a point at the beginning.

Do another one, if you’d like, and maybe some circles. Remember not to go smaller than the diameter of your pencil. You’ll lose it all in the coming details.

Flip the canvas one more time, and repeat this last step on the other side. Pull up, curve back around, pull back to the starting point.

Okay! Your mandala might not look exactly like mine - and that’s the whole idea! One million people could take this course, and none would be the same. Rejoice in the beauty you’ve created and get ready to color!

FREE DOWNLOAD:

Be sure to download the free coloring page, titled TIME WITHOUT END, from my book MANDALA MEDITATION.

Welcome to Step 1, coloring this paisley mandala.

Remember, this is your art, so color it the way you want to. I simply make suggestions.

Lay your art supplies in front of you. Whether it’s colored pencils, markers, crayons, oils, acrylics, watercolors, pastels, or glitter glue…. Select hues you are attracted to and make groups of three complementary colors.

Give yourself a variety of options to choose from.

Remove the colors you’re not interested in using. Edit down to one final selection.

Of your three colors, choose one, put the other two aside. I chose my accent color, pink, leaving the two purples for the paisley mandala.

Get your supplies ready. In my case, I need to shake my paint pen WITH THE COVER ON, and pump the nib on cardboard until the tip is saturated in a pool of paint.

I’m going to outline my shape. once… twice… maybe three times, before gently filling in the area.

Moving on to the next area. Again, I will define my area by outline with a nice sharp edge. Color in back and forth to fill each section. Some people call this edging a bumper. It is a nice way to give yourself some padding, so you can color in more quickly.

Next we will outline the background. We want to go around all of the pieces that stick out of our paisley mandala.

Make sure that you leave plenty of white space to color in with another color.

Really exaggerate the design elements while coloring in the background.

Once you have your bumpers in place, you can carefully color in section by section.

Add bumpers along the edge of your canvas, too! This will prevent your marker, pencil or brush from going off the edge of your page.

The reason I take my time doing this wide border in sections, is so that I can fill it in quickly!

While you continue coloring, I will share a little information about the symbolism in this mandala. Over the next few lectures, I will be sharing guided meditative thoughts based on the psychology we will discuss right now.

Paisley designs can be traced back close to two millennium and originally represented perpetual life, divine limitless, and immeasurable ecstasy. Wow, paisley! That’s a tough concept to represent!

The idea of infinity can be difficult for the mind to comprehend. Instead of trying to find an end point, picture life as a looping cycle that expands larger and larger as it wraps around itself.

Hold on to this thought while finishing up with your first color.

Take your time. Experiment with blending if you’re using colored pencils or paint. Let this dry for a bit before we meet back here for Step 2 of coloring this paisley mandala.

FREE DOWNLOAD:

Be sure to download the information page from my book MANDALA MEDITATION, explaining the psychological meaning of this artwork: TIME WITHOUT END.

I start by shaking my paint pen WITH THE CAP ON… pumping the nib on cardboard for fresh paint.

Be mindful of where you place your hands and fingers while painting.

Just as in the last lecture, we will outline each shape we want colored in. Carefully color in one section at a time.

If your second color is darker than the first, you can go over your background a bit.

But! If you are coloring with yellow right now, and your background is blue - you might want to be careful about coloring over the top of a darker color. Things can get messy quickly!

Don’t be afraid to leave a little bit of white space between colors. We will be tracing over everything with a black outline, later in this course.

I want to remind you that paisleys represent things that exist beyond what we can imagine. It’s a big thought! I’ll share a tip in a bit on how to grasp the concept of infinity.

I’d like you to imagine that your wildest dream has manifested beyond your expectations.

Think about that.

The thing you want most has come true… but even better than you thought it would.

Sit with this feeling of enjoyment as you finish coloring these sections.

Let this dry. Then, let’s meet back again to apply the last color!

Okay! Here we are together with our last color.

Just as we’ve done before, we’ll carefully outline our paisley shapes with a wide edging.

Take your time, stroking back and forth to fully fill in each remaining section.

Usually at this point in my class, students comment that their artwork doesn’t quite meet their expectations.

May I inspire you to hold out a moment — during the next two lectures, our masterpiece will really pop!

We will outline and add details with black, adding depth and texture to our compositions.

Take your time filling in the paisley shapes while imagining this experience:

You’ve just been promised an obstacle-free path to all of your dreams come true.

Try not to think about HOW this will happen. Focus instead on what this end result looks like to you.

Have fun coloring!

Please wait for your art to dry completely before moving on to the next section.

Here is a preview of the beautiful outlining work we are going to do together in this lecture. Do you love it? I have two sizes of Sharpie Paint Pens - a fine point and a medium nib. Let’s start with the broader tip. Shake it up and pump on some cardboard — or sharpen your colored pencil — put a little paint on your brush.

Start right at the center and pull your hand up and around the paisley shape. Look at where you are going, instead of where your hand is at. Focus ahead of your brush or pen stroke and gently pull yourself around the paisley shape. No hurry here. Take your time. Go over your lines twice if you need to clean anything up. But don’t get caught up in this needing to be perfect. We are playing and creating art! Let’s trace around another paisley shape. Refresh your brush or paint pen if your lines start to get thin or squiggly. We want to master controlling a juicy amount of paint with steady line work. Everything takes practice. Do line work like this while doodling at work, home, or traveling. But, obviously, not while driving.

Let’s do this archway that butts up against the same colored leaf shape. Watch how my black line redefines each shape. Continue tracing all four leaf shapes, rotating the canvas, rather than reaching across your wet painting. On to the leaf shapes! Remember these? Pull up. Back down. Wide at the bottom, pointy at the top. Don’t you just love how the black is making our art POP!? Now that areas we are not tracing inside the mandala, try to keep the black outline on the background color, rather than on top of the leaf shape. Okay? Carefully outline the remaining shapes, taking great care to draw on the background color, rather than on the shapes themselves.

If any of your shapes are too skinny for the thick outline we are drawing, hold off until the next lecture, when we will be using a finer point pen (or brush).

In my opinion, these outer embellishments look nice with a thick outline — just take care to leave the elements showing (rather than accidentally blacking them out).

That’s it! Let this dry…. see you at the grand finale!