Mindful Mandalas: Botanical Doodling For Self-Care

In this beginner friendly class, we will use real botanical references to inspire doodles and patterns which we will develop into beautiful, easy to draw Mandalas

We will explore 3 different compositional structures, paired with simple, easy to follow mindful drawing techniques to promote a sense of calm and connection to the present moment.

** What You Will Learn **

• We will start by clarifying what a Mandala is, and why they are so powerful physically and symbolically to use in mindful art-making.
  
• We will then gather inspiration from our natural surroundings – this may be from your garden, your walk to work, or even from your collection of pot plants. I’ll walk you through how to tune into your surroundings mindfully, so that you can practice mindful observation.
  
• We will record what we observe by creating an Inspiration Image Bank of photographs, which will serve as our inspiration as we move onto the drawing part of the class. Your Inspiration Image Bank will be a fantastic personal resource to draw upon, both within the class and beyond.
  
• We will use your Inspiration Image Bank to start creating a wide range of doodles, drawings, shapes and patterns, and this will become your Botanical Doodle Library which will be the foundation from which all our Mandala drawings are developed. This is another brilliant personal resource to continue to develop beyond the class in order to support an ongoing botanical doodling practice.
  
• We will explore 3 different Mandala styles, each one with a different compositional structure. I’ll explain how to approach each style, and give you lots of examples, and ways you can apply your botanical doodles, as well as suggesting a mindful drawing technique for each to try out as you draw.
  
• For each Mandala style, there are separate draw-along style videos, so that if you would prefer a little more guidance to create your Mandala drawings, you can draw along with me.
  
• I’ll give you some ideas for how you could continue to develop the practice beyond the class, so that you can incorporate what you have learnt into an ongoing creative practice.

By the end of this class, you will have:

• A series of 3 experimental botanical Mandala drawings.
• A toolkit of mindful drawing techniques.
• A framework