Friday, October 5, 2012

Butterfly Mandala


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OK, I'm still addicted to creating mandalas this week.  Yesterday it was cloudy and rainy and there weren't a lot of photo ops.  Although I do note that my picture taking was way down last month and so far this month too.  Next week I know I have some new and exciting photo ops coming up while I'm on vacation, so I'm just biding my time.

The butterfly shot below was used to make today's daily.  I really wanted to try a butterfly.  I guess that's a Painted Lady or American Lady. My goal was to get wing, pink, and coneflower center all in the mandala wedge piece.  I'm pleased that I was able to do that.  The mirrored wedges ended up looking like a butterfly looking down from the top instead of the side I think.  I like the star center and pink accents. Not only do you have to think about what pictures to use for mandalas but also what parts of the picture will work best.


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I find that starting out with an abstract image can really work well.  In the original swirl shot below, I was attracted to it because there were so many lines and I felt it would be easy to get green, red, and yellow all in the wedge shot.  I like how this one has heart shapes in it.


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The original shot below is a sequined or metallic ball gown (Ms. NC from a few years back).  I experimented with altering the color and using filters to get two very interesting madalas out of one creation.  I'm sure I could keep going and get several other coordinating shots too.  Mostly I needed to boost the color.  The original was too blah.






This one is cool but needs more boost and has a few lines not lining up as I'd like.  See the blue upper and center window in the original.  That's where the wedge piece came from.




On another note, Donnie asked for help creating a business card with a techno theme.  I created a few using wallpapers and such from the web but really wanted to create my own.  Below I created a new blank image, tinited the background blue, added in a layer of text with a typewriter style font and making sure to go out of bound.  Then I duplicated the layer, slid it a bit, and changed the type of layer to translucent (or was that screen or overlay?).  Just a few minutes work really.  



Then I used a polar coordinates distortion filter to curve the numbers.  Gives it that black hole sucked into space look.  Adding an edge burn filter gave it even more depth.  



The finished product has name upper right, address lower right, and a techno globe lower left.  Cool stuff at least to me!

1 comment:

Katherine Edison said...

You've got a great series going here. They'd make really neat cards! Just beautiful!