This mandala is made with bouganvillia flowers. I use what I call a wave effect in many of the rings. Rather than creating even concentric rings, I get the undulating motion you see in this composition.
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In the corners, I have placed reduced versions of the central mandala.
Now, let's talk backgrounds. For posters on Zazzle, I use dimensions of 23" x 34.5". If I divide that up into four segments across, I get 5.75". If I divide the 34.5" by six down, I also get 5.75". So I can make a pattern of 5.75" squares. Here I created the blue circles and fit 4 in a square of those dimensions. I then duplicated across and then down, until the pattern filled the whole page.
One can then play with color, contrast, brightness and so on to get the desired effect as a background.
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Next, I did the same thing with these celtic knot designs. The possibilities are endless.
I then took the calendula mandala and put it over each of the backgrounds. Here, I show it over the celtic knots.
One neat feature of this design involves the reduced mandalas fit into the corners. While the large, central mandala expands off the page; the smaller ones include the whole mandala. I am impressed by the software that allows that.
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I liked the wave efffect I got with the bouganvillia clusters. The calendula flowers are small, and suited to curved combinations that work well for the waves. Because they don't grow in clusters, however, I needed to create my own combinations. Before assembling the mandala, I created this page with individual flowers and mirror image pairs.
I then created a second page with a series of curved combinations as you see below. Together, the two pages offered a large variety of elements to work with in composing the mandala.
My thought is that with large blooms with a lot of detail, the concentric circles of individual and paired blooms is best. With smaller blossoms and especially the clusters, then a larger number of concentric rings is called for, and the waves add interest to the design.
Here, I give you the same mandala over the circle pattern. You can let your imagination run wild with this stuff.
Now let's put Photoshop to work. We duplicate the pattern and shift it over and down until we get this more complex design.
We could probably make the lines thinner and repeat the process to create an even more intricate design; but I'll leave that up to you.
Now let's add a remake of our previous jumping cholla mandala. Each one teaches me something new. This one is about improving the spacing of the rings. I also did not expand the mandala off the page as far which left room to make the corner duplicates larger.
