I really like the way the wrinkles of this strange little fungus interact in this mandala.

I like the ghostly glow of these toothed jelly fungus in the dim light.

Again, though, it is the moss which really establishes the character of this mandala.

This mandala started out as something totally different, but I really liked the way that the skulls started lining themselves up like the minutes on a clock, and the starburst effect of the bones off-center- left... and really just lots of things about this image.

It is based off a photo of the entry way to the Kutna Hora ossuary in Sedlec, near Prague in the Czech Republic.

Playing with the bones gave me the idea that this program might give me a good way to represent Lovecraft's Cthulhu, an incomprehensibly awful monstrosity from outside of space and time as we know them... that happens to resemble an octopus.

This mandala came out very floral and not very monsterous, although the eye in the center with the strange rune-like markings about it might be good for something. I like it anyway, though.

This one came out a bit better, both through the use of the fantastic and rather rare picture of the baby octopus (it's all over the web, I assume it's OK to use...) and through adjusting the opacity of the current item on the clipboard. There's also a "lightness mask" function that is much less useful, in my opinion, than a "darkness mask" would be. In any case, though, I was able to give the impression of a sea of tentacles coming from all directions, and the baby peeking out like a half-remembered glimpse of the dread Cthulu's distant past, or an evil portent of the Earth's future...

All of these highly intricate, detailed to the last pixel mandalas are definitely a product of my taste. Meditating upon them would be interesting for me, but would drive Eric crazy. I decided to make one that was more to his tastes. There is just a bit of a pattern to the black background - you can find it if you look carefully, the smaller silver beads are centered on it.