Dearest Blog,

I really reached far back with this one.

When I was a child I used to envision the cycling of the year (the calendar, if you will) as a thin circular band of ever-changing colours, going from brightest in high summer to darkest at the winter solstice. Although I didn’t call it that because frankly dear Blog, I was too damn young to know about that stuff. Yeah, I know Blog…I WAS a weird kid.

So here I am, 50-odd years later, finally taking that image out of my head and putting it on paper.

My idea with the concentric circle mandala was to make it primitive, and to illustrate the elements of the natural world within the border of the cycling year. Can you find them, Blog? Earth, Air, Fire and Water. I tried to represent them all so that they are recognizable.

I used cheap-o magic markers on watercolour paper – a set of pens designed for the current adult colouring book craze. When I tried to put the night sky and moon phases in the black band, it just ate up the white pigment ink pen. Just sucked it up like a sponge!

Someday I will refine this piece and perhaps do it in acrylic on a proper canvas.

I like to think of this as a first draft.

Rock on,

The WB