In which art-making grinds to a halt

Portfolio still needs work.
Label still needs work.
Help file for coloring method still needs work.
Spent all day in semi-comatose state. Art is basically not happening today.

However, the UF mailing list has unexpectedly broken out in fractal humor, which is exactly like you'd expect: it's funny only to an infinitesimally small segment of the population, and arguably not even funny to them. It gives me an excuse, though, to post limericks. So here is one.

A volatile fractal geometer
Saw an insect, and hurled a small bomb at her:
"The chaotic effect
Of that butterfly wrecked
My picnic, and broke my barometer!"

And an old fractal, by way of illustration. This one's from early 2003.

Monarch

Morphology

Hooray, I'm all properly registered now, and messing with the image importing feature. I used a picture of a pretty butterfly, just because I'm in that kind of mood. And because I didn't have a picture of a fluffy kitten handy.

untitled [morpho swarm]



The base for this one is a phoenix formula. The imported butterfly image is quite large, such that I could probably render the fractal big enough to do a decent print. With this remarkable ease of image inclusion, it seems like one major implication is that the possibilities for all sorts of illustration are dauntingly vast. The fractal can become something much more like collage, with enormous potential for surrealism even beyond the already dreamlike quality of the algorithms themselves. The main thing, I suppose, is that now it's very easy to include literal recognizable content. The fractal is no longer a pure abstraction, but can be crammed full of symbolism and allusion and who knows what all.

So beyond knowing about how to assemble the fractal layers into the effect I want, now I need to think about what outside elements to include. It might mean taking photographs, Photoshopping them in various ways, getting them ready for their eventual placement. I could think of it as pre-processing.

I am...intimidated. I thought I didn't know where to start, but now I've started and I don't know which direction to go next.

A radiant swallowtail, perhaps

I've been thinking about the color gamut of a computer monitor, which doesn't do blue-green very well; it either goes all muddy and icky, or it lurches into too-saturated cyan and primary green or blue. I like blue-green, when it's out in the real world where there are materials that can do it justice, and I was wondering if it would be possible to use it in a digital image that was less harsh and computery-looking.

I've also just been re-reading Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates, by Tom Robbins, in which the main character complains of things being too vivid. It was the combination of influences, I think, that resulted in this fractal.

Iridescent Wings



Rational Newton Julia, five layers. Actually a re-working of a very old image that never got anywhere when I was first messing with it.