Twin Mesas Digital Art

Two roll-outs of a fractal

2011-11-21T15:40:00.000-08:00

I was playing around to keep busy while I had a few spare minutes and created these two variations:

Butterfly Implications

The Butterfly Implications title derives from Chaos Theory.

In and Out of the Wormhole

The In and Out of the Wormhole title derives from one of the implications of General Relativity and considerations involving black holes and time travel.

The Making of "Strange Mood"

2011-11-02T09:14:00.001-07:00

Image basis for original sound used in making "Strange Mood"

The background for how my previously posted "Strange Mood" music was created is in this following sequence.

I selected an old fractal print of mine (see above) done in 2003. I do not recall the program I used for this. I selected this image not for its visual quality but for its simplicity and smooth gradations of pixels. It did have some water texturing brought in to it so it is a slightly post-processed fractal. The main point I guess is that this image was already the product of algorithms in which iterations through formulas created the source of the visual pattern. I then placed this image in the i2sm (Image to Sweet Music) program. This freeware uses algorithms again to read in the pixels of the image to output text-based music in the midi format. I selected a non-percussion instrument to allow for smoother transitions. I brought this midi file into Anvil Studio and set my final midi instrument choices and re-saved it as midi. I then used the 'free midi to mp3 converter' to convert the file from midi to mp3 so that it was in an actual, but condensed audio file. I then opened this mp3 file in Paul"s Extreme Stretch and set the stretch to about 8% and saved it out to a wav file (only export format available). These are always very big so I always reconvert them back to an mp3 and erase the wav file from my hard drive to save space. But first there was some further editing to do. I opened the wav file in Creative Wave Studio and I removed what I thought was a too extensive beginning section, I normalized the sound, and I put in an echo effect and faded it in and out. I then exported it as an mp3 as the final audio you can now hear.

Then I looked through my more current images and selected my "Dark Mirror" image. I brought this image into Paint Shop Pro and placed the Title text on it and saved it as well. I placed both images into Windows Movie Maker as the only 2 slides of a slideshow. I brought in the final mp3 audio and put it on its track. I changed the last slide's (non-text version) timing to match with the end of the soundtrack and saved it out as a wmv file. I then uploaded this to YouTube. Let me know if you have any questions regarding this process.

Strange Mood

2011-11-02T09:12:00.000-07:00

I recently composed Strange Mood. I selected my print, Dark Mirror, as its cover image.

The Sound of Thinking

2011-11-02T08:59:00.000-07:00

I drew this abstract

and then used it as the basis for the ambient sound (12 minutes in length) below:

The Sound of Thinking by Smudgefactor

Remote Rest Stop Featured

2011-10-29T10:13:00.000-07:00

"Remote Rest Stop" was featured in the RedBubble group: "Sci-Fi Featured"

The Home of the Ancient Ones

2011-10-23T12:37:00.000-07:00

This is a digital watercolor, post-processed version of a photo I took of the Anasazi cliff dwelling at the Montezuma National Monument in Arizona. I clipped/cropped out this section from the photo and processed it using the freeware FotoSketcher as a water color rendition, after adjusting the parameters to my taste. I then edited out some areas to clean it up. Since I am not at all good with the traditional watercolor media, I was rather pleased with the way this came out.

Remote Rest Stop

2011-10-20T14:21:00.000-07:00

I finished this print today.
http://www.zazzle.com/remote_rest_stop_poster-228892278098422834

Eye in the Sky

2011-09-30T06:31:00.000-07:00

Digital doodling yesterday resulted in this "Eye in the Sky."

Turning some music on

2011-09-17T14:07:00.000-07:00

In addition to trying to do some upgrading of the appearance of this blog (and I may or may not be through with that at this point.) I have added my music that I have composed. This can be found in the right column of this blog for your listening pleasure.

I know that the quality of music is in the ear of the listener just as the quality art is in the eye of the beholder. But if you happen to like any of my compositions, drop me a comment.

"The Gardener" completed

2011-08-05T16:00:00.000-07:00

I haven't done much art lately since I have been busy on a variety of genealogical writing projects. When the photo that is the basis of "The Gardener" came up, I had to stop and create a work of art (at least to my taste) before I went further. This is based on a b&w photo of my father who is working in his garden. It was taken in about 1975.

Abstract Painting Tutorial-1

2011-07-08T11:06:00.000-07:00

I will use the "Breaking Through Illusions" image below to show one way to create an abstract painting digitally.

