Top Tips for Colouring a Mandala.

I have drawn quite a few colouring pages and books and I often get people who say they would love to colour in, but they are self-conscious or nervous about choosing the colours. If you are nervous about colouring it defeats the purpose of the activity and the colouring in looses its meditative purposes. The ideal would be to colour like a child and not care about the outcome. Healthy children are kind towards themselves and they enjoy the proses of creating regardless of the outcome. Unfortunately, as adults, we often lose this ability or lose touch with the healthy child within.

I am proposing a method to help you get back in touch with your healthy inner child and its ability to create freely when colouring.

Close your eyes and draw five colours. Put these five colours aside. Close your eyes again and choose one colour from these five colours. Colour with this colour and then repeat the blind-choosing of one colour from the five colours for the next colour. Continue blindly choosing from these five colours of the rest for the mandala.

This is a method often used by people who want to meditate whilst colouring mandalas. I suggest you test out this method and see if it works for you. If you have tried this method or just want to take it a step further here are a few general tips:

1. Removing all the blacks and browns from your crayons is an easy cheat to ensure that your mandala will be vibrant and colourful.
2. Colouring mandalas with colour pencils are the easiest because colour pencils allow for a lot of control and this will ensure that your colouring is neat.
3. Creating a balance of colour is the easiest if you use a maximum of eight colours when colouring a mandala. This will ensure that there is a repetition of colour in your mandala. This repetition complements the repetition of patterns in a mandala and ensures that your mandala is a peaceful and soothing creation when you are finished colouring.
4. Use only three colours maximum for each pattern. Mandalas are often drawn in what I choose to call rounds. Each round usually contains a pattern that is repeated in a circular formation. The most effective way of colouring a round is by using a maximum of three and a minimum of two colours on a round. This again ensures repetition and it stops your mandala from becoming overwhelming.
5. Using dark and light colours next to each other creates balance in your mandala. Colours like light blue, light green, yellow and sometimes orange could be considered light colours. Colours like dark blue, dark green, red and sometimes orange could be considered dark colours.

Dark Colours (left) vs Light Colours (right)

• If these tips make you nervous, refer back to the first method of blind choosing. I have had a lot of success with this method and would really recommend using it.

I would love to get your feedback on whether you agree with my methods and tips for colouring mandalas! Maybe you have some tips of your own? Please do not hesitate to share! If you want to contact me or check out some more of my sketches you can check out my Instagram profile here, my Facebook profile here and my website here. I look forward to hearing from you!