Under the Sea Mandala

Geometric Mandala

Forgot to post my mandala yesterday — something a bit different.

A Special Thank You...

...goes out to Susan at Beautifully Practical for featuring my mandalas in a recent article on her blog. Thanks so much, Susan, for including my work beside the other two lovely ladies. Read the article over at Susan's blog and check out her Etsy site while you are at it!

Spring is in the Air Mandala

More Etsy Love

 

Just wanted to send out a big thank you to everyone who has included my mandala and fractal art in their treasuries on Etsy. Here are a couple screenshots of some great treasuries where my items were found just this week. :)

Honesty Mandala

Last week I came to the realization that I need a creative kick in the pants (yep, it's true). After much pondering, I decided that a little bit of goal-setting would be just the thing I needed. So, I officially declare that every Monday will now be Mandala Monday (at least in my world), and I will create a new mandala to kick off each week. This is somewhat ambitious considering I typically use my fractal images as source files for my mandalas, and I haven't exactly been cranking out the fractals lately either. So, it's time to fire up Ultra Fractal and see what happens. Stay tuned! :)

Edit: Just added this print to my Etsy shop: Honesty Mandala Art Print

Scientists Find Viewing Fractals Has Soothing Effect

Earlier today I was surfing around the internet and stumbled upon an interesting article from 2006 about scientists studying fractal recognition and the physiological effects of viewing fractal images. This backs up my claim that fractals, like mandalas, are wonderful to use in meditation (see my earlier post, How to Use Mandalas and Fractals to Meditate).

Here's an excerpt from the aforementioned article:

"Imagine working in a windowless building, cut off from the soothing sight of clouds blowing across the sky or leaves rustling in the wind, as another deadline looms. Feeling stressed, you look up at the wall and see a strange but somehow pleasing pattern etched into its surface. You feel better.

That's the kind of future that University of Oregon physicist Richard Taylor imagines, and now he's working with other scientists at the UO and other universities around the world in hopes of realizing it. They're studying patterns known as fractals in an effort to understand why and how certain ones seem to give people a mental boost."

Read the entire article here. (The article was originally published in the Register Guard, but appears to no longer be online at that location.)

Odds & Ends

Happy (belated) New Year to everyone! I can't believe it has been nearly 2 months since I last posted! Note to self — write more posts for blog in 2011. :)

New Printer in the House
Santa brought me a New Year's gift last week (What can I say? He must procrastinate as much as I do!) It's the Epson Stylus Pro 3880. I'm thrilled to finally retire my nearly 10 year old printer, the Epson R1800. It was a great printer (wonderful color), but the seemingly endless nozzle clogs and empty ink tanks had me pulling out my hair. The 3880 is a lot larger than I anticipated, but it can print very large prints. Look for some of those appearing on Etsy in the near future.

NASA Contest
On another note, I've decided to not enter the final judging of the NASA & Etsy Space Contest. I'd submitted my bestselling print, Celestial Staircase, and did not read the fine print as I should have. Granting the "Sponsor a non-exclusive, fully-paid, irrevocable, royalty-free, sublicense-able and transferable worldwide license to use, reproduce, transmit, display, and distribute" my image is a little more control over it than I wish to give them. But, that quoted sentence ended with the phrase "in perpetuity" — that was the clincher! I'm too fond of it to kiss it goodbye.

Adobe Illustrator
I've decided to make a resolution this year — to make friends with Adobe Illustrator again. I've had it installed on my computer for years, use it on and off for odd jobs, but for the most part, it sits there collecting dust, neglected and begging for use. Although I've claimed in the past that my brain doesn't function in the means necessary to become a skilled Illustrator user (think Robot from Lost in Space: "Does not compute, Will Robinson."), I'm going to make it my new bff. Look out Photoshop, there's a new kid in town!