This image above was created out of 3 images. The first two I created by playing around using my mouse within the online Pollock-style art creation application available here. Note that you will be presented with a blank screen when you go here, just start moving your mouse around and you will begin to get the picture :)

Here are the 2 images I created in this manner and saved to my computer:

and

I knew that I needed a background to pull this together so I selected the following nebulae_4 provided by Caleb Kimbrough at Lost and Taken for my background texture. This by the way is a great resource of free and high quality textures. Many thanks to Caleb Kimbrough and those who also provide images through this venue!

These images were not selected randomly. I selected those that looked like they would blend and compliment each other in terms that I liked. The next step was I put these three images into Paint Shop Pro and I played with the different layer blend modes between each layer and levels of transparency. Since that varies with each image and the taste of the artist, I do not record specifics here. When I reached an outcome I liked I saved it out as the final jpg which essentially flattens the layers into one layer while using the parameter settings (blend modes, etc.) in use at the time. This process of saving as a jpg does not retain the layers or different image components so if that is wanted you will need to save it in the application specific format that does retain these.

Breaking Through Illusions Featured

2011-07-07T10:07:00.000-07:00

My "Breaking Through Illusions" image (previously posted) has been featured in the Colours section of the Art Universe of Redbubble. There is a lot of very nice art displayed along with mine in this featured section of the Art Universe, check them all out.

Breaking Through Illusions

2011-06-03T14:52:00.000-07:00

I finished this one today. It was made from two abstracts made rather playfully and then these to layered in on top of a texture made available on Lost and Taken. The original can be found in my Redbubble gallery.

Over the Horizon - revisited

2011-05-10T16:27:00.000-07:00

I had removed one choice of background from this slideshow and forgotten to put in a replacement. I have now posted this revisited and improved version which has many of my fractal images in it. I created the background music by beginning with my reading of a song in Tolkien's The Hobbit and massaging it into the atmospheric/ambient music background I am now using for these images.

In the Hall of Images

2011-04-25T08:23:00.000-07:00

I finished this one last night. This should be my last tweek on this particular watercolor wash. I was looking at it and since I could see forms lurking among the random patterns of the wash, I decided to take a pencil and emphasize or outline what I saw and then I went back and used a fine black ink artist pen and went over these outlines and then I shaded in a bit with colored pencils. It is rather a hodge-podge but rather intriguing.

My Dad's Shoes

2011-02-26T12:56:00.000-08:00

I finished this sketch today of my Dad's shoes. I was working from a grey scale version of a photo of the shoes I had taken of the real shoes when we were clearing out the house when my mom died. My father had died eight years earlier. These were his work shoes. His hardworking and and substantial presence permeates their every pore, so I wanted to do what I could to capture that by actually doing some traditional art and sketching them. I guess you could say this sketch is dedicated to my father whose footsteps I have been proud to follow in most of the ways he would have wanted.

Over the Horizon completed

2011-02-26T07:26:00.000-08:00

I got around to trying out some new things in the composition of an audio sound track and decided to put it with some of my fractal images. After a bit of the usual trouble I tend to have in the area of building slide shows I decided to go searching for freeware again and I came up with Magix Slideshow Maker 2. It works pretty well all though I may edit and replace the one I have out there (sound is too low in volume and they tacked on an advertisement at the end that I can clip off. Anyway, if you are interested it can be found here on YouTube

Sands of Time

2011-02-07T15:04:00.000-08:00

Sands of Time

I recently completed "Sands of Time" and I decided that in addition to posting that notice I would also bring in a short tutorial regarding how it was created. I will add in a label of "tutorial" for those that I do this way so you can filter down to those if wanted and in general it is my plan to do that more often.

The final "Sands of Time" image was created with only 2 images which for brevity I will refer to as #1 and #2.

#1 Roman Coin photo

#1 is a capture using a digital microscope made by Celestron that was attached to my laptop. The coin is a Roman coin I had previously bought uncleaned and after using a lot of elbow grease I was able to get it clean to see what I had...sort of armchair archeology---I did the cleaning several years ago. By the way they are dinky little things--about 1/2 inch in diameter. I captured images of all of my Roman coins and selected this one as the one I wanted to use in a painting in some way. I'm lazy so I like to start first by looking around and seeing if I have something usable already available and I thought of and found my "TheSilent Witness" image (#2)

#2 The Silent Witness

I then brought the #2 image into Paint Shop Pro (PSP) and also pasted a copy of #1 image into PSP as a layer riding above #2, using #2 as a background. The size of #1 and #2 were not matched so I enlarged #1 to match #2 without pulling it out of proportion. That left space beyond the #1 in which it did not cover #2 image. So I made it partially transparent and moved it around so I could find the best placement. I liked it with the background sculpture showing clearly through where it now does in the final image. I then used the eraser to remove the black background of felt that came through when the picture of the coin was made so that the coin would be surrounded by transparency. I also rounded off some corners since the original screen capture truncated the coin on the left and right sides.

