Zen Colouring Contest #33 - Steemit

Here is my entry for Hive account@magiccleatus' Zen colouring contest #33

I felt this mandala had a very animistic theme to it, so I took advantage of all the eyes in this image. I initially thought I would do more with the spider's web feel, but I changed my mind as I worked through it. The eyes and mouths in the outer ring plus the possible aliens - or sky dragons - dominated the later development of this piece.

I paired it with a background of a picture I took last year when our clear Wyoming skies were being heavily obscured by all the terrible fires to the West of us. I enhanced the feel by cutting out parts within the image to be part of the background.

Rough method... (GIMP)

Alpha channel was already present, so I did not need to add to it.

• Use fuzzy wand tool to select parts for the background. "Delete" each section that I wanted clear for the background.
• Duplicate layer (layer dialogue)- I named it "paint"
• Use paint bucket (make sure "select none" is done) to add solids and patterns to the design.
• Open as layer background image.
• Drag background layer to the bottom so that it is behind the rest of the image.
• Scale background layer to the size I want so that other distractions aren't in the final image.
• Crop image to only include the mandala and the parts of the image I want.
• Export image.
• Take it to Photoscape
• Resize to a better size for uploading as contest entry...
• Add margins as desired.