Sea Turtle Mandala

This is from Guada's year long challenge and I couldn't have been happier to see that the first one was honu! If you know me you know these are special creatures for me. I miss my time with Malama na Honu and hope to pick it back up once we return! Until then, I have this (and at least a thousand photos of the basking gang) to remind me of wonderful friends and precious memories!

If you are interested in mandala in general see this post for more info!

Initially I thought I would do this in color pencil but the paper was too slick to get the effect I was hoping for. Plan B - pull out my copics and see how that goes. Much better but not perfect. I didn't like all the circle lines that showed up so I chaned my technique from the normal suggested one (make tiny circle and get coverage then reblend) and was able to get a smoother finish on the orange areas and did a more marbled effect with the rest of it. I hope you can see in the jellyfish (and yes I know jellies are not usually green but that was the color scheme I wanted *S*) that I simply placed the tip of the copic down and lifted it without making a stroke to get a water like effect. I think it shows up okay? If you want to see other sizes click here. 

And just so we are clear - I only did the coloring on this - Guada provides the template in her challenge and collaborated with Jay on the design!