Then I started cycling through the merging options offered by PSP between layers. This type of thing is nearly always available in painting programs that deal with layers (including Gimp which is one of several freeware that provide the ability to work with layers). Since I was not taking notes, I have no idea which type I picked to blend the two layers. I do recall that the one I liked best showed more white in the top right corner than made for a good composition, so I took the color selecting tool and selected the black part of the left column in image #2 and used the fill tool to place this color in the top right of the #1 image. I saved this result out as a jpg. However I was still not satisfied as my choice brought out the textures and the image bleed-throughs I wanted but there were too many colors and it made the whole thing too busy. So I brought the jpg back into PSP and using the free Colorworks/mono plugin provided by Cybia. I shifted it to the monochrome shade in the final version, the full-size version of which is on Redbubble.

Some more roll-outs from my original watercolor wash

2011-02-06T14:13:00.000-08:00

Here are some more roll-outs from my original watercolor wash which had already been tweeked and here I have added in some textures from a great site: Lost and Taken. The 2nd one includes one more layer from a previous print of mine called "Waiting.":

As usual larger views of these are available in my Redbubble gallery. As cam be seem I am still playing with the traditiona/digital interface.

Faerie Queen completed

2011-02-03T15:11:00.000-08:00

I created my own hardcopy watercolor background and after I had scanned it in and tweeked it a bit I finally saw what I wanted to do with it so I created faerie in DAZ 3D, worked with the wings to make them semi-transparent, improved on the hair and clothes and did general editing and the above is the final result. The full-size image can be found on Redbubble.

Alien Moonscape

2011-01-13T07:19:00.000-08:00

The Alien Moonscape image above is another re-make of an old sketch that I did. I still find this particular style of doodle/whimsy/surrealism/whatever interesting and fun to create and look at. A larger version is here. Below is the original sketch done in the late '60's or very early 70's.(once I found that if you scan it as a b & w document you can scan it in without all the various paper discolorations and texture):

I brought this into PD Pro (Project Dogwaffle Pro, I only have version 3.5) and used their mask/alpha and painting tools to paint the sketch. This image was then brought into Paint Shop Pro 8 [Paint Shop Pro has since moved on past the version I have and is now owned and developed by Corel.] so I could bring in some background. I looked around to see what I had already available and I settled on the following render I had done using Apophysis :

and I used the following planet I had created inside PaintShop Pro using Lunar Cell, a plugin provided by Flaming Pear.:

Of course there was the usual editing of things gone awry and then I tweeked everything and in particular the blending parameters of the layers until I arrived at the final version. At least that is the best I can remember, since I tend to forget what I have done by the time things begin to work out.

Encounter with the Unknown

2011-01-10T09:21:00.000-08:00

I haven't been very active here as I have been channeling my artistic efforts into illustrations for my Middle World Chronicles links to which are updated on the Arroyos Seco blogspot. However I recently was re-looking at a more digital painting approach and trying to find ways to actualize that interest and I pulled out some of my old pencil sketches for technique testing. I'm still not happy, but I am pulling together more resources. Meanwhile this is my first refinement of a pencil sketch done sometime between the 60's and 70's. I still like the presentation of the issue of what it is like to push yourself beyond the boundary of the known, knowing that you will be coming face to face with something, but of course that something is unknown until you deal with the effort, tension and resolve the approach-avoidance conflict of taking that final move and looking over the edge...

A larger version is here.

Isis Walking has been Featured in Spirit and Psychic Peace Group

2010-07-26T09:10:00.000-07:00

"Isis Walking" has been featured in the RedBubble group: Spirit and Psychic Peace.

At the Beach

2010-07-11T07:28:00.000-07:00

I created a video using music I composed and my photos, art, and video clips related to the ocean. The link is here.

New Print...OM

2010-07-06T13:21:00.000-07:00

I recently finished this image of OM written in Sanskrit and suspended above a peaceful ocean. The full size version can be found here.

Tai Chi-The Inner View Published

2010-04-01T08:50:00.000-07:00

"Tai Chi-The Inner View" has been published in Holy Chaos-Emerging Visions #17. This image is available for purchase here.

New Slideshow

2010-02-27T15:37:00.000-08:00

I made my first slideshow of my art. I first had to figure out how to compose my own soundtrack. It turned out to be something that reminded me a something from 2001, so I decided to use it for the display of my science fantasy art. It can be found here. Also I have it embedded below the posts on this page.

"Crossing the Threshold" featured

2010-02-05T08:13:00.000-08:00

My image, "Crossing the Threshold," has been featured in the Redbubble group: Dimensions.

"Contemplation #2" Featured

2010-02-05T08:06:00.000-08:00

My image, "Contemplation #2" has been featured in the Redbubble group: Spiritual and Psychic Peace.

"The Reckoning" featured

2010-01-09T10:16:00.000-08:00

"The Reckoning" was featured in the Redbubble group: Sci Fi.

Intersection has Been Featured

2009-12-18T07:40:00.000-08:00

My image Intersection has been featured in the Redbubble group: Digital Abstracts and Patterns.

Crux Celtica Featured

2009-12-08T15:10:00.000-08:00

My image, Crux Celtica -v3 has been featured in the Redbubble group: I In the Beginning...Ancient Practices.

Inner Journeys has been featured

2009-11-12T11:26:00.000-08:00

My print Inner Journeys has been featured in the RedBubble group: A Spiritual Walk.

Angel Wings in the Making

2009-10-26T20:30:00.001-07:00

Another one completed today.

Nebulous Horizons

2009-10-26T20:16:00.000-07:00

Completed this today. Larger version can be seen here.

Vase Cubed

2009-10-25T20:24:00.000-07:00

Another contemporary abstract work.

Introspection

2009-10-24T11:46:00.000-07:00

Created this print this morning. Playing with a slightly different style. This can be viewed on my gallery to see it in more detail.

The Old Neighborhood

2009-10-21T13:24:00.001-07:00

Here is an abstract I just completed. Click here to see it in my gallery.

Brainstorm Published in Emerging Visions

2009-10-09T09:49:00.000-07:00

"Brainstorm" was published in Emerging Visions #16. This print is available for purchase here.

Insight-2 Featured

2009-10-08T19:38:00.000-07:00

"Insight-2" was featured in the A Spiritual Walk group on RedBubble. This group features work that showcases spiritually focused art, writing, and photography. I am proud to do what I can to be a part of this effort as well as to be featured among the many great artists and writers in this group.

"Winds of Wichita" Featured

2009-08-26T09:52:00.000-07:00

"Winds of Wichita" was featured in the Spirit of Native Americans group on RedBubble. This group features work that honors and reflects the Native American people, culture, and history. I am proud to do what I can to be a part of this effort as well as to be featured among the many great artists and writers in this group.

"Inner Journeys" Featured in Gateways

2009-08-25T05:18:00.000-07:00

"Inner Journeys" was Featured in the Gateways group of RedBubble.

This is a group whose aim is to, "...to explore images/writing that act as a kind of meditation, a way into other areas and/or levels of consciousness." I was very pleased to be featured among the excellent artists that belong to this group as well as for this print being selected for this particular group due to the focus of this group and the meaning I place on this print being recognized by them as well.

"Favorite Getaway" has been published

2009-04-25T14:32:00.000-07:00

A surrealistic digital print of mine has been published in Eclecticism #8.

"Difficulty in the Beginning" published

2009-03-23T12:43:00.000-07:00

My digital abstract, "Difficulty in the Beginning" has been published on Sacramento Poetry, Art, and Music.

http://www.eskimopie.net/

"Into the Future" published

2009-03-16T07:56:00.000-07:00

"Into the Future," a digital painting, has been published on Sacramento Poetry, Art, and Music.
http://www.eskimopie.net/

Retired!

2009-03-03T06:32:00.000-08:00

I am now retired and will have more time to devote to my art, photography, writing, and maybe even music (I'm playing with moving into that venue as well). Whatever, I am glad to be moving into this stage of my life.

Digital painting published

2009-02-28T12:24:00.000-08:00

My digital painting, "Mirror on the Wall," was published in Sacramento Poetry, Art, and Music.

Getting Started

2009-01-23T13:21:00.000-08:00

I decided this would be a good hub to connect my different sites, provide information, and express a few personal views from time to time.