Tag Archives: mandala

Pretty in Punk Mandala

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My love is amorphous, like a single celled organism dropped in a vat of acid.

My love is amorphous, like a single celled organism dropped in a vat of acid.

What’s black and red and pink and spiky and full of love? This lopsided septagonal mandala which potentially looks like a Hot Topic exploding over an Orange Julius stand at the mall. It appears to be comprised of equal parts death, hearts, and sugar. It looks sharp. It will probably cut you if you try to pick it up. And it’s probably ornery, too. I bet the tips break off in your hand and you have to dig them out with a sterilized sewing needle.

On a wholly unrelated note, if you like webcomics and/or binge-reading, and you haven’t already, why not head over to Panels and check out my new article about webcomics you can read straight through, beginning to end, online?

Roots and Branches Mandala

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It's alive!

It’s alive! Alive and full of pointy microscopic tree ejaculate.

Do you know what pollen looks like? It looks like this, which may explain why it hurts so freaking much when you get it in your eyes.

Some people say that the desert is dull and colorless, but this is only because some people only visit the desert in the middle of winter. So, yeah, it’s all tawny and dusty in the middle of winter, but who are you to talk? You came here because it’s all white right now where you came from!

Now spring is a very colorful season in Tucson. There are wildflowers galore, and then every single tree explodes into flower. Imagine that: hills dotted with red, orange, purple; blanketed in yellow and chartreuse. And every last one of them spewing microgametophytes in every direction.

It’s sort of perverted if you think about it.

It’s also debilitating if your immune system treats tree pollen like a deadly pathogen and mounts a full scale defense. Which mine does. And then you take every allergy remedy known to man in an effort to simply breathe. Which I do.

It’s only a couple weeks in a year of generally clean air, but it’s been gradually knocking me over for days, but yesterday and today have been the worst. Last night was almost completely sleepless and today has been a near total loss. I’m barely aware of what I’m writing right now.

And that’s all. And that’s why that’s all.

A Lively Mandala

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Life...don't talk to me about life...

Life…don’t talk to me about life…

Complexity. I really, really want a macro lens for my camera so that I can take pictures of minuscule insects; they tend to have really complex patterns on their little carapaces. So much of the world is not merely beneath the notice of human beings, but beneath the ability of human beings to notice. Yesterday, while helping the girl with vocabulary words, I helped her understand the difference between a telescope and a microscope. Telescopes show us things that are big but too far away to see, while microscopes show us things that are close but too tiny to see.

“But not germs,” she told me. “They’re too tiny for microscopes.”

But of course, they’re not. “They’re too tiny for the microscopes in your school, but not for scanning electron microscopes.”

Those pictures are amazing. Have you seen these high rez images of tardigrades swimming along like the kings of the universe? How about simple viruses and bacteria? There is an entire alien world living in your bellybutton. And smaller than that, photos of atoms: like, the actual building blocks of matter atoms. I remember having my mind blown by this 25 years ago. And then tinier still, subatomic particles whose existence we can observe only in partial glimpses, whose physicality we possibly couldn’t even comprehend even with visual perception.

Extremely small things really demonstrate how large the universe really is. We can’t even sense its superlatives.

Anyway, this mandala looks to me like something a scientist in a movie based on an HP Lovecraft story would observe when asked to magnify small sample of an alien organism. And the pallid, bespectacled academic explorer who’d acquired the sample, which was discovered 100 years ago buried under the Antarctic tundra, would bemoan the fact that the species was long extinct and the world would never know this beautiful creature, but then the scientist would notice that the cell was only dormant. Awakened by the heat of the electronic equipment, the cell would begin rapid mitosis. Within twenty hours, the scientist would be dead and the wild-haired, wild-eyed explorer would be ranting in Arkham Asylum about the ancient menace waiting to devour the world.

Natural Geometry Mandala

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Classically beautiful...

Classically beautiful…

I’m in love with this elegant purple mandala. It’s really regular in symmetry and even thought it’s limited and color and shape, that simplicity opens up a greater complexity in the overall design.

Flowers are their own kind of mandala

Flowers are their own kind of mandala

Today was a nice day as far as being an artist goes. I read fairy tales to kindergarteners, repaired books for the school library, and took a rambling walk in the park, mostly for the purpose of take photos of roses. I also spent a lot of time swinging on the swings, for the purpose of giving little dragon some air. How many hours a week did I spend swinging when I was a kid? Jumping rope? Skipping? I mean, seriously, I probably jumped rope a couple hours a week, every week.

