Mandelbrot

If you look closely this is my drawing of the Mandlebrot set..not a photo.FB_IMG_1524272149873

I do love Chaos theory, when I first heard of it I bought a book called Chaos and read about Mandlebrot who came up with the theory.

That was around 30 years ago, so I don’t remember much about it. But I love the idea that coasts can be fractal, and so can clouds. When you zoom in on a real Mandlebrot pattern you always see this distinct pattern no matter how deep into it you go.

The colours change, curves and swirls and spirals appear, but that pattern keeps coming back.

My drawing is not perfect, but at least it gives an idea of the pattern….like a little Buddha on its side… sparking with electricity.

Other fractal patterns include squares within squares, and triangles within triangles.

Go and look at websites with them on….you will be fascinated hopefully.

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Digital portraits

I’ve posted A few digital drawings here, and one website, now defunct, was called sketchfu where I drew many of them. (I found out today its domain name is up for sale!).

The tools at sketchfu were quite crude, only 5 or 6 sizes of pen, a colour picker and a colour palette together with a slider that allowed you to change the opacity. But it was surprising what results people could get. There were various little competitions and challenges to copy various pictures and portraits.

I did some of the challenges, and I drew some portraits. You could not draw as well as in Photoshop but they came out OK……

 

You might notice the final drawing here is meant to be of professor Stephen Hawking. This was drawn on my tablet in an app called sketcher free. I did it a few weeks ago following his death. Instead of a stylus I used my middle finger to draw on the tablet screen.

I cannot tell you how uncontrolled and disappointing this last drawing feels in relation to the previous ones. If anyone is aware of a good drawing website, please let me know!

Waiting for lightning

The forecast is for thunderstorms. ….IMG_20180329_004651_329

The heat has been here for only two or three days and already the forecast is for thunderstorms and then a drop of about 10 degrees Celsius.

Back to normal for April. Cooler,  hopefully not too cold…

Looking at http://blitzortung.org you can track the lightening, an hour ago it was heading in this direction. Now it has tracked slightly east. The weather over the Channel looks bad, with lots if storms in north France.

I want to write a poem about waiting for the storm….

Here I am, on Earth