Research
I wanted to learn more about what a Mandala was so I simply did some searching. I found a website that gave me a lot of valuable information about them as well as some good reference images.
Exploring the Mandala | Asia Society
This is a mandala I used as a reference when building my first “illustrator only” iteration.
It’s very complex and lead me to believe mine needed to be
Exercises
Exercise 1 – Abstraction patterns
At the very beginning of this project, we began making abstractions of 10 different organic things and 10 different man-made things.
From there, I moved into Exercise 1 where I used my abstractions in a 3×3 space to create a flat pattern across the composition. What I created at first was not good. I was rushing, not entirely understanding what was expected so I waited until class and then worked on more after class was over.
The first one. Yikes.
The ones below came after I showed mine to the class. Understanding the exercise really helped moving forward, not sure why I couldn’t wrap my head around it at first.
Iterations
After exercise 1, I moved to creating my own mandala templates and using others I found on google to experiment with. I mostly spent my time learning illustrator’s radial tool and seeing how organizing the patterns in radial would change the composition. Here are some radial patterns I did in the very beginning. In some of my beginning iterations, I leaned more towards movement and rhythm, purposefully making my iterations have more spiral movement around the focal point.
At this point, I was starting to create my own templates and iterate with some other ones. Using procreate, I could actually quickly sketch entire Mandalas using their radial symmetry guides which helped me ideate some patterns and ways to utilize the abstractions in a unique way. Here are some of those templates alongside the Mandalas I created with them.
These two templates were my exploration into scale and proportion, but the very bottom one gave me a lot of trouble and I didn’t know what to do with it. The one directly below this is actually what I end up moving forward with for a time so let’s look at those.
At this stage, I was moving toward finalizing my patterns. Given that my example was an entirely complicated thing, I started combining radial patterns in a template I made in illustrator. Starting with that one template…
I made some changes to it and decided scale wasn’t what I wanted to do. I really wanted symmetry and proportion and I liked my designs previously where proportion was present but not active as the primary principle so I started moving towards iterating with that.
It began to get complicated very quickly.
I began using radial to create patterns surrounding the focal point. I mixed and matched different radial patterns, but most of them used linework rather than form which led to some issues down the road. I was beginning to rethink my Mandala at this point.
The above image is what my Mandala turned into, kind of experimenting with scale and proportion in regard to the multiple smaller focal points placed across from each other. Another detail is the divide between the top left and bottom right and the top right and bottom left. They feature different patterns that separate them while mirroring the segments across the focal point. I thought this created a weirdly unbalanced but symmetrical look that I really enjoyed. However, this was very complicated and very packed with patterns. So I began rethinking how I approached creating the Mandala.
Production
The End – Final Mandala
What I ended up doing was creating the pattern in one segment, compiling abstractions in a way, and then putting it into radial rather than creating radials and combining them into a Mandala. Here’s what I started working on.
I thought this process of combining patterns and then going into radial allowed me to iterate more, to the extent that I blasted through maybe 9 different looking Mandalas, all of which I did not screenshot because it happened in a span of 8 seconds. Because of my experiences with the other principles, I also rethought what principle I wanted to use. Looking at my previous designs (the hand-drawn ones) I liked the ones that were more static and harmonious than the ones with radial movement so I focused mainly on trying to capture that but more solidified. I kept running with this process and began creating what would end up turning into a finalized Mandala.
This abstraction is from the “portal” of a cathedral. I really enjoyed the shape and how value could be applied to change its look so I cleaned up the abstraction a lot and made it smoother and more complete. From there I just created more patterns using it.
I noticed a lot of the values were really dark and wouldn’t help in putting color through so I changed them and overall lightened up everything.
Putting all of this into radial resulted in what would basically be the finalized version.
I made some smaller changes like reversing the window abstraction behind the three pillars to go from dark in the center and lighter on the outside which contrasted with the pillars a lot nicer than I expected.
Finding the colors was a fairly easy process. I went onto Adobe Color and messed around with the little dial, saving color palettes I enjoyed and thought would apply to the Mandala in a meaningful way.
From there, I took three of these and moved them to illustrator where I would create three different 6×6 graphs showing the colors with varying brightness and saturation (HSB).
My main goal with adding color was to ensure that each part of the Mandala didn’t blend into each other and that each part was recognizable. After some feedback in class, someone suggested I play with backgrounds which is something I had actually experimented with prior.
Final Production