Here’s when I stopped swinging a lot: I was probably about 12 or so. I had a Walkman (children…it’s like an MP3 player, but it only holds one album at a time) and I was swinging with my eyes clothes and my headphones on and a toddler ran in front of me and I kicked that little sucker right in the head. I don’t remember the kid’s reaction, but I do remember the mom freaking out. She wanted to be mad at me for swinging with my eyes closed and my headphones on, but she knew it was her own fault for letting her baby run in front of the swings.

So today I didn’t close my eyes. A little girl came over and swung next to me. I could tell she wanted to strike up a conversation–I am a colorful person, after all–but she was too shy. Instead, she tried to swing as high as me. I decided that I was going to outswing this kid, that I would keep going longer and higher than she could. Trying to keep up with kids is better than a FitBit. So I ended up pumping for way longer than I would have otherwise. Eventually, the kid had what sounded like an asthma attack and stopped swinging. Which means I won!!!

Then The Man and I went out with the Missesses Kitty and ate a really unreasonable amount of West African cuisine, which I have been obsessed with all month. Fufu! Peanut sauce! Goat! Good stuff.

A Digilicious Mandala

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My soul isn't perfect; why should my mandalas be?

My soul isn’t perfect; why should my mandalas be?

One of the reasons that crayon mandalas became less prevalent in my day-to-day life is that I felt I was reaching the limits of the abstract form and beginning to repeat myself. The representative ones were still original, but those take a lot more forethought and don’t spill out in the same organic way as the purely geometric ones.

When I did last week’s mandala on the tablet, I had to start over again with the form in some ways. I had to let go, again, of the idea of perfection. Now I start to see more possibilities.

With crayon, what’s done is done. You can stack a little bit of color with Crayolas but not with great detail. You can’t really go past a certain level of detail in crayon, whereas the tablet lets you get down to the pixels, and, of course, to add layers, so that you can always get something on top of whatever you’ve done. So that’s what I’ve been exploring here, and I’m actually much happier with the result than I was with last week’s circles. Something about the dots and lines reminds me of various types of indigenous folk art. I think I can really start to get even more impressive results, and hopefully come up with something T-shirt worthy.

In the real world, I still have a few more days in the cold place, although it has been warming up. Crocuses and snowdrops and narcissus–the first flowers of spring–are just poking their heads through the soil, and everywhere you go, landscapers are trying to untangle the mess of this unreasonable winter. It’s increasingly difficult to function; sleep is elusive here, in a narrow bed, without The Man, without some of the comforts of home that help me sleep. It becomes debilitating very fast. Maybe tonight will be the night that I sleep for 8 hours without interruption.

My First Digital Mandala

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If you squint, it's practically perfect.

If you squint, it’s practically perfect.

Here’s my confession: it was time to upload Thursday’s mandala, except the crayon series is, of course, hard copy, and we’re caught up with the scans. I would have had to get up off the couch, turn on the scanner, plug it into the computer, open the scanning software, find the next mandala in the series, pull out the scanner from the shelf and then get the paper into it without hurting the scanner or the paper, scan it, refile the original, uncouple and turn off the scanner, close the software, and then upload the file. And this all seemed like an unconscionable amount of work. So I drew this one instead, because the tablet was already plugged in; the stylus was already in my hand.

I have not gotten off the couch in nearly 4 hours.

This is really not something to be proud of.

Up close this design looks pretty amateur hour, especially compared to some digital work you see, but if you shrink it down or look at it from far away it’s not bad. I still did it freehand so it feels like mine but I think I can get more impressive results with better technique and more knowledge.

Today I have to go to Chicago, so I’ve uploaded this mandala in advance. It’s uncertain how regularly I’ll be able to update while I’m away; I’ve got a bunch of other commitments and work on which I’ve fallen behind, and I’m not likely to sleep well on this trip, or have much free time. There will be something, but I’m not sure what.

Damselfly Mandala

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You might think these were dragonflies, but you'd be anatomically incorrect.

You might think these were dragonflies, but you’d be anatomically incorrect.

Dragonflies have dissimilar front and back wings, and keep their eyes close together. Damselflies have wings of the same size and keep the eyes on opposite sides of their head. Those are lily pads, though, with rippled water forming the outside edge of the mandala. It’s a cool shape, too. I’d like to do something that maintains the angles and proportions of this form as it expands, with the points and curves alternating and expanding.

