I spent some time this week playing around in Procreate with some of my mandalas. It’s always interesting to me to start coloring them in and see what works and what doesn’t. If I was just printing the mandalas out on paper and using colored pencils, they would all work.

But if I’m coloring them digitally (with Procreate or another app), sometimes how I’ve created the mandala causes issues when doing so. For instance, the net sections I left white above, because coloring them in using Procreate isn’t as easy as dragging and dropping the color like I do with most sections.

It’s a good exercise for me, so that I know when I create the next mandala what to do or avoid. Case in point – the circles on the inner layers of the above mandala. I used white to create them, so you can’t color them in digitally, because they are already white, even though it just looks like open space to color.

You can see the same use of white in this mandala to create the circles. Had I used the eraser to create the circles, the background color would show through them. Instead, you get this stark white on top of the layered gradient background.

An interesting effect, but definitely something I need to keep in mind when I am creating the mandalas. Draw and learn, right? 😀