Learning objectives:
- image transfer
- composition balance: circular design
- composition contrast: shapes and color
- repetition: pattern
- line/shape stylizing
- organic shapes vs. geometric shapes
- Color theory: color schemes
- mixed media color application:
- colored pencils
- watercolor pencils
- watercolor
- optional: gel pens
history of mandala

The monks use millions of grains of brightly colored sand to create the sand painting.
The ceremony of creating a mandala takes nine days.
The mandala represents the world in its divine form. It also represents a "map" by which the minds of people can be transformed from an ordinary mind into an enlightened mind.
After the mandala is completed the monks who created it, destroy it.
The destruction of the mandala is important to the ceremony because the destruction of the mandala symbolizes the temporariness of life.

The basic pattern of the circle with a center is found in nature and is seen in biology, geology, chemistry, physics, and astronomy.

Living things are made of cells and each cell has a nucleus - all displayed as circles with centers. The crystals that form ice, rocks, and mountains are made of atoms. Each atom is a mandala.
Within the Milky Way galaxy is our solar system and within our solar system is Earth. Each is a mandala that is part of a larger mandala.
Flowers, spider webs, and the rings found in tree trunks all reflect the mandala pattern. The "circle with a center" pattern is the basic structure of creation that is reflected from the micro to the macro in the world as we know it.

So…… Mandala is a graphic, mystic symbol of the universe.
It is typically in the shape of a circle enclosing a square or a square enclosing a circle.
A mandala often bears symmetrically arranged representations of gods or deities. Many cultures embrace the mandala as a “circle of life” symbol, but in many cases it is often merely decorative.