Mandala is perhaps the most beautiful and intimidating educational book I have ever used in my life. I was introduced to Judith Cornell's work in 1993 and worked with her in week-long collections at various art centers over the next seven years. As a fine artist, she brought her artistic training to an area that had long been neglected as a serious art form in the West. Its teaching methods are laid out in a clear and elegant progression which has made it possible for almost anyone to experience the success of creating a personally meaningful and beautiful mandala. Each group art formation session began with a period of meditation in which the image to be created (hopefully) appeared. The days I spent with Judith was days of rich, creative silence as inner images emerged in a soft, spiritual environment. All this is captured in her absolutely wonderful book, Mandala. The reader of this book can easily obtain the few materials needed to begin studying mandala creation by following Judith's directions. The best way to use this book would be with two or three friends in range
small group. As for other reviewers' complaints about the black paper, the mandala was drawn on, this was Judith's shortcut to beginning artists who knew nothing of "values" in the art industry. By having her students draw under the drawing with white pencil on black paper and then add color in a second, minute layer, she taught them the values as well as provided an experimental process for bringing light out of the darkness. Without any formal art training, I was able to reverse the process later using white paper, watercolor, ink, and colored pencil on white paper. Judith's genius was to relate this art-making process to inner healing, and later, to take it to hospitals and teach it to cancer patients and others with serious health problems. This is an exceptional book - not at all "historian" despite it being first published some fifteen years ago. Most of the artwork in it, which some reviewers describe as "scary" was not created by visual artists but by beginners with very little prior art experience. This was Judith's special gift - to show even the uninitiated how to bring out the "light within".
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