We love PIN pens, their variety of sizes gives the creative mark-maker so many creative options. Here we make a rosette-style mandala with PIN pens to really show off the different nib qualities.
Follow our step by step mandala guide and try making this yourself with your PIN pens. This is a lovely creative project to explore mark-making and to have fun experimenting with various PIN pen sizes and how they relate to each other.
Make a rosette-style mandala with PIN pens: you will need
To make your black and white mandala you will need the following…
- uni-PIN pens in brush, 0.1, 0.3 and 1.2 nibs
- A pencil
- A pair of compasses
- A ruler
- An eraser
Start making your mandala
To make a rosette-style mandala with PIN pens you have to set your template out methodically. First, use your compasses to make seven concentric circles. You will see that first central disc had another with a 5mm gap and the third echoes this.
Once you have made your concentric circles, make inter-sections in the shapes.
To do this first make a cross in the centre of the circles, effectively quartering the shape. The make diagonal lines between the quarters. Then make another set of diagonal lines between those sections. These will form the basis of your design and make it easy to create intricate marks.
Now make your marks!
Take your central circle and draw curved scallops around the shape. As you can see that we have drawn another circle 5mm around the central disc, and our scallops fit within the inter-sections and secondary circle.
Use your brush to fill-in this centre shape. Now use your 0.1 PIN pen to make pointed petal-like marks following your pencil guide lines.
You can make the petals more ornate, by filling in your shapes with delicate dots and curves.
Build your mandala rosette centre
Really use your pencil template to your advantage. Here we’ve emphasised the circle around our central ‘flower’ to make a simple circular shape with the 0.3 PIN, making tiny scallop shapes along the line. These little scallops echo the larger central shape.
Once you’ve completed this neat circle. Add squat pointed petal shapes – again you’ll see this follows the 5mm pencil guide.
Fill in around the petal shapes following your pencil circle to create a solid circular shape.
Start layering!
Now use your pencil guide to build your mandala layers. Make curved shapes form your central petals as shown above.
Then use your inter-sectional lines and concentric circles to draw petals in-between the larger curves, adding depth by colour blocking the bottom of these petals. Use a combination of PIN pen nib sizes for larger and smaller petals.
Get ornate and intricate
Now use your brush PIN pen nib to layer ornate pointed petals shapes around the shapes.
Now finish and fill
Use your thicker 1.2 PIN pen to make round petals shapes inside the last of the concentric circles.
Use your fine 0.1 PIN pen to fill in the curved petals. We have used a cross-hatching technique here so you get a lovely texture that works well with the solid colour-blocked areas.
You’re done!
Once you have finished designed your mandala with the PIN you can erase your pencil guide marks.
