LESSON XI - Part 3: Color Wheel Mandalas

In this project, you will first find reference material for your Color Wheel (fruits & veggies & flowers).  Then, you'll draw and paint the Mandala.

GATHERING REFERENCE MATERIAL

You will be filling up your Color Wheel with different fruits, veggies, and flowers -- your choice. So you will want to gather references for each color:  Red, Yellow, Blue, Orange, Green, & Violet.

You can find the reference photos in three different ways:

1) Go to Farmer's Market or Grocery, and take pictures there, or buy the different colored produce and bring it home, to either take pix of, or draw/paint from life.

2)  Tear pix out of magazines, of fruits, veggies, and flowers, for each of the six colors.

3)  Find photos to use, on Pinterest.


Divide up the photos, by color.  Save them in separate manila envelopes, for this and for future projects.



DRAWING & PAINTING THE COLOR WHEEL MANDALA

Start with a piece of watercolor paper, that is at least 8" square.  Draw a 7" (approx) circle in the middle of the square.  Use an old-fashioned compass to draw this circle, so that you have a tiny hole in the middle of the circle.

Then draw a line through the center of the circle, dissecting it in half.  Then divide up each half into 3 pie shape segments, so you will end up with a circle divided into 6 equal parts.

Now, label each segment, in pencil -- on the outside of this circle -- with a color.  It doesn't matter where you start, but label them, according to the color wheel, as follows:  RED, ORANGE, YELLOW, GREEN, BLUE, VIOLET.

On your palette, you will prepare three separate washes of the three Primary Colors -- one at a time.  First, mix up a YELLOW (Aureolin Yellow, or similar) wash.  Make sure you have plenty of water, so that your wash is transparent.  You will be applying this wet wash onto DRY paper.

Paint this YELLOW wash on THREE of the segments:  the ORANGE, the YELLOW, and the GREEN.  Let this wash dry completely before proceeding.

When that wash is dry, clear off the yellow wash from your palette, and mix up a ROSE (Quinacridone Rose or Permanent Rose or Rose Madder Genuine) wash.  Since we will be layering this underpainting, keep the Rose wash light. So, be sure to have plenty of water so your wash will be nice and transparent.  Again, you will be applying this wet wash onto DRY paper, so make certain that your Yellow wash is dry.

Paint this ROSE wash on THREE of the segments:  the ORANGE, the RED, and the VIOLET.  (You can see why it was important to label the segments.  Let this wash dry completely before proceeding.

All the photos here are of my workshop students' work.

Now, mix up a BLUE wash, using Cobalt Blue and lots of water.  This should be a Pale Blue wash.  Paint this BLUE wash onto dry paper, on THREE of the segments:  the VIOLET, the BLUE, and the GREEN segments.  

Let this underpainting dry, while you find your photo references for the different color segments of the mandala.

Using your chosen photo references, draw and paint each of the color segments of the Wheel, one at a time . . . 

You can choose to draw and paint flowers, fruit, vegetables, or a combination of all of those.

You'll have to think about your design.  It's challenging, but fun, to design within a pie shaped space.

Obviously, you will be using more than one color in each section, but try to make each segment predominantly that color.  For example, the Yellow segment should be mostly Yellow, even though it might have a purple or green background.

These are all examples of my workshop students' work.  I'm looking forward to seeing your Color Wheel Mandala!