Today was rather unproductive for me in general. After biking 3 miles to try West African food (goat soup and fufu cooked by a dude from Benin) for lunch, I took a salsa dance class and then ate chicken and waffles with The Man the Misseses Cat. Now it is very late and this blog still hasn’t been updated and nothing related to visual art will be accomplished today.

I wasn’t a complete waste of brain, at least. In between lunch and the salsa class I spent a lot of time working on my 4th essay for Panel.net, so I did write for a couple hours, but not with the focus that used to consume my writing. Still, I’m pretty excited about this one. My 3rd piece, “I’m Gay, Who’s My Dad?” came out today but did’t seem to get as much traction as the previous 2 pieces. I thought it was a pretty catchy title, but nothing. No comments, no likes, no tweets. But this next one should get a little more attention, I think. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, because I write for myself, of course. The only person who needs to approve of or get excited about my work is me.

But, you know, I do have meaningful things to say, to anyone who wants to listen.

Love and Lace Mandala

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Symmetry is a many-petaled thing

Symmetry is a many-petaled thing

It sort of reminds me of the desert heliotrope (blue phacelia) with its cordate leaves and its projecting stamina. (I had to look that up; the plural of stamen is stamina, although stamens is acceptable. Except it’s not acceptable to me. Not when stamina is in the offing.) But it also looks like a rather complicated doily, something your great aunt would lovingly smooth over the back of an armchair.

I finally cleared the shmutz off my flatbed scanner, but I scanned so many mandalas before I realized it was there that there will be another couple weeks of smudged papers. That scanner is super useful, but I don’t like working it. There’s no convenient place for it in my office. Yesterday I spent a really long time trying to scan 3 pages from a graphic novel. Graphic novels don’t really fit in flatbed scanners.

If only, one day, I could be so successful that I could pay someone to do my scanning for me. Ha ha ha. Tired today. No further witticisms.

By the way, you can follow me on Twitter @QWERTYvsDvorak

The Rockets’ Red Glare Mandala

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Patriotism is a circular argument

Patriotism is a circular argument

Clearly, this mandala celebrates the raucous chauvinism of America’s Independence Day. Originally, I think I had bigger plans for it, but somehow, just like real fireworks, it was a short display that ended too soon. Probably I should hold it back until July but who knows what the future holds? Today we celebrate the glorious 4th mandala, and that’s that.

Yesterday, while I was still reeling from my personal crisis of can’t even, I received the official invitation to become a regular contributor at Panels.net. I didn’t even realize until I skimmed the contributors’ bios that there are a number of really accomplished people affiliated with that site. Illustrious company. Go me. I really do have a lot to say about comics, and I believe I say them very well, thank you.

Today was one of the days I read to kindergarteners because it lightens my heart. We read 2 Jane Yolen books. Talk about a gifted writer! How many people in the world could create a story about a little girl being extremely quiet in the woods and end up with something that would keep a room full of 5-year-olds in rapt, delighted attention (Owl Moon)? Plus, the hilarious Recess Queen, which always gets a lot of laughs, as well as a short book about cowboys. I started my new bulletin board but made the mistake of doing the picture before settling on the words. Now I have about 12 tabs open, each with a different quote that might possibly be usefully paired with an image of an exploding volcano.

This Mandala is Very Busy on the Cellular Level

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This Mandala is Very Busy on the Cellular Level

Not entirely amorphous…

It looks to me like a diagram out of a biology textbook, or else a page torn from the sketchbook of a character in an HP Lovecraft story. Amoeba? Planaria? Nudibranch? Ancient unspeakable horror? The colors are great, though.

Looks like Wednesdays are going to be a bust for me, artwise, until we finish this salsa dancing class at the end of the semester. I do the majority of my work between 10 and 2, but by the time we get home from the après-class gathering, it’s well past 10. Wednesdays are my volunteer days, so I did pull down the old bulletin board and put up a new background. However, this week is a particular Tucson holiday: Rodeo. Our schools don’t get a day off for President’s day, but we do get Thursday and Friday off for the Fiesta de los Vaqueros, so the school is closed until Monday.

Now it’s late, but I think there’s a good chance I can finish the new T-shirt design I’ve been working on.