A site to test WP on HM
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 (such as during Covid 19 !)
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 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
This mandala is titled “Perfectly Imperfect”:
1) because it is made from a photo of a natural process. 2) because I much prefer somewhat asymmetrical mandalas to rigidly constructed, perfectly circular ones.
3) 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 of them for those interested. In the case of this post, the method explains the name, so 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 dish-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 from the photo of tiny crystal formations. 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.
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.
Both the trees and the dregs are examples of the Branching Pattern found in nature. To read more about the pattern, see the page in the Header: The Branching Pattern in Nature. ( Under construction. Coming soon)
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This pic of tree branches, cedar I think, was made from a rubbing over small clippings of the tips of the branchlets . There are several examples on this site of crayon rubbings with additional paint flooded in around them. This was an early attempt and I include it here because it’s branches!
This is not really a mandala. It is not really a Blue Moon either, maybe not even a moon at all! 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 lit up over the moon. 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, for many reasons.
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.
