A mandala is a circular pattern usually symbolically representing the universe or the notion that life is never ending—I chose to make something about my love to explore mountains. Painted with goueche. The idea in mind is the experience of getting your bearings at a high elevation; While turning the compass, you see mountains fading into the far distance in every direction. Being in the thick of mountains and to then conquer one of the many is an exhilarating and humbling experience. 

Colors chosen were centered around blue with touches of an orange analogues range. The foreground mountains are a blue-violet and move toward blue-green as they recede while being muted by a shift from yellow-orange inside to red-orange. This complementary unity helps separate the mountains from the compass with harmony.

I concepted a few different directions to take this project. On the right is a M.C. Escher inspired pattern. I went into designing this one with the goal of creating depth and some sort of interlocking shapes. I made one representing hawaii because of my history of briefly living there. On the left is a suction cup ball sort of thing—no real message with this one; I just knew it would look cool. As you can probably tell, the sticky-note sketches are one unit of the pattern to be repeated for the other three quarters—I used my makeshift lightbox to repeat the pattern.