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If you have ever felt drawn to mandalas, then you are in good company with me. I am a silk artist and have spent the past 15 years painting mandala art on silk, creating my own personal style and imagination with vibrant colors. This art form is also very therapeutic and can many applications in the field of healing. You may know that mandalas are wonderful aids for meditation and relaxation and so this article shares with you how you can create your own personalized mandala on silk for that very purpose.
To start with you will need some blank silk and a simple frame. You can buy yourself a small length of habotai or pongee silk at your local craft store or online and 4 lengths of wood to nail together in a simple fashion to make a square frame. You can attach the silk to the frame using some drawing pins.
Buy yourself some special liner in a tube to create the line design for your mandala on the silk. This will act as a barrier for the silk paints and give the design form. I would advise getting little tubs of occasional red, yellow, blue and maybe a purple and black silk paint. Ask in the shop for these paints. With this starter selection you can mix most other colors you would like to have for your mandala. You iron the dried fabric from the reverse and this fixes the paintings into the silk.
Make sure you have a few clean watercolour brushes to paint your colors onto the silk and a deep palette to mix colors in.
So now you are basically going to use the liner to create a line drawing of the mandala and you will apply the paintings afterwards within the lines when the liner has thoroughly drawn. It's a bit like colouring in but much more creative.
First of all give your silk a quick wash to remove any gummy seracin from the silk worms or other chemicals that might have gotten into the fabric. Next stretch it onto the silk and do not be afraid to pull on the fabric. It should be really taut. Leave it now a bit to dry.
Next you are going to apply your line mandala. You can either trace through a mandala design you have created for this purpose, or simply draw one freehand on the silk. I suggest you mark the center and draw a few concentric lines as a guide for your mandala artwork.
Now take the tube of liner and slowly and carefully either retrace along the lines of the drawing you have placed underneath the silk or start to draw freehand on the fabric.
Leave your completed design to dry overnight and iron from the reverse next day. You can now color in your design using the silk paints. Let your imagination run wild. Be creative.
Again leave your artwork to completely dry and when it is, iron your silk from the reverse to fix the colors.
Your mandala painting is now ready to hang.
If you would like to find out more about my process, please have a look at my detailed How to Paint a Mandala on Silk dvd where I talk to you in the first half about supplies and then you get a close up step by step video guide of me painting a mandala on silk using proven silk painting techniques.
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