Hello my Lovelies! Thank you so much for visiting. This is Payal Sinha, the artist behind @thesimplyaesthetic. I just wanted to take some time and quickly show you guys how I used the Blackout Sketchbook from Archer&Olive to create an easy peasy Mandala Artwork.

The Blackout Sketchbook can be your best companion for a variety of subjects. You can not only use pens and liners but even water-based mediums and it works perfectly fine on the Sketchbook.

Before we move on, I just wanted to give you a quick idea about what Mandalas actually are:

What is a Mandala?

A mandala is a complex abstract design that is usually circular in form. Mandalas generally have one identifiable center point, from which emanates an array of symbols, shapes, and forms. Mandalas can contain both geometric and organic forms. They can also contain recognizable images that carry meaning for the person who is creating it.

Mandalas represent the connection between our inner worlds and outer reality. Designing your own mandalas can be both inspirational and therapeutic. Many people use Mandalas to express their state of mind as each shape represents something about you.

I am going to take you step by step through the entire process of the artwork I did and I would love to see you recreate them. So, without wasting much time, Let's get started.

MATERIALS YOU’LL NEED

• Archer and Olive Blackout Sketchbook
• White Gel Pens. (Sakura Gelly Rolls)
• Procircle or protractor - to divide your Mandala into parts.
• A compass
• Pencil and Eraser
• Winsor & Newton Gold Ink
• Round brush of size 0.

STEP 1: DIVISION OF THE CIRCLE

The first and the most important step in creating a Mandala has to be the formation of the patterns and to form perfect patterns you need to divide your area equally to give it symmetry.

The trick here is to divide the circle (360°) with a division every 10°.

Take your pro-circle or protractor and with the help of the marking divide your circle. You will now have 36 equal parts in your circle. You can see how I made the circle in the video below.

STEP 2: CREATING THE CIRCULAR GRID

The next important step is to make circles. From the center make a circle at whatever distance your please till the end comprising on 10-12 circles depending upon the idea you have in mind.

Usually, we make these circles to help our mind to form patterns looking at them. This obviously comes with practice but you can always try to club different patterns together to form a Mandala.

STEP 3: ROUGH SKETCH OF PATTERNS

Now we stare at the circles for a while and let our imagination do its job. Start from the center to create some zentangle pattern moving towards the outside of the circle. One tip here is to not repeat the patterns simultaneously. If the same patterns are repeated one after another, the mandala will lose its depth.

Using the lines and circles you drew as guidelines, you can draw shapes like circles, triangles, raindrops, loops, etc.

If you are a beginner and have difficulty creating patterns- you can always stop by my profile or look for some patterns on Pinterest for inspiration.

We are basically creating a rough sketch before moving on to the permanent step to give us an idea about what our final result would be and what patterns work together and what don’t.

STEP 4: OUTLINING THE PATTERN

Once we have our basic sketch ready we will now take our gelly roll pens from Sakura and start outlining our pattern. Without worrying about the intricate details of each pattern we will just create a basic outline. As you can see below I have just outlined my pattern using white gelly rolls.

STEP 5: ADDING INTRICATE DETAILS

Here comes the fun part, creating patterns and adding those tiny intricate details to give the depth to your Mandala. Since I am using white and gold for this mandala, I am going to leave some a few blank places to fill the gold and the rest with white. It all about creating a colour combination and fluctuating between them.

STEP 6: FILLING IN COLOURS

Once the white part of our mandala is ready we move on to adding the gold. Here I am using W&N metallic ink. I personally love this ink because of its consistency and how pigmented they are.

STEP 7: MANDALA TOUCH-UP

Now we have come very close to the end of our mandala project. After adding the gold and once the ink had dried we add the final details to the mandala. Now this completely as per you choice because there are chances you might want to highlight some patterns more and bold some patterns. You can call this the Mandala Touch-up Step.

STEP 8: ERASING THE GRID

The last and final step is to erase all the pencils lines that we might have visible from our initial steps and there you have it, your very own Mandala.

I hope you enjoyed this process and I cannot wait to see your recreations. If you have any questions you can always reach me out at the Instagram @thesimplyaesthetic .

Until next time lovely people, take care and keep feeding your soul with creativity!