Mandala Flower and Vines

Wow, I am not 100% sure what to say about this drawing. I am very surprised at the popularity of this video. It was a very simple drawing that only took a little over an hour to draw.

The design was inspired from a Google image search. I cannot find the original image although I've looked several times. I was hoping to show how you can use images as inspiration without completely copying the image.

I do like the way the final image looks. This was one of the first mandalas I drew that wasn't using a compass. I sort of let the mandala grow naturally and eye-balled the divisions of the mandala. I must admit that I didn't put as much effort into this drawing as I have for others. This is one of the reasons I am so surprised that the video has over 200,000 views.

When I look at some of my most viewed videos/drawings, I've noticed that a lot of them are ones that I didn't overthink and over-plan. Sometimes just letting things be a little simple and not trying to hard is what people are looking for. I think this is because it lets people know that it's something that they can do if they put their mind to. Simple drawings aren't as intimidating the way more detailed drawings can be. That's just me guessing at the popularity, but I can't say for sure.

Zentangled Mandala - Pushing Through Mistakes

This little mandala didn't turn out the way that I was expecting. The solid black lines were not supposed to be solid black lines. You can see that by the way that I started off the drawing. As I was going over the penciled lines with my pen, I made a mistake which caused me to have to make the lines solid. I remember being really disappointed by having to change this vision of what I was planning.

When I make mistakes like this, I tend to start over again, but this time I decided to keep going. I will say that the disappointment did cause me to choose more simple patterns than what I was planning. Apparently when I make a mistake, I let it effect me a little more than I should.

Over the years, I have learned to work around the mistakes that I make in a drawing, but I must admit that there's still a part of me that gets annoyed by my own mistakes. What's funny about that is most of the time, no one other than myself would even know that a mistake was made.

This is something that I try to impress upon my students. Even when you think there's a mistake beyond repair, keep going. There's a great possibility that the mistake will not be noticeable once you finish the piece.