The Largest Mandala I've Ever Made!

The inspiration for this piece was based on an earlier sketch I had done in my sketch book a while back... I posted it on my Facebook page here and here and after one of my friends saw it, she commissioned me for a VERY large scale version of it spanning 5ft x 5ft for her living room... :)

This is the original sketch....

Below is the beginning of the background

 

The grid and underdrawing - barely visible (some small scale colour comps are taped to the canvas on the left...helped a little but the mandala ended up taking on a mind of it's own as usual anyway!)

Below: painting the underdrawing

Elaborating, thickening of the lines in places

 Adding blue to the "water element"

 Adding moonlight throughout the water and shading

 

At this stage, I was stuck deciding what to do with the remaining "rocks" making up the outer circle... In the original sketch, I had envisioned the outer circle as earth and stones however the person who commissioned me wanted a "fire" element/aspect added to the painting. So while shading the water, I was listening to a documentary on volcanoes and thought why not lava! It's definitely a strong part of the forces of nature and elements of the earth and the colours are amazing!

So...below is the beginning of the lava circle - shading in the "rocks" with a dark grey/charcoal. I actually really love it in this stage - I was tempted to just leave it as was with the yellows and oranges of the background showing through but no...I decided to learn how to paint "lava"! And I'm glad I did!  :D

 Below is the first layer of "lava", just an overall dark red

 

 Then I added some oranges and yellows in between the rocks for a molten effect of sorts...I also added a really dark reddish brown layer over the rocks to make it more realistic and pop a bit more...

 And alas, the finished product... my apologies for the poor quality photo... a better quality shot is to come and I will update this post as well as the Facebook page with it asap! But you get the gist of it... I had to share, this was an amazing learning experience for me, I would not have tackled a 5'x5' mandala out of my own sheer will thats for sure! As intimidating as it was, I'm very happy I did it! :)

 

For now, I think I will move on to something a little smaller again... there's a 3'x1.5' canvas on my easle at the moment so we'll see what transpires! 

 Below: My favourite part of this mandala where the water meets the lava :)

Have a good night everyone and happy creating!