I’ve been drawing my mandalas with Procreate, which was one of the first drawing apps I came across for the iPad.  After I started drawing the mandalas, I discovered an app called Amaziograph.

It’s $0.99 on the App Store and is also available for Android.  The app is made specifically for drawing tessellations and mandalas.  After debating whether I needed to buy another app, I finally bit the bullet and bought it.  I mean, it was only $0.99 – so if I hated it, it wasn’t a huge loss.

I’ve had it for about a month, and honestly, I’ve only played around with it once or twice.  It does have some nice features for drawing mandalas.  With Procreate, I use the symmetry feature, but I only have the option for 2, 4, or 8 areas.  Amaziograph lets you choose the number of areas from 1-12.  So it’s possible to create some really interesting designs when you use an odd number (like 7).

This is my first attempt at drawing a mandala with Amaziograph.  It’s pretty rough in places, but I wanted to get a general idea of how it worked.  The design features are great, since they are made specifically for drawing mandalas.

However, I found I missed a lot of things I’ve grown used to with Procreate, including the auto-shape recognition, the two-finger delete, line smoothing, and the ability to change and fine-tune the brush options.  I think the line smoothing is what I missed the most, because I do have tremors in my hands sometimes, especially if I’ve been drawing for a while.

While I liked the ability to play with the number of areas, it did make drawing more difficult, because when using an odd number, things didn’t always end up connecting where I thought they would/should.

I’m not sure I’ll use it as much as I was hoping I might, but at least I got a chance to try it out and see if I liked it.  I still want to play around with some of the tessellation features at some point.  In the meantime, I think I’ll stick with Procreate.