Trying out the radial symmetry again, something I’m not always successful with. This one turned out well, though. 🙂
Mandalas
Mandalas Everywhere
When I started my mandala YouTube channel, I wasn’t sure how it would work and how I would feel about it. Drawing is often one of those things where I do a lot all at once because I’m inspired, but then it might be several days or a week before I feel like drawing again.
Before I started the channel, I decided that I would begin with a fairly light publishing schedule – just twice a week, because more than that seemed daunting. And for the first few weeks, it seemed like a good choice, because it was taking me about 20-30 minutes to draw something. Normally, the time it takes me to draw something is mostly irrelevant, since I only posted here for the most part. Occasionally I’ll remember to add them to my Pinterest, but that’s not a given.
However, I wanted my videos to be shorter than that, so I was spending a lot of time editing them down to make them around 10-15 minutes. Last week, I challenged myself to do some speed drawing. How fast could I draw some mandalas? Could I spend less time drawing so that I could then spend less time editing?
So I sat down and started filming. The first mandala took about the same amount of time as usual. However, I was using a reference photo and was getting frustrated when things weren’t going the way I wanted. I decided to ditch the reference photos and just draw.
It helped that I was home alone, so I could really focus on what I was doing, and not worry about being interrupted while I was filming. The next mandala took about 9 minutes, so a little better, but not great. I tried a few more and eventually got down to just 5 minutes. Now, I don’t want to draw that fast all the time, because I often want more details than I can get in that time, but it was nice to know that if I need to draw quickly, I can.
Plus, the quicker I can draw, the more videos I can put out – which seems to be how you succeed at the YouTubing – more content, more content, more content. 😀 So now that I know I can get more done, I am going to try and post a bit more often than twice a week on YouTube. I don’t think I’m ready for posting a video every day yet, but I might get there eventually.
Monday Mandala 82
Still experimenting with different shapes and silhouettes, as well as more black areas. This one has lots of areas to color, especially with gradients.
Monday Mandala 81
This is one of my recent favorites. It’s balanced, I like my linework, and the elements all gel together nicely. Plus, all the circles make me happy. 😛
Monday Mandala 80
Another foray into Native American symbols. I am in love with Navajo sand paintings, so I was using them for inspiration. I like the middle, but I wish I had added a few more layers.
More Dots!
In addition to the regular Monday Mandalas I draw, I also like to play around with dotted mandalas.
I first saw this technique on a YouTube channel, and she uses physical paints rather than making digital designs. However, the concepts are the same, and I’ve had a lot of fun playing around in Procreate with them.
I like the color palette of this one, though the middle of it does remind me of an old rotary phone dial. 😀 Using Procreate for these makes it really easy to make the dots all a uniform size – I’m sure there’s much more of a learning curve when doing these with paint.
It is relaxing to just play around with the colors and sizes and patterns when making these. Now that I think about it, it’s kind of reminiscent of diamond painting. Or maybe I just have diamond painting on the brain. 😛
It’s always amazing to me how differently these all turn out. This color palette reminds me of Dippin’ Dots – you know, that ice cream treat that’s made out of various flavors of dots mixed together? Not sure what flavor this would be – Neopolitan, maybe? In any case, it’s fun and relaxing to sit down and just doodle some of these into existence.
Monday Mandala 79
Lots of black in this one, so it’s quite heavy. I like the scrolls and I think the layers mesh well.
Monday Mandala 78
Did something a bit different with this one – drew the outside layers first and worked my way inward. I like how it turned out. The inner layers are heavy, but I think it works for this design.
Introverted Hermit on YouTube
Getting a YouTube channel up and running has been a goal for a while now. However, I just never seemed to get it done. So instead of dreaming about this fictional channel and all the fancy (translation: expensive) equipment I’d need to do it, I decided to just get it done.
I sat down and filmed myself drawing with what I had – my phone, my iPad, and some ok lighting. Am I making mistakes?
Oh, yeah.
But I’m learning from them. And that’s the point, right? For instance, I’ve already learned that you can’t upload a video longer than 15 minutes unless you have ‘verified’ your YouTube account. I’m not sure why I have to do that, since really all they want is a phone number, which Google already has.
In any event, I haven’t taken that step. It doesn’t generally take me longer than 15 minutes to draw a mandala, so I don’t need to – yet. I have taken the step of ordering a soft box light to help with my lighting issues. I can’t seem to find a good/comfortable place to draw that doesn’t result in some kind of glare or reflection from the light.
I’ve also learned that dealing with music on YouTube is a pain. I don’t want my videos to be silent, but music ain’t cheap. I’ve looked at a couple of options for *gasp* subscription services for this, but I decided I want to wait for a bit. YouTube has free music options, although they are admittedly not great. But they are free. 😀
So right now I film, use iMovie to edit/remove the audio and then upload to YouTube. Then, I find free music to use and add it. Then I wait a million years for YouTube to process the videos with the added music. THEN I can schedule/post the video.
Finding songs longer than 2-3 minutes also took some searching. And, while I’m not thrilled with the music I found, it’s free and I don’t have to worry about downloading the same song EVERY TIME I want to use it with a video. (Some of the subscription services make you do this – which, to me, misses the whole point. I didn’t want to download a file every time I made a video, so for now, I’m making do with what I have – access to YouTube’s free (albeit not great) music library.)
Filming with my phone has also been an experience. I have an older phone, so there isn’t a lot of space on it for filming videos. I can film one video at a time – then I have to delete it before I can film another one. And then I had to learn how to really delete the videos, because Apple. 
Luckily, my husband gifted me his old phone. The screen is cracked, but since I’m just using it to film, it doesn’t matter. And since no one is using it as a phone, there’s nothing on it, so there’s lots of storage space. 😀
Now I can film several videos at once when the creative mood strikes, rather than being forced to do everything one step at a time.
I’ve gotten several done and uploaded to YouTube, so if you want to head over and check them out, click here. These are different mandalas than the ones I do for Mandala Monday, so they won’t be repeats of what you see here.
I am debating whether I want to add the mandalas from the videos to my Etsy shop. They are not necessarily drawn with coloring in mind, but I think many of them would work nicely. Something to think about while I revamp my Etsy listings. 🙂
If you like what you see in the videos, don’t forget to like and subscribe!
