How to make a colourful mandala with Eye Fine pens

If you are looking to get creative but don’t know where to start, this Mandala step by step is the ideal project for you. Here we show you how to make a colourful mandala with Eye Fine pens.

Try this at home

Making mandalas is fun and educational home activity. It’s brilliant if you want to create a beautiful image but aren’t overly confident in your drawing abilities. It’s also great if you are home schooling as it’s a cool, satisfying project to explore shapes, measurements and mark-making.

Pick your pens

Eye Fine pens are fab for making mandalas. We know it’s a great writing pen, but the pen is also excellent for visual projects too. It produces a precise 0.7mm line and the uni-flow’ system ensures a steady and continuous ink flow so your colour coverage is fantastic too. Talking of colour, the Eye Fine range boast a fabulous selection of vibrant shades, meaning your mandala will be eye-catching and colourful.

Check out the range of Eye colours in this video, featured on our YOUTUBE channel.

Make a colourful mandala: you will need

Make a colourful mandala

For this colourful mandala project you will need an A4 sketchbook (we’re using an Stocky gecko); a pair of compasses, a ruler, a pencil, an eraser and Eye Fine pens.

1 Mandala step by step: make your circle

Make a colourful mandala

Mandalas are circular designs with repeating shapes. The word “mandala” comes from the Sanskrit word for circle so we start with this shape. A pair of compasses is the perfect tool make the perfect circle. To make a 10cm circle, position your compasses to at 5cm. Place the PIN of your compasses in the middle of your page and draw the circle as shown.

2 Make a colourful mandala: divide your circle

Make a colourful mandala

Using a pencil and ruler, draw axes across your circle, these will help you line up your shapes symmetrically around the centre point.

Start by drawing a vertical line through the centre, then a horizontal line through the centre.

Make a colourful mandala

Now draw two, evenly spaced, lines cutting diagonally across the first two inter-sections (see above). This will form eight symmetrical triangles coming from the central point. Again, if you’re considering this as a home school project you will see this is a really good way of teaching children how to divide shapes and help them learn about halves and quarters etc.

Make a colourful mandala

Now use your ruler to make lines across these sections, see above. You will erase these lines after you’ve completed the design.

3 Mandala step by step: draw more circles

Make a colourful mandala

Starting from your centre point, use your compasses to draw concentric circles inside your shape.

4 Make a colourful mandala: use Eye Fine colours to make your central motif

You will see now how your concentric circles and dividing lines will help you in making this mandala. This is why it’s a particularly good project if you’re not confident with drawing as you can follow the shapes.

In the first, smallest, circle use your Red Eye Fine to draw round curves along alternate intersecting lines as shown.

Now use your Violet Eye Fine to make pointed petal shapes. Do this by making a curved line from the top of your central red scallop shapes to a guide line of the second circle as pictured. Then draw petal shapes in-between the purple lines using your Light Blue Eye Fine remembering to centre these shapes using your guiding pencil line.

Make a colourful mandala

Embellish this central motif further by using your Light Blue Eye Fine to colour in semi-circles in-between the red flower shape. Then use the Violet Eye Fine to make little dashes along the pencil line that is going through your blue petals.

5 Mandala step by step: expand your design

Make a colourful mandala

You are now, hopefully, getting used to working with your concentric circles and guide lines. So you can have some fun. We’ve used the Pink Eye Fine to make rounded petal shapes. As you can see we started from the top of our blue pointy petals, rounded the lines at the top intersection of the third circle, and joined our pink curves at the next blue point.

Make a colourful mandala

Now use your third circle as a guide. Go over this pencil shape with a regular Blue Eye Fine. Then use your pens to make dots on the inside of the blue line.

6 Make a colourful mandala: add more curved petals

Make a colourful mandala

You can see your design taking shape with the simplest of drawing techniques, that’s why this is one of the most satisfying projects to try. Now use your lines as a guide to make ornate petals with the regular Green Eye Fine pen in the fourth circle. Do this by drawing a curved line from the tip of your pink petal up to the next intersecting line as shown.

Make a colourful mandala

Now get your Orange Eye Fine and draw curves in-between your green shapes. Embellish by drawing dots along the inside of the orange semi-circle and an upside down tear shape along the intersecting pencil line as shown.

7 Mandala step by step: finish your design

Make a colourful mandala

One of the great things about Eye Fine pens is that you get different shades of the same colour, this looks great when you use these shades to create similar shapes. So here we’ve used the Light Green Eye pen on the final circle to repeat the ‘pointy petal’ design as shown. As with the regular green shape, we draw a curved line from the tip of your previous pointy petal up to top of the next intersecting line as shown.

The last stage is up to you. You can make more petals to expand the mandala design or you can work with the circle shape to ‘close’ the motif. We opted to follow the pencil circle line over with a Black Eye Fine. To embellish this circle, we used the pen to make dots alongside the inside edge. We then used our intersecting lines as a guide to make an inverted petal on the inside of the circle as shown.

Make a colourful mandala

Now is the time to rub out your pencil guide lines. Before you apply the eraser over your design, make sure your pen ink is dry as you don’t want to smudge your mandala.

 

You’ve now made a mandala. For more inspiration we have a great video mandala step by step you can follow using our EMOTT pens click here to check it out.