By now you've been wearing your poor little fingers to nubs trying for that one beautiful mandala and I haven't even taught you all my tricks. So, let's try some new stuff, okay?

For this lesson, I've used a Klimt painting called 'danae' because I like his colors. It's some kind of an abstract, can't quite figure out of what, but it doesn't matter anyway -> Klimt Painting.

To save time, I've already distorted the image and "made the four" to arrive at this -> Klimt's Four. Download it and open it in a new photoshop window. Or, you can use one of your own "four" and just follow along with the instructions below.

1. If it's not already black, click on and set the foreground color to black. [see image below]

2. Then switch the foreground color to the background color by clicking on the curved arrows. [see image below]

3. Image Menu -> select "CANVAS SIZE"

This will bring up the following dialogue box. In it, switch the width and height from inches to pixels and, if you're using it, the danae image should show 500x500 pixels.

4. Change the 500 x 500 pixels to 700 x 700 pixels.

Now your image should be surrounded by a black border of 100 pixels width, and not 200 pixels wide. Do you know why? If you don't know why, you probably flunked grade 2 math, so don't bother me with questions about it, just trust me on this one.

5. Reswitch the black background color to make it the foreground color by clicking on the curved arrows.

6. On the toolbar, click on the paintbrush tool , set the brush size to about 13 pixels in diameter and use a soft brush.

7. Paint in the four near black portions of the edge of the image as shown below. Note that I've already painted in the top and right, and have yet to paint the bottom and left sides. I'm just making a brownish color black. In a moment you'll see why.

8. Click on the paint bucket tool , and click a bunch of times anywhere on the black margin. As you click, the black entry ways will grow larger, but the lighter red and white areas will not be affected as much. I clicked about 20 times to achieve this effect:

9. You may wish to click on the paintbrush and trim up the edges of this image ... it's up to you. I got rid of the little specks that resulted. With some paintbrush trimming on the edges, the image above isn't bad. However, you might want to play with the 'TWIRL', 'PINCH', 'WAVE" and other distort filters and even make some new fours with the results.

Just to show you some more options, let's try some further tricks.

10. Start by downloading this image to make sure we're on the same playing field -> Ray's Danae

I've cleaned up the edges and made the canvas very large.

11. Filter Menu -> select "DISTORT" -> select "PINCH" set at 100%

Here's what you should now have -> Ray's Pinched Image. Note that the larger you make the canvas, the more dramatic will be the pinching effect.

13. Filter Menu -> select "DISTORT" -> select "TWIRL" set at about 50.

Here's what you should now have -> Ray's pinched and twirled image. [But your black margins will be larger].

13. Click on the "magic wand tool" and set the tolerance at 50%.

14. Click on the black part of the image and you will see that most of the connected black portions of the image will be selected.

15. Select menu -> select "INVERSE".

Now only the mandala should be selected.

16. Edit menu -> select "COPY"

17. Edit menu -> select "PASTE"

Now you should have a double layer with the mandala on it. Look in your layers window and you'll see two layers.

18. Edit menu -> select "TRANSFORM" -> select "ROTATE"

19. In the upper bar, set the rotation angle at 45 degrees and you will have this image -> Ray's Doubled Image. [But you will have larger black margins].

19. In the layers window, flatten the image. Do you remember how? if so, give yourself a gold star ; if not, look for the little black triangle on the layers window and click on it and select 'flatten image'.

20. Filter menu -> select "DISTORT" -> select "PINCH" set at 100%.

Note that the large black margins gives a more dramatic pinch effect.

21. Filter menu -> select "DISTORT" -> select "TWIRL" set at about 71 degrees [or whatever pleases your eye]

Here's what I got -> Rays New Image

You may feel finished, or you might want to try some other effects.

22. Filter menu -> select "DISTORT" -> select "WAVE"

Here's what I got -> Ray's waved new image. Now you might be asking yourself, "Is this a mandala". Well, it has a certain symmetry, but some asymmetry can also make a mandala image even more interesting.

or

22. Edit Menu -> select "STEP BACKWARD" or "UNDO" to get your image back to the last version

23. Filter Menu -> select "DISTORT" -> select "POLAR COORDINATES"

Here's what I got -> Ray's polar coordinates image.

And, of course, if you're a gold star student, you immediately wanted to try 'making the four' with this image to see what would unfold.

Here's what I got -> Ray's new making the four image.

And, this makes you want to pinch it a bit, right? -> Ray's pinched new four image.

Or, better yet, pinch and twist it? -> Ray's pinched and twisted new four image.

And, on it goes.

At this point, I'd like to put up a page of your favorite mandala. Send me a 500 x 500 pixel image and I'll post it for all the world to see.

What's too shy to post? Well, this ain't therapy, kido. So, I can't help you, but if you wish, you're welcome to use an anonymous tag, something perhaps like "too shy" or "Imacoward".

Ready for lesson 5 yet?

Steps [introduction] [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15]