I was drawing from the nude when I was thirteen when a professional artist began training me. His style was Buddhist although he didn’t know it. Kieffer yelled, “I told you not to do that!” and scratched big Xs over my disobedient attempts at beauty. I could tell he cared for me but his harsh teaching style ingrained his truths deeply.

He taught structure, to take risks, to impress others was not a worthy goal, and there are no straight lines in a figure. I saw a woman sitting in place for an hour and he told me to draw the hairs as they grew from her arm, the fatigue of her muscles at holding her up in the pose, and her cells breathing and dividing.

The circle below is a study in color. Every color has over three qualities but the three main ones for me are: warm/cool, dark/light, and saturated/ mixed color. The stem is warm red. The middle is very dark and the outer edges are light pink. The inner dark is made from red and a little green to grey it and blue to darken. The outer pink is red mixed blue a little green and white. The only saturated color can be found in the small bits of yellow in the leaf.

AND there are no straight lines in this organic form.

Mandala 1