This week, I tried doing what most artists do by default: Starting with an idea in mind first and then trying to get there.
See, with fractals, I try to make an art out of looking for order in oceans of chaos. So most of the time, I dive into a set of formulae and see where the currents take me.
Not so for this week though. I decided I wanted to make an eye. A fractal mandala eye, as a gift, actually, for my fellow You Got Snekked curator, 
One last thing, I tried basing it off of my own eye. Blue-ish green with flecks of gold, especially around the pupil. Of course, it looks nothing like my eye, lol. Though how cool would it be if I could get this put onto contact lenses? Hmm, surely that's a thing...
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Gallery: Motifs
Max. Print Size: 28" x 28"
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
-- Albert Einstein
“Perception requires imagination because the data people encounter in their lives are never complete and always equivocal. For example, most people consider that the greatest evidence of an event one can obtain is to see it with their own eyes, and in a court of law little is held in more esteem than eyewitness testimony. Yet if you asked to display for a court a video of the same quality as the unprocessed data catptured on the retina of a human eye, the judge might wonder what you were tryig to put over. For one thing, the view will have a blind spot where the optic nerve attaches to the retina. Moreover, the only part of our field of vision with good resolution is a narrow area of about 1 degree of visual angle around the retina’s center, an area the width of our thumb as it looks when held at arm’s length. Outside that region, resolution drops off sharply. To compensate, we constantly move our eyes to bring the sharper region to bear on different portions of the scene we wish to observe. And so the pattern of raw data sent to the brain is a shaky, badly pixilated picture with a hole in it. Fortunately the brain processes the data, combining input from both eyes, filling in gaps on the assumption that the visual properties of neighboring locations are similar and interpolating. The result - at least until age, injury, disease, or an excess of mai tais takes its toll - is a happy human being suffering from the compelling illusion that his or her vision is sharp and clear.
We also use our imagination and take shortcuts to fill gaps in patterns of nonvisual data. As with visual input, we draw conclusions and make judgments based on uncertain and incomplete information, and we conclude, when we are done analyzing the patterns, that out “picture” is clear and accurate. But is it?”
-- Leonard Mlodinow, The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives
Eyes are the windows of the soul, they say. Most of you know that I don't see any reason to think "souls" exist. More saliently, the very word soul, like the words 'spirit', and 'god', don't actually have much meaning. Go ahead and try giving me a clear definition of any of those and you'll see what I mean.
But as much as I am scientifically minded, I am also a poet, so I have no problem with a metaphorical "soul" ... Who we are emotionally, in what ways we react to external stimuli, what drives us, all wrapped into one easy-to-use, monosyllabic, cliché word ... Of course, there is always "personality" but that doesn't have the same ring to it.
Point is, yes, I think looking into someone else's eyes is an extremely personal thing that can tell you a lot about said person (and yourself). There's no mystical, insubstantial "soul" behind there, no, but through subtle perception, you can discover a lot - through their eyes, facial muscles, general stance. Eyes are just the most popular... But ever held someone's hand for any length of time? A stranger, I mean. I haven't, but now that I've thought of it, I think I'd like to... I'm sure I could tell lots about them by how they react.
Alright, so, here follows a very much simplified depiction of the initial creation process. I started out with very geometric shapes and after about an hour of playing with parameters, I eventually found something that reminded me of the texture of an eye's iris, close up:
The final step was to increase the number of spokes of the mandala, by a lot:
Then, the colouring... I knew I wasn't going to get a colour combination in Mandelbulb 3D that I would be happy with, so I went immediately with saving multiple pngs with different colours/textures:
From there, it was just a matter of using layers in Photoshop and using different eye images from google to select certain shapes and erase them at different opacities, etc. The center (the pupil) was just black and white paint brushes, also at varying opacities.
And finally, here, as usual, are a few details. It can be printed at 28 by 28 inches...:
So there we go. Hope you like it,
And everyone, if you want to buy this design, or any other of mine, you can check out my site, Mandelsage.com, for details =) ... And I am open to doing commissions too! How about a mandala based on your personality? ;)
Thank you for your upvote 💖
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A few recent posts of mine:
ULOG: Talking to My Future Self - 005 - 34 Years Old | No Man's Sky - Radioactive Planet Adventures | Goldflake - Gallery: Motifs
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If you'd like to support me further, or follow me elsewhere, I'm on these social media:
Patreon | Instagram | Facebook
My Bitcoin wallet address:
1DPGX72eQj5TNVpSG1grRMxVAaDuqGG2RL
All Images, Copyright @Mandelsage - All rights reserved (unless otherwise specified).
Before using bidbots, consider that they are generally bad for the long-term health of the Steemit ecosystem, and that many manual curators will not consider posts using bidbots for curation. Instead, try joining communities, engaging authentically, and earning more and more organic votes over time =) ... The best post I've found explaining this controversial topic is by Luke Stokes - click here to go to his post.
