Above is the finished product of my peacock mandala, a piece I recently completed. The objective with creating this piece was to learn color theory, as I used all 12 colors of the color wheel, plus their shades and tints, in addition to other curated hues. Additionally, you can see I displayed complementary and analogous colors as shown on the color wheel.
The entire process took about 20 hours, from ideation and sketching to meticulous painting to developing an intuition on color mixing. Despite the challenges, the process was incredibly rewarding, resulting in a piece I proudly display in my living room.
I outlined the process below with pictures!
Step one was ideation and sketching. It took a while to figure out what kind of design I wanted to do, where I wanted to incorporate each color and how I wanted them to interact, and the symmetry of it all.
Next was the painting. This proved to be the most difficult part for many reasons. I found myself doing several coats to make sure the paint looked smooth, and having to go back in and re-sketch many parts of the design so I could layer the aspects. Additionally, this step involved a huge learning curve as I figured out how to mix the colors together to get the exact shades I wanted (see palette pictures below).
I’ll finish off by saying the 20+ hours were undoubtedly worth it, as I’m absolutely in love with the end result! Learning the fundamentals of painting definitely require tons of patience, but I know the ROI will prove to be a good one!
Will be posting more art pieces over the summer,
Riva
the riva gallery 