Just as I have many Tree pictures, I also have quite a few mandalas, created in many different ways. It is the making of them, more than the final result, which is the project for me. It also happens to be soothing and absorbing in times of stress.
This mandala, if it is “about” anything, is probably about the tangled interconnections between . . . everything!
A page about Mandalas in general is coming to the Home Page header soon.
The edge of the woods… Did you think that meant looking in to the woods, or looking out towards the town from inside the woods !
SOME QUOTES ABOUT EDGES:
When you walk to the edge of all the light you have
and you take the first step into the darkness of the unknown,
you must believe that one of two things will happen:
There will be something solid for you to stand upon
or you will be taught to fly.
-Patrick Overton
“Life” is a concept, like the Universe, that expands as soon as we reach what we think is the edge. – Kamand Kojuri
Sooner or later, we will come to the edge of all that we can control and find life waiting there for us . – Rachel Naomi Remen
Perfectly imperfect mandala (larger)
This mandala, made from a photo of a natural process, is called “Perfectly Imperfect Mandala” because:
1) I much prefer somewhat asymmetrical mandalas to rigidly constructed, perfectly circular ones.
2) Life, to me, is both “perfect” and imperfect. Don’t ask me to explain that one!!
I make my digital artworks in several different ways; the category, Art Methods (in the header) explains several basic methods for those interested. In the case of this post, because the method explains the name, I’ll tell you here. It’s simple: I notice something. I take a photograph of it. I play with it … and something else “arrives”!
I have a small, square black plate. I don’t have a dishwasher, so sometimes a few dishes may remain on the counter by the sink overnight! In the morning I noticed that as the plate dried, it had grown some crystals, flat ones like frosted glass, probably from a bit of salt or soda and probably a splash of detergent. Where there was a glass standing on it, a circle appeared. I started to wipe the plate then realized that the circle was somewhat mandalic and I could make something of it. So I did!
This way of working appeals to me because it involves three things: the offerings of the world, chance, and whatever I make out of it. ( As we all do every day: just what we do with what we are given!)
All the added parts are cuts of various tiny crystal formations on the photo. The picture below shows the black plate with the crystals. Unfortunately I wiped off the bottom part before it occurred to me to save it.
This one is to emphasize the importance of exercising!
If you’d like a smile, here’s the photo from which this picture was made.
Believe it or not, the inspiration was my lunch after coming home from an exercise class : a bowl of carrot soup on a pottery dish. A lot of twisting and turning and adding in Photoshop Elements . . . and Just Bend arrived. That’s how far my artwork gets from the original photos!
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Covid-Time 1 : Time Stretched!
Covid-Time 2 : Time Shrunk!
One of the odd things about this Covid time is that for me, and for many people it seems, time itself appears to either speed up or to crawl! It’s hard to believe it will soon be Summer when I have hardly become used to the idea that it is Spring … and what happened to Winter? Some days I can’t believe it when I see that it is only 3:00 PM when I thought it must be at least 6:00 PM; other times, the days speed by faster than ever and there isn’t time to do all the things I meant to. And it always seems to be the weekend again every few days! Strange.
So I thought I’d have a bit of fun and try to depict that visually.
At the top, is a picture which might represent a chunk of normal Time, with all its ups and downs, ins and outs, lights and darks. (Dont take it too literally: perhaps this was a day I spent looking at flowers, waiting at traffic lights, or making a spinach and tomato soup, then trying not to snooze while watching TV) : )
Then to follow there are Time Stretched and Time Shrunk.
The last two are made by manipulating the same original picture, which is itself an edited photo, just as our brains seem to do with time!
There is no such place as Kefiristan! This is to show an example of making a picture of branching trees out of something else that branches : dregs of some kinds of liquid, in this case of dregs of kefir (a fermented milk drink) in a glass, turned upside down. Many slightly thick liquids, such as kefir, thin yogurt, some flour-thickened liquids, pea soup, and some paints will leave a pattern like this on a glass or bowl. The photo below is the original, turned upside down. If you want to try it, use a clear glass.
Both the trees and the dregs are examples of the Branching Pattern found in nature, and anywhere there is Flow, (such as information flow). More about the Branching Pattern will soon be added to Patterns in Nature in the Top Menu on the Home Page.
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This is just an abstract, for which I am not going to write a comment here other than to say that it had an unusual method!
If you want to see how it was made, check out the page on my Art Methods in the top menu on the Home page and scroll down til you come to this picture there.
You might see a moon like this only once in … a blue moon! When a title for some art piece just arrives to me and I like it, it sticks!
In this case, what I began with reminded me of the way a full moon often looks in a dark sky, when you see the clouds around the moon lit up. The moon on that night, the real moon, had a shadow somewhat resembling the Ying-Yang sign, which happens to be a favorite symbol of mine.
The symbol was familiar to me many years before I knew what it meant, because, when I was a young child, my Dad subscribed to a magazine with that symbol, in red and white, on the cover. Many elements of early Taoism still appeal to me. So I decided to put one in my picture!
Art Method follows, for those who are interested:
This was made by my favorite method: chance, natural processes, liking a pattern, plus foto-fiddling.
This is a “black plate” piece. My “black” plate is a Japanese-style small square plate (made in China) and glazed with a dark–grey, pewter-like , “metallic” glaze. When certain liquids left on it dry, they form dried puddles in various shapes, different each time. On a photo of the plate, I draw out the colours which I want, and add or change other details as I wish to.
What do I mean by drawing out the colours? As painters know, grey is not always a mixture of black and white but may be made by mixing complementary colours. The beautiful thing is that colours reside almost everywhere, even tho’ you may not notice them! If you take a photo of a dark scene, and later try to increase the saturation of the darkest areas, you may find, not black, but coloured pixels. You may be able to look at the corners of a darkening room and see that the grey is not black-white, but a scintillating “grey” made of the colours which you see in the daylight.
Here is the black plate original. I up-saturated the colours, found shapes which I wished to emphasize, and drew a ying-yang symbol in the centre.
You might be able to “see” certain animals around the moon, if you try really hard! 🙂
This is one of several abstracts inspired by the beautiful patterns of bark on trees.
It was made from a photo of greyish tree bark. I up-saturated it and re-coloured parts, but otherwise altered very little, since I liked it the way it was. (And, for the record, I also love tree bark just the way it naturally is ! ) 🙂
