Mandalas (an interlude)

The other day, I was directed to this video by one of my FaceBook friends, and I've been dabbling with these mandalas for a couple of weeks now. This past Sunday, I had a lunch date with some dear friends that I hadn't seen in much too long, and I was the first to arrive at the restaurant. Since I had a few minutes to kill, and had my sketchbook and micron pens with me (as I do most days these days), I started drawing a mandala. I finished it at home in the evening. I call it "Lunch with Friends"

Today, I decided to try re-creating it in Illustrator, as a vector drawing.

I like both of them, for different reasons. I will be pleased if I can manage to get a similar level of control as the woman in the video. The nice thing about the vector version is that I can play with coloring it in much more easily than the hand-drawn one.