Taos Sunflower Mandala

When you drive the roads of Northern New Mexico this time of year you will see sunflowers lining many of the roadsides.  Sometimes you’ll even see fields of sunflowers.  These are the great big ones that produce sunflower seeds you feed the birds with, but a smaller variety with lots of 3″ to 4″ diameter blossoms.  

The sunflowers along the roads were inspired this mandala.  I took pictures in steps with this one.  I think it’s fun to see how different it looks at each stage.

The initial drawing.

I took some artist’s license by adding red and orange, since there isn’t any in the roadside sunflowers.  I almost always try to include some red in my mandalas.  Not sure what Jung would say about that. 

Turquoise for New Mexico.

Black to make the eye travel.

I decided it was a little flat, so I added some shading.

Finally, I put the lines back in with permanent black ink to punch up the whole picture. 

Taos Sunflower Mandala  –  6″ Diameter — Watercolor and Ink on Paper

Deborah Baldwin Fair 2009

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Taos Mandalas – 1

We’ve been back from our vacation in Taos now for about a week, and I finally have a few minutes to begin posting some things from vacation time.

As soon as I got to Taos I went over to the artist supply store and picked up some watercolors, paper, and brushes, among other things.  I wanted to work on some mandalas while there.  I got two finished.  It takes several days to complete each one, so that’s all I had time for.

Here’s the first one.  I had originally planned to do it in shades of purple, but discovered that I hadn’t purchased the right reds and blues to mix for a good purple, so as it turned out, the colors I did have were more southwestern colors anyway, so I went with that.

Watercolor and Ink on Paper, approx. 7″ in diameter.   Deborah Baldwin Fair 2009

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