April 16th, 2007
[-art, photography, poetry-]
Today’s image comes from Maureen Shaughnessy, the talented photographer and artist who has been a frequent contributor to The PCQ. She continually explores deeper and deeper into the possibilities of photographic/drawn art alterations.
I asked Maureen about this image and she said that she took a painting of a “normal, boring fish” and digitally altered it giving the appearance of perspective and swimming in different positions…” Maureen was working with the idea of “taking a flat…almost cut-paper or 2-dimensional tapestry gradually…transforming into a 3-dimensional dream image as you go right.”
I love not only the image she came up with, but the visual, design and metaphorical exploration behind it.
To accompany her image, she includes the following:
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And a part, just a little part of a poem by one of my very favorite
poets, Mary Oliver … to accompany this dream image. This is the last bit of her poem,
Dogfish
Mostly, I want to be kind.
And nobody, of course, is kind,
or mean,
for a simple reason.
And nobody gets out of it, having to
swim through the fires to stay in
this world.
And look! look! look! I think those little fish
better wake up and dash themselves away
from the hopeless future that is
bulging toward them.
And probably,
if they don’t waste time
looking for an easier world,
they can do it.
— by Mary Oliver
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Linking literary works to art - whether they are your own words or someone else’s - can add a further dimensionality that enhances both.
thanks, Maureen for an inspiring alteration.
This image is part of Maureen’s Alterations and Digital Collages set
Here’s a link to Maureen’s blog, Raven’s Nest
All Maureen’s articles on The PCQ.
Here’s a PCQ science article on Dimensions
Originally published in the original Practically Creative blog, March 2006
Tags: 2-dimensional, 3-dimensional, alter, alterations, altered, art, artist, digital art, dimensions, enhance, fish, idea, inspiration, maureen shaughnessy, metaphor, paint, perspective, photograph, photography, process, space, transform | 1 Comment »
April 16th, 2007
[-digital art, animation-]
Click on this work. It’s a mesmerizing animation. Zonal1 - who posts his work to the flickr group - does abstract digital art, most of it working with fractals. This one - even though the colors and shapes are out of this world - has a real body-feel to it. It reminds me of a beating heart and breathing lungs. This is reminiscent of the Heart and Mind blog entry where we actually saw inner-life–but it wasn’t moving!
Since I don’t know too much about fractals I did a bit of minor research. According to the Wikipedia - page: Fractals:
In colloquial usage, a fractal is “a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be subdivided in parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole”. The term was coined by Benoît Mandelbrot in 1975 and was derived from the Latin fractus meaning “broken” or “fractured”.
A fractal as a geometric object generally has the following features:
* It has a fine structure at arbitrarily small scales.
* It is too irregular to be easily described in traditional Euclidean geometric language.
* It is self-similar (at least approximately or stochastically).
* It has a Hausdorff dimension that is greater than its topological dimension (although this requirement is not met by space-filling curves such as the Hilbert curve).
* It has a simple and recursive definition.
Because they appear similar at all levels of magnification, fractals are often considered to be infinitely complex (in informal terms). Natural objects that approximate fractals to a degree include clouds, mountain ranges, lightning bolts, and snow flakes. However, not all self-similar objects are fractals—for example, the real line (a straight Euclidean line) is formally self-similar but fails to have other fractal characteristics.
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This information led me to the page on Benoît Mandlebrot:
Although Mandelbrot invented the word fractal, some objects featured in The Fractal Geometry of Nature had been previously described by other mathematicians (the Mandelbrot set being a notable exception). However, they had been regarded as isolated curiosities with unnatural and non-intuitive properties. Mandelbrot brought these objects together for the first time and turned them around into essential tools for the long-stalled effort of extending the scope of science to non-smooth parts of the real world. He highlighted their common properties, such as self-similarity (linear, non-linear, or statistical), scale invariance and (usually) non-integer Hausdorff dimension.
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He also emphasized the use of fractals as realistic and useful models of many phenomena in the real world that can be viewed as rough. Natural fractals include the shapes of mountains, coastlines and river basins; the structure of plants, blood vessels and lungs; the clustering of galaxies; Brownian motion. Man-made fractals include stock market prices but also music, painting and architecture. Far from being unnatural, Mandelbrot held the view that fractals were, in many ways, more intuitive and natural than the artificially smooth objects of traditional Euclidean geometry.
As he says in the Introduction to The Fractal Geometry of Nature:
Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line.
Mandelbrot has been called “a living legend” and “a visionary”. His informal and passionate style of writing and his emphasis on visual and geometric intuition (supported by the inclusion of numerous illustrations) made The Fractal Geometry of Nature accessible to non-specialists. It sparked a widespread popular interest in fractals as well as contributing to chaos theory and other fields of science and mathematics.
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Much of the fractal art we see is based on the Mandelbrot mathematical principle called the Mandelbrot set.
The Mandelbrot set is a fractal that has become popular outside of mathematics both for its aesthetic appeal and a complicated structure arising from a simple definition.
For non-mathematicians, the interesting fact is that this *simple* definition lends itself easily to the production of digital art.
Here’s a piece of art based on the Mandelbrot set:
‘budding turbines’
While out of my league in terms of mathematics, I find the information and its illustrations inspire me. How beautifully the universe is designed. Art and music are in and out of every part of it and us. No wonder (yes! wonder!) we are creative beings.
Thanks, Zonal 1, for your inspiration this morning.
Originally published in the original Practically Creative blog, May 2006; edited for re-publication
Tags: animated, art, Benoît Mandelbrot, creative, digital, digital art, fractals, geometry, inspiration, Mandlebrot set, mathematics, science, self-similar | No Comments »
April 15th, 2007
[-photography, digital art-]
Today’s image is all about water.
Water is so magical to look at, photograph, be in, experiment with because it can do so many things to and with our senses. It not only reflects, but is, at the same time, transparent! We see *on* and *in* it simultaneously. It catches light and color. It distorts size and position of what is seen through it. It is powerful enough to etch through stone but can be as gentle as a foggy mist.
~ water alters our perception ~
© 05-07 nancy waldmanRemember this as you create.
• Before painting, soak your paper in water.
• Take a photograph of an object through a glass of water.
• Find out what happens to a photograph that is soaked in water.
• Click here for more outrageously watery suggestions.
• And finally, don’t ever underestimate the power of a shower for providing an atmosphere conducive to inspiration!
Thanks, Elinesca for today’s inspiration.
Originally posted to the original Practically Creative blog in February 2006; edited slightly for re-publication
Tags: alter, art, digital art, digital photography, image, inspiration, painting, photo, photography, rain, see, senses, transparency, water | No Comments »
April 12th, 2007
[-art, digital art-]
Meet Flik R, our featured doodler
Flik R - who chooses to remain in his flickr persona - does fantastical drawings with gelpens and Uniball Signo rollerpens. But rather than be satisfied with that, he keeps going, taking his art farther by using his drawings as the raw material for digital art.
Flik draws the design in pencil first and then erases the drawing so he can still see the outline of each shape. He then colors them in with gel pens.
Using his graphics program, he uses the “negative” command to do an inverse of his drawing with rather spectacular results.
Experimenting with this led him to do some drawings with the negative in mind.
Flik then began selecting triangles from his drawings and using a tile function to make kaliedoscopic patterns!
This drawing and its inverse were used to make all these different patterns.
all images © 2005-2007 flik r all rights reserved
Thanks Flik R, for showing us a couple of ways in which hand-made art
can be altered with our computers to make wonderful new images.
See more: Flikr illustrates, The Dread
about the artist:
Flik R is 35 year old male from the United Kingdom. He entertains himself with various creative, technical or abstract projects as well as enjoying animals, computers, and long walks at night in the countryside. When asked what he thinks about while doodling he said,
Often about how much it makes my neck/back hurt, but how that it is worth it  Often I don’t think of anything at all, it’s a great way to spend time. A complicated doodle can waste/pass a few hours quite happily.
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He says of himself,
I don’t take any of my “art” very seriously, and give anything away to anyone who expresses an interest in it. To me, the memory is of equal merit as the item. A jpeg suffices.
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My ‘favourite’ picture is of the horse, something calming in that, something impressive in a horse also. The picture was just something a friend gave me the idea to draw one lacklustre day many years ago. A few hours later I had this picture, tiny and delicate, and it brings me comfort and calm just to look at it now, well a copy of it. The original lives in Sweden now. Favourite may be a strong word, it’s really just one I like a lot.
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See more of Flik R’s drawings at flickr.com/photos/flikr/
Originally published in the April 2006 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: alterations
Tags: alter, alterations, art, creative, digital alterations, digital art, doodle art, doodles, flikr, gel pens, graphic, graphics program, images, inverse, pattern | No Comments »
March 2nd, 2007
[-digital photography tutorial-]
a photosandwich recipe by Baywhale
To make this image:
I start by opening one image in Photoshop.
I then open a second image:
On the Window menu I select Tile in order to display both images at the same time, then using the move tool (shaped like an arrow) drag one image on top of the other.
On the Window menu select the Layers toolbox. In this toolbox the background layer will be set automatically at an opacity of 100%. Adjust the opacity of the additional layer; the higher the opacity the more it will ’show through’ the background. I would suggest starting with 30% but you need to experiment to get a result you like.
For this example I add one other layer:
There’s no limit to the number of layers you can use so experiment to see what looks good. As you add layers the overall contrast level will fall and the result might look quite dull until you alter the overall contrast in the next stage.
When all layers have been added I Save As a separate image on which I make adjustments to contrast, brightness and so on. I usually don’t close the original image containing the individual layers as I almost always go back to try a different combination for a ‘Saved As’ image.
Photoshop gives many options in how the layers are combined. You can also apply gradients and alter the brightness and contrast of individual layers. But for now most of your experimenting will be in selecting the images to use and playing with the opacity levels.
Have fun!
Bay
All photos: © 2005 - 2007 baywhale all rights reserved
Here’s another article inspired by a baywhale creation: Memories of Hope.
See Baywhale’s “Nettles” in our Gallery.
Please visit Baywhale’s flickr stream to see more of his creations.
Of his Adventures in Wonderland set, Bay says,
I see this set as ‘pure’ art, the deep and dark psychology takes place when I take the individual pictures but when I combine them it’s all about pleasure.
Baywhale, a computer operator in London, is also a proponent of the World Community Grid, a painless way to contribute to our world. Information on his World Community Grid group can be found at the flickr group, The Painless Charity of the Amazing Secret Angels- photograhers who flickr
Originally published in the January 2006 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: Alterations
Editors note: You don’t have to have Photoshop to do this technique. Any photo or art software will allow you to layer and manipulate transparencies, brightness and contrast.
Tags: art, baywhale, digital art, digital photography, flickr, how-to, images, layering, layers, photography, photos, photosandwich, transparency | No Comments »
