circles of light
there are many days when N sits down to color and picks up a white crayon or colored pencil and applies it to the white paper she’s using, and says with disappointment, “this white one doesn’t work.” this was the impetus for doing this activity with her… i wanted to show her just how and where her white (and for that matter, the underutilized silver and yellow) art materials would shine beautifully!
as an art therapist, mandalas are such a huge part of my artistic language. in my graduate studies, i learned quite a bit about mandalas. the word is pronounced maahn-dah-la. simply put, mandalas are just drawings within a circle; however they have such huge symbolic significance, and i think wikipedia gives a pretty nice summary of their history. mandalas can be created in any size or medium, and by any person. i find them to be pretty wonderful to use as a springboard for artists of any age who perhaps don’t know “what to draw?!” because the circle provides a safe container and a frame for the lines, shapes, and colors to happen within.
weekly mandalas i drew in my last semester of grad school, 2005
carl jung saw mandalas as a representation of the unconscious self… (not like when you get a concussion, but more like your subconscious mind.) in malchiodi’s book handbook of art therapy
one of my favorite books on these artsy circles is by the mandala queen, judith cornell, and it’s called mandala: luminous symbols for healing. she provides a series of meditations followed by mandala art activities, many of which involve drawing with a white colored pencil on black paper. her reasoning for these materials is that they create the illusion that light is emanating from the paper, reflecting the artist’s own “inner light.”
i am wise enough to know that even just by virtue of her age, my 34 month old daughter is more connected to her “inner light” than many adults, as she is closer to “the source” (her birth, connection to spirit, not yet socialized, etc.) than we are. i also know she perpetually has ants in her pants, so i skipped the super-awesome visualization/meditation exercises (intended for adults) that cornell offers in her book, and just gave N a piece of black paper on which i drew a circle (you can just trace a plate.) i gave her a white colored pencil (and she had access to all of the other colors and crayons, too.) i told her that her pencil was a wand of light that could make lines and stars and shapes in the nighttime sky (the paper.) then she took off with her magic wands…
circles within circles
i was flipping through the book as she drew, and saw cornell’s exercise on tracing hands inside of the mandala (on page 38) to get in touch with one’s own healing potential. N, such a natural healer 
, asks me to trace her hands a few times per week (often on the magnadoodle) so i asked if she wanted me to put her hands inside of her mandala. she was excited about the idea, and patiently let me trace.
N's final image
N’s mandala is much like the ones done by the group shown in cornell’s book, and is undoubtedly a glimpse into her psyche in the moment she created the piece, as are all pieces of art made by any person. but this blog isn’t the place for me to interpret/expose my daughter’s inner-workings… i am offering this as a fun, relaxing, and deepening exercise to do with your little one. and if nothing else, it gets you to think about using various colors of drawing papers and puts those often-ignored white pencils to work!
cornell's book & N's image
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