Creativity Journey #4 – Harvest Moon Mandalas
October 1st, 2020
Creativity Journey – Harvest Moon Mandalas
This journey shares mandalas inspired by today’s full moon, the harvest moon. It also shares mandalas that honor nature and our connections to the beauty and bounty of our Mother Earth.
HARVEST MOON AND AUTUMN
This time of the year is a time of beauty, abundance, celebration and gratitude. The harvest is here, fall fruits are ripe, the leaves have turned to heavenly colors. The bright lights of nature are transformed from the green of summer to the infinite variety of yellows and reds in pumpkins, apples, squash, persimmons, leaves and all manner of food and foliage.
Harvest Moon is a time to celebrate the fullness of fall’s harvest. The native persimmon tree in my back yard softly drops its ripe fruit in early fall. Karen Martinez was inspired by the beauty and sweetness of these persimmons. The womb of Mother Earth gives birth to the harvest, and the creativity we share with her. The actual seeds and beautiful calyx top of the persimmon are adhered to the bottom of this mandala. The dark colors around the persimmon were inspired by a guided meditation honoring the womb of creativity that is the soil and soul of Mother Earth.
Persimmon Mandala by Karen Martinez – with seeds and calyx.
Persimmon growing on my native tree
American Persimmon – Diospyros Virginiana
The beautiful calyx of the ping pong sized native persimmon.
The calyx is taken off before eating the sweet skin and pulp.
There are lots of seeds inside.
PANDEMIC POEM & MANDALA
This autumn, 2020, is also a time of uncertainty about the future. When will this pandemic end? When will these hateful, hurtful actions and words from those in power end? At times it all seems so dark. The poem and mandala below speak to what is felt, at times, this year.
Moon Mandala by Ann Brune, poem by Tammi Truax
This mandala above, by Ann Brune speaks to these times. It shares the words of Tammi Truax, poet laureate of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Each week that city’s newsletter contains a poem by Truax for reflection and encouragement. Here is a New York Times article about the poems.
Ann’s blue mandala quietly speaks with the words “momento morti”. This Latin phrase is a reminder of mortality. We can hold in our hearts a gratitude for our lives and remembrance for those who have passed recently due to the pandemic and for those who have left this world at other times.
CREATIVITY JOURNEY #4 – The Fullness of the Harvest Moon and Mandalas
This Creativity Journey blog post (like the others) is organized into five parts.
* The why, or big picture of creativity, what is our deep longing to connect with our creativity.
* A guided meditation to relax into a mind, body and heart space opening to creativity flow.
* Prompts for Dancing on Paper, mark making with words and images.
* Examples and how-to of mark making through the prompts.
* Closing Poem, Prayer or Inspiring Words.
THE WHY OF MANDALAS INSPIRED BY NATURE
The geometry of nature with round circular shapes inspires us to create in the wholeness of that sacred shape. There is no beginning or end. A circle is complete and infinite. It represent the cycles of life. It is a shape seen in the smallest cells to the galaxies of the sky. Creating within a circle is a safe place where our creativity can be embraced by this shape of nature.
“Look deep into nature and you will understand everything better.” Albert Einstein
GUIDED MEDITATION – Creativity Journey, Inspired by Nature – 7 minutes, 4 seconds
PROMPTS
Prompts are nudges that offer suggestions on where to begin. They let creativity flow. Mark making becomes a dance on paper.
Often the blank paper used to write on, paint on, or draw on is the scary big unknown. The first step is often the hardest. That first mark made helps opens the flood gates and lets creativity flow.
The word prompt to think about are words of nature. Write the word as a prompt for journaling. Use the word, or words, as lines and images like the mandalas below. Create a mandala with those images. The shared mandalas in this blog are about gifts from nature: the moon, persimmons, flowers, butterflies. Let something in nature be your prompt.
My inspirations were butterflies and flowers. The letters and words were drawn into the shape of mandalas. These words were drawn with a Pilot parallel pen with turquoise ink. They were the third in a series that I drew one morning.
My inspiration was the interconnection of butterflies and flowers. From physical facts, both depend on each other. Butterflies need the nectar from flowers, flowers need the pollination from butterflies and other insects. They both have parts of each other within them. What other interconnection is there between butterflies and flowers? What exchange of love and light is there when they touch? What unknown, to humans, need and joy is exchanged? My wish and prayer is to know the connections between all of creation.
EXAMPLES & HOW-TO
These are the art materials I used. For the fine lines my new ink pens of various line widths are Isograph pens by Rotring. I used the finest line, .1o. These pens are made in Germany and can be refilled with different colored inks. The watercolor pencils are Inktense by Derwent. The Pilot parallel pen, size 3.8, has turquoise ink.
Mandala, by me. Flowers within the butterfly.
Mandala, by me. Butterflies within the flower.
The fine lines of the .10 pen and detailed coloring needed a counterpart with looser expression on the same idea. I quickly created the turquoise inked parallel pen mandalas.
Mandala, by me. Flowers with the butterfly.
Mandala, by me. Butterflies within the flower.
After created the first four mandalas, I created the two word mandalas (seen above in the prompt section). Again I used the Pilot parallel pen, playing with the words butterfly and flower.
This book of Alexander Calder animal sketches and the iridescent watercolors were used by Christine Torlina for the mandalas she created.
A special card for a friend was created by Christine. She used iridescent watercolors and a butterfly stamp.
A somewhat mystical experience took place between Christine, her husband and two deer in a pond near their country home recently. Wildlife abounds in their restored prairie and neighboring land. An early morning walk brought the new day, the deer and humans into an encounter never to be forgotten. Christine shared her story, visualized her experience and created a mandala to remember the connections felt in that experience.
CLOSING POEM, PRAYER or INSPIRATION
Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
Mary Oliver
ENJOY & CREATE
