If you are on social media, you have probably seen at least one Mandala popping up on your feed from time to time. In the last couple of years, Mandala art has come up with a boom. With the increase in stress, millennials look for ways to relax their minds and with that people started reviving the artists in them. A lot of concepts came up in the recent past like Zen Doodling, Mandala art etc. Like I have mentioned in my earlier posts, I am not an artist. Being a stressed millennial myself, I discovered oil pastels by chance and found them relaxing. But then the mind flits and jumps to so many things and I landed on Mandala art last weekend.
Thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, last weekend (one of the rare long weekends) was spent at home instead of on some short trip nearby to let off the steam and so I got a little curious about Mandala art. The concept was first introduced to me by my best friend years ago. Now she is a very good artist. She sketches well and creates beautiful pieces herself (Check out her art on Instagram). Then another friend of mine started creating videos for mandala tutorials on YouTube (Check out her channel). I read up a little on mandalas and that's about it until last weekend.
A little about mandalas. A mandala is a geometric configuration of symbols mostly used for spiritual and religious purposes. It's an ancient and advanced spiritual practice. If you look carefully at the ancient carvings on some of the heritage sites all over India, you will see mandalas almost everywhere. I realised how ancient it is when I came across one on one of the pillars of a cave at Ajanta. These caves date back to 2nd Century BC and some of the mandalas are still well preserved.
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| Mandala Carving at Ajanta |
Through all this exposure to mandalas, I remained distantly interested until last Saturday when I downloaded this very basic symmetrical drawing application on my laptop. I started with a few patterns here and there and found it oddly relaxing. Of course, what I created were not amazing pieces of art but they were good enough to show off on WhatsApp status and Instagram posts. So I got hooked on to it all through Sunday and spent a very relaxing evening. The first one I created was much appreciated by few of my friends and that encouraged me to do some more.
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| The first decent one |
The app is so user-friendly and easy to use that the mind started creating patterns on its own and I was able to replicate them on the screen. This was the first time I was just creating something artsy on my own instead of replicating something else. Probably that's something that got me hooked. This further motivated me to try this on paper once the lockdown lifts (I am low on art supplies).
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| More Mandala patterns |
I used different colour combinations, shapes and patterns. This was a fun way to spend an evening instead of moping around about my inability to step out of the house and wasting a long weekend staying indoors. We all are pretty bummed about staying indoors for such a long time but that's not entirely bad after all. You just need to find something that takes your mind off of the negativity.
In my case, I discovered a whole range of things, starting from drawing with oil pastels, mandalas and of course, writing this blog. So, find that something for yourself and immerse yourself in it. You'll probably end up liking being locked up indoors.
Stay indoors, stay healthy.
