PLANET HEART (TM), My Creative Journey through Mandalas
Planet Heart is an imaginary planet where everything is made up of hearts, from the smallest water drop, to the fruits, the stars, and clouds in the sky, to the Heartlings who live on the planet. While inventing and drawing Planet Heart, I discovered the joy of drawing heart mandalas.
I was fascinated with the infinite options of combining the hearts, which seemed to imitate the endless creativity of nature. I felt obligated to explore and name the many orientations of the hearts. This is how I invented the mandala shape for myself, not knowing it had been in use for thousands of years. I didn’t even know there was a name for the radial designs!
The more I drew mandalas, the more I listened inwardly and discovered the benefits of it for myself. I used to debate in my head what colors to use on an outer pattern of hearts that I knew was an exact formula of the inner ring.I was making decisions between logic and aesthetics. The more I practiced, the better I got. Also, I learned how “anal” I want to be, for myself, and not for anyone else. I found the balance that felt right to me, which gave my art its trademark look. I discovered through this introspective process that I make up unnecessary rules, like when I stick to the coloring pattern, and that sometimes maybe I need to be a little less rigid and listen to that quieter creative side. I learned to be more respectful to my right hemisphere.
I also realized that I can apply these lessons to the real world, and that I do tend to make up rules where they don’t serve me. It became a necessary active exercise to constantly step back, observe where I am being too rigid, and then actively let the creative side back in.
In the process, I developed my own stream-of-consciousness brain warm ups and then integrated those right brain insights actively into my inventions with the help of my left brain. Finally! The two sides worked together. As I learned to let go of my rigidity, I became more and more creative. Grateful for the luxury to take the time to doodle or to write in stream of consciousness, I noticed that I released my right hemisphere in the process. After each release of my right brain, my left brain would jump in and ask for logic in what came out. If my right hemisphere felt like giving plants legs and double hearts where there would be a belly button, my left hemisphere gave these features use, names, and purpose in the Planet Heart stories. This was part of the invention process.
The need to explore heart orientations and then name and organize them is another example of how I used both sides of the brain to first release and then organize. When I invented the heart hand, I explored many organic shapes with heart hands before it dawned on me to take heart “bites” from yet infinite more shapes that I then also named and organized. After a few years, these “bites” led to more inventions that I am eager to bring forth.
As an inventor, my entire thinking process depends on listening intently to my innermost thoughts. I have found that working with mandala designs has been invaluable for that process. That is what led me to invent the entire niche of adult coloring books!
While I labored on my own creation process, I theorized that when people like a product, they probably synchronize with it with their own gut and hemispheric balance. So people who are more left brain will feel comfortable with products that are left brained, and vice versa. Like our affinity to products, we want the walls of our house and the furniture to reflect the inner world of our brain in order to feel comfortable. This is a theory I will investigate further in the future.
Anyway, it was through this heart patterns exploration, that I also invented the concept of radial patterns and the entire niche of coloring books for adults, which are now on Amazon. I know it benefitted my brain. I hope you will benefit too!