Life has been happily busy lately and creative time with my camera has been at a minimum. That is pretty normal for this time of year when I’m finishing up piles of orders as well as making sure there are enough of my cards and prints stocked at the Artisans’ Corner, an artists’ cooperative that I’ve been part of since we opened 2 years ago.

Consequently, when I was thinking about images to use for this week’s mandalas, I just looked back through my archives to find interesting images from past winters.  “Winter Sky” was taken a few years ago, a couple of mornings after Christmas when it had uncharacteristically warmed up and the snow had melted, creating a very foggy morning.  At this point most of the fog had lifted and the sun washed the landscape in golden hues.

In the past, I’ve tried creating mandalas from cloud images and have not usually been pleased with the results.  The mandalas were just a big blob of grey mostly, with no interesting patterns revealed. So I wasn’t expecting these mandalas that appeared from Winter Sky.  I think, perhaps, the way the clouds are lit, creating greater contrast between the clouds and the sky, is part of the reason for that.  This has given me a few new ideas about how to best use clouds for mandalas.  Love new ideas!

Enjoy!