Except for meditative doodles, I don’t do a lot of detailed artwork.
Anything that requires a lot of prep work or that needs a bunch of measurements makes the energy cost of getting started way too high for me.
(Meditative doodles are just ‘in the moment’ type of details so they don’t have the same cost.)
But, that being said, I like those round, repetitive designs that a lot of people call mandalas. I’m pretty sure that mandalas are a specific type of design that has a cultural meaning so I won’t use that name for the design I want to make.
I’m not trying to borrow or appropriate a cultural practice , I’m not pretending that what I am doing is sacred, nor am I adding meaning to it – I just want to make a pattern in a circle.
But making a pattern in a circle requires a lot of measuring and every time I have tried that, I have gotten bored with the measuring and haven’t finished the design.
Until now!
Last week, I bought some templates for another project and one of them was a circular pattern of straight lines.
The energy cost of using a template to make my ‘measurements’ is very low.
So now I have an easy route to creating these patterns for myself and I won’t end up abandoning my projects partway through.
Really, taking an easy route gets a bad rap a lot of the time.
Taking the hard route for its own sake, especially if it means you lose the fun and the purpose, is just foolish.