Design a Mandala

Alexandra Varela
10-3
April 28, 2009
This is I
 Every part of this mandala represents a part of my life. My life is unwritten because I
have new experiences everyday that changes the story. If you look at the mandala, the first
thing that you will see is a flower. It is a daisy design. My second name is Margarita and that
is the flower, daisy. Under the daisy there is a green circle. That represents how much I like
nature and its animals. Green is also my favorite color because it is fresh and alive. The circle
is inside an octagon. This represents my eight cousins. They are all very close to me and I
love them very much. Just outside, there is a staff with notes. This is a song called “This is
Me” by Demi Lovato. I play the piano and love music. I chose this song because this mandala
is about me. Each of the sides of the inscribed hexagon represents something different. My
dogs each have a side and so do my brothers. Mom and Dad share one side because they are
always together. The blue at the end represents the sky because the sky is the limit.
To begin this project, I started with the main circle. I divided it into six equal sides. I
connected the dots with my ruler to make a hexagon. Within the hexagon I drew a circle with
a 1½ inch radius. I divided the big circle in eight equal parts. Then I measured half the radius
of the big circle (2 inches) and drew circles at each half with a radius of 1¼ inch. That made
eight little circles. I erased everything that I didn’t like and continued with my drawing. Then
I decided to do 5 concentric circles inside the eight little circles. I would use that later on as
my staff. I connected the centers of the eight small circles with my ruler making an octagon
inside the concentric circles and the hexagon. I made a smaller circle in the center with a
radius of 1½ inch. Above all of that I decided to do my daisy design. I put the compass on the
eight divisions I had made earlier to the whole circle (big circle) and drew a semi circle with
each side creating my daisy. The compass was put to measure 4 inches. Again I erased
everything extra. In the middle, I decided to make a tiny circle to make it look more like a
daisy. I made a circle with a radius of ½ an inch. The complete design looks like many layers,
one on top of the other.
At the beginning of this project, I didn’t have a straight idea of what I was going to
do. I decided to start with the little ideas I had and let them come to me, which eventually
came. I had always like the idea of the daisy and wanted to design around it, but I really had
to design before it. I started to think about the things I liked: playing the piano, nature,
family and things like that. I organized my ideas on a separate piece of paper and started to
make sketches. I really liked one, and decided to go ahead and do that one.
It wasn’t the easiest thing to do because I had to erase a lot of things, but I am very
pleased with the result. The easiest thing to do was when I was doing my sketches. I had so
many ideas and wanted to do them all but I stuck to something that represented just who I
was but in and easily recognizable way. It was also very tricky trying to erase the lines that I
wasn’t using. Sometimes I had to shade part of the design so I didn’t get confused. My
project may look very simple, but it was a lot of work to make the concentric circles and the
smaller circles, eight, because if you erased something that you shouldn’t, you could loose
the whole drawing.
I would love to do another project like this in the future because I like to me creative.
What I mean is that is nice to learn in another way than to always be having tests and quizzes.
It’s a fun experience and a way to show your creativity and artistic talents.