More and more adults are using the crayons they loved as children to color in books designed for them. They are finding the experience not only playful but also contemplative and transformative. This new coloring book created by Paul Heussenstamm presents mandalas to color as a way to center and balance oneself and "open the doorway into the symbolic language of the soul."
Paul Heussenstamm is a fourth-generation artist and teacher based in Laguna Beach, California. His sacred art incorporates principles of many religious traditions, among them Buddhism, Hinduism, and Christianity. For this coloring book, he turns to his favorite motif, the mandala.
The book has 50 outlines for coloring. Some of our favorites are the Yoga Square with Ball Eyes Mandala (eyes around a lotus), Butterfly Mandala (concentric circles of butterflies), Ecstasy Dancers (individual dancers surrounded by jagged lines), Mayan Mandala (with Mayan symbols and shapes), Flower Mandala (daisies, hibiscus and other flowers figures in different poses), and the Ying-Yang Dance (a center of the yin-yang symbol surrounded by more of them).
The book has a sturdy, flexible cover and is bound so that pages lie flat. The pages are one-sided so that the finished artwork can be removed and framed if desired. Samples of the pages can be found at the publisher's website.
