Archive for the 'Wallpaper' Category

New Widescreen Wallpaper – Charamandala 1

Published on 2008/12/31 in Creativity, Graphic Design and Wallpaper. 0 Comments

Today, this last day of 2008 AD, and before the year ends, I’d like to share with you something that’s been incubating since September.

Artistic Incubation

As I’ve often hinted at in the past, when creating something non-urgent I often start a project, complete more than half of it, and then forget about it for a few months. This kind of artistic incubation can be beneficial because when I return to the project, I return to it with fresh eyes, and see problems and possibilities that I didn’t see when I first created it. This process is also recommended for authors, that they should write an entire first draft without looking back and then let the first draft sit without looking at it for a few months.

Continual First Draft

Often, new authors will continually, some might say obsessively, revise the first chapter of their book only to never complete a first draft at all. This kind of resistance is something that all creators tackle. Once a first draft is complete, I tend to stow it away and forget about it for a while. It’s possible that this forgetting allows my unconscious mind to work on the problem in the background for months. However it works, I know that it does work.

After I’d created the logo for this website in July, I decided that, as a design element, it might work well as the central focus in a piece of visual art. So in September, I started experimenting. And today, I’m happy to present the fruits of my efforts.

What’s Not in a Name?

Charamandala 1 preview

See that white symbol in the top center of this page? That’s the Charamandala—the unique logo for Byteful Travel. The name is a conjugation of two words that are quite old. Chara means joy in Greek, and mandala is from the Sanskrit word mandalam, which means circle. (Note to the seeker, there is much to learn about mandalas. Recommended research.)

I’ve dubbed this wallpaper Charamandala 1, because I suspect this won’t be the last desktop wallpaper to feature the charamandala. Charamandala 1 comes in aglow and deep versions and is available in widescreen or fullscreen sizes.

And feel free to let me know what you think.


Recommended Reading:

  1. New Widescreen Wallpaper – Ocean of Twilight
  2. New Widescreen Wallpaper & Be A Mind At Play
  3. New Widescreen Wallpaper – Snowy Crystal
  4. New Widescreen Wallpaper – Snowy Sight Indigo
  5. New Widescreen Wallpaper – Indigo Island
  6. New Widescreen Wallpaper – Crescent Nightfall
  7. New Widescreen Wallpaper – Liquid Lazuli


New Widescreen Wallpaper – Snowy Crystal

Published on 2008/12/29 in Creativity, Graphic Design and Wallpaper. 0 Comments

Before I ever created a gallery to make my wallpapers available for free online, I created them for myself. It was only after experimenting with an iTools account (a now defunct service that provided high-quality web hosting for free) that I realized the potential to share what I had created — to share my solutions to the problem of an uninspirational, or worse, visually-stressful desktop wallpaper.

Restless Digital Artist

Snowy Crystal Indigo preview

I had been using Snowy Sight 2009 Indigo for a while, and I got restless. To be honest, I got bored with it rather quickly, so once again I starting playing around with it in Photoshop. My original intention with was to create a binary-looking version of Snowy Sight — something that wasn’t afraid to show an aliased pixel edge or two. Simply pixelizing the flakes wasn’t enough, and I explored different filters and tools to try and create the desired effect. In my experimenting I noticed that the crystalize function produced an interesting ice-like effect, that worked well with the snow flakes.

A Cyan Plan

Snowy Crystal Cyan preview

I also began experimenting with other hues for the wallpaper. Red felt too strong to use for a winter wallpaper, and I felt similarly about the other warm colors of the spectrum. However, a cyan hue had a certain appeal and hadn’t been done before. (For those of you who are unsure, cyan is the color between green and blue on the color spectrum.) When I shifted the hue to cyan, the way the gradient gets lighter to the top reminded me of the early morning sun hitting the snow flakes and causing them to melt. Bingo.

I call this new wallpaper collection Snowy Crystal. The wallpaper comes in 4 variations, including deep (i.e. darker) flavors:

  • Snowy Crystal Cyan Aglow
  • Snowy Crystal Cyan Deep
  • Snowy Crystal Indigo Aglow
  • Snowy Crystal Indigo Deep

As always the desktops are available in widescreen or fullscreen sizes, up to 2560×1600 for widescreen and 1600×1200 for fullscreen.

Use these new desktop wallpapers to remind you that the snow will indeed melt… eventually. On the other hand, if you are in a warm climate, use them to remind you that snow does indeed exist.

And you should try driving in it sometime.


Recommended Reading:

  1. New Widescreen Wallpaper – Snowy Sight Indigo
  2. The Dam Ice and New Snowy Sight Wallpaper
  3. New Widescreen Wallpaper – Ocean of Twilight
  4. How to make a Wallpaper Mashup
  5. New Widescreen Wallpaper – Indigo Island
  6. New Widescreen Wallpaper – Charamandala 1
  7. New Widescreen Wallpaper – Crescent Nightfall