Since I started being an artist full time 3 years ago, I have been trying to find a style or way of working that is my own. The layering of mandalas and tea dipping is very therapeutic, but the wanted to work towards something more concrete. I want to incorporate these images within other pieces.
I love flowers and enjoy creating 3D designs that you can achieve with a ‘still life’. My hubby and I are both a bit allergic to flowers and pollen so I have bought a range of different artificial examples.
I have a couple of white jugs and a favourite over decorated piece that belonged to my step grandma. I thought it would also be fun to use jars and bottles which are currently in fashion as vases. I also visited the National Museum of Scotland looking for different shaped vessels
When I start a project – I do lots of preparation and thinking , but then procrastinate about actually starting the work…..
these are my first efforts – I have prepared lots of mandalas on cartridge paper and printer paper. The printer paper is too thin and buckles and creases too much but is good to practice layouts and composition.
I used some water soluble powdered pigment ink in some of the mandalas and this seems to leak into the acrylic, causing the circular effects you can see in the last picture above.
I like the way the negative shapes of the flowers work well with the flat background. I thought The fowers and vase need to be drawn simpley to contrast with the mandalas. I have been playing with different tones of blue and thicknesses of pen. I think each mandala needs me to be more intuiative with the back grounds rather than mixing up a vat of colour like I did yesterday
I hav been trying to draw as realistically as possible and have been posting on Instagram to see what reaction I get from my friends. I was surprised when I posted the picture below asking for feed back – I was unsure about the white and felt that the jar was a bit clumsy – it received more positive feed back than some of the more neatly drawn careful designs
I have tried different colours in the back ground and I am particularly fond of the shapes created by my artificial seed pods
When I posted the image of the step by step below I was also interested in how people appreciated the contrast of orange and mandala top left and the thin layer of orange bottom right- when I had been striving to achieve a flat opaque finish
Larger fleshy flowers are not as effective – because there is not enough negative shape to play with and the thicker line looses definition 
This background is too simillar to the flower- not sure what it is supposed to be really….. the stems and flowers appear to be a climber but the rigid stem is a bit incongruous
My real cycleman didn’t really work either – I think the flowers and the petals are too close together and the pen line too thick
I will keep at it ….
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