Free Hand Mandala Drawing of Dragons

I know that not everybody believes in reincarnation, but I'm pretty sure that in my last life I was a Buddhist sand mandala painter. I had been getting a sneaking suspicion that I was Asian, but I couldn't tell where, when, or what. The signs were everywhere. When I was born I couldn't pronounce my 'L's, they instead came out as 'R's which eventually forced me to change my name from Lily to Sky. As a little kid my mom would chant along with her Tibetan bowls, while she did this I would try to approach without being herd and crawl into her lap cross legged. There I would sit in silence while she did her ritual. Around my teens I adopted my signature clouds that appear in almost every picture I made, which is very reminiscent of the clouds found in Japanese landscape paintings. As time goes on, I've accumulated many trinkets that are part of Asian culture, leaving my living space as a life sized shrine. One of my favorites is a carved green jade necklace I bought in China Town in Vancouver BC of a Dragon and a Phoenix intertwined. Some people wear crosses, other people wear crystals.

Having been born in 88, I identify myself with the Dragon proudly. Now, in 2012, as we approach the Chinese New Year I anxiously await to see what crazy adventures it will bring. On January first as a pranced around the streets of Vancouver with a most beloved friend, I stumbled across my favorite magazine, Common Ground. This months title being "Year of the Dragon." Once I had arrived back home and settled in, I opened the magazine to figure out what wisdom I could find, this is what I read;

On January 23rd, 2012, we move out of the Chinese Year of the Rabbit into the prosperous and fertile Year of the Dragon. Dragons represent potent and benevolent power as the ultimate ruler of all the elements, embodying primordial power as a catalyst for change and transformation, wisdom, infinity, longevity, and movement through space.

It is critical that we adopt our way of living to eliminate out-of-date practices that hinder the brilliant future of our planet, our Galaxy and the entire universe. Research undertaken by cosmologist and inventor Nassim Haramein has created a "Unified Field Theory." (I have posted the video below) This information can change our lives on earth dramatically, as it unlocks deep levels of understanding of human existence through an exploration of the geometric structure of the universe and human consciousness.

The unified field is the space we occupy. No matter how big or small, all matter we observe is made of atoms and all atoms are of 99.99999999% space. Physicists use math to describe the universe and the nature of relativity through the language of equations. We can improve our understanding of the fundamentals of our universe when we understand the geometry of the fabric of the vacuum and the dynamics of space-time within that structure.

This is a critical period of our evolution where we can come into coherency and harmony with nature instead of destroying our environment as we interact with it and transform our society from scarcity consciousness to abundance.

We live in the perfect organization of a holographic and non-linear fractal universe structure. We are a reflection of the abundance of mother earth; like her , we are self sustaining. The anxiety we feel as human race is a direct result of the stress of living within the confines of a box of a closed system. Stress can be better defined as the misinterpretation and misrepresentation of misinformation and acceptance of living within the confines of a mistaken identity as limited beings confined within a limited structure. There are no closed systems in nature. What appears to be an isolated system is actually connected to an infinite potential of the entire universe.

Our society, as a whole, tends to embrace looking out-side of ourselves for answers, based on expansion and radiation instead of contraction - exploding fuel-filled rockets instead of floating hot air balloons.

The Year of the Dragon is a perfect opportunity to break out of the box in our search for creative solutions by going towards the center and using our intuition to find answers from within. We are invincible if we harness our collective power to command our energies toward the inevitability of a peaceful harmonious existence, through breakthroughs in enlightenment rather then disaster.

When most people read articles, I'm sure they take in the words for what they are. But the morning that I read this an image flashed into my head. A mandala to be more precise. I've painted two Mandalas in my life. One of the painting I still have, the other was given away to two wonderful friends for their wedding. Both contained the Shri Yantra. I never got to document the one I gave away, but I do have this picture as evidence.

This time the Mandala I envisioned did not contain the Shri Yantra, but instead the Cuboctahedron, with four dragons in each corner to represent the four elements/directions. Now, I know that in the last month I posted this video a few times, but if you have not seem it, now is the time. This is the video Nassim Haramein made about his "Unified Field Theory," and it has been influencing me this whole year. I've always had a love for geometry, but this video is what justified my obsession.

Nassim Haramein - Black Whole from Milo on Vimeo.

If you want to skip forward to the geometrics, start the video from 51 mins in. When I was 13, I drew the star tetrahedron inside seven consecutive circles, the "seed of life." I had to wait until I was 18 to get this tattooed on my back. 8 of these star tetrahedrons combined create a larger cubeoctahedron structure. When I watched this video, it defiantly blew my mind.

So when this image appeared in my head, I immediately put down the magazine and went a grabbed one pencil, an eraser and a stack of cheap paper. From there, I sat at my kitchen counter, and free handed this:

Later that night I enlarged the image on a photocopier. From there I traced the image on a light table with a black extra fine rolling ball pen. No rulers, no measuring, just a really steady hand and a good eye. This was what it looked liked:

I then took the liberty to fill in some details:

So today I spent my time typing this, and trying to color the image. I havn't really moved from the kitchen counter in 10 hours. My first love was Primsacolor pencils, I think they still might be. For most people, they don't have the patience to deal with color pencils. It takes a long time to slowly shade all the colors together and complete an area. I love it. I don't care for the instant gratification that painting brings, big brushes and paint strokes seem sporadic and sloppily done. There is a type of controlled perfection that comes with a well done color pencil drawing, its just the way I am. And this is what you can do with it if you have the patience:

Now that you've seen the result, lets go back to the beginning. I think in my last life I was a Buddhist Sand Mandala Painter. All the pieces make sense, the obsession with these images, my urge to paint them repeatedly, and the ability to gracefully create them without the use of measuring tools. I know that this isn't something I can put on my resume, and I'm sure very few people really even care. But the fact that I can spend my time being happy to create something that bring joy and fulfillment to my life is a unique gift that only artists have. And I use the tern artist loosely to encompass anyone that has the urge to make something. Whether it be cooking, writing, singing, doodling, building, anything! I urge every single person to find something that fills their heart with something golden, because now is better then ever to make yourself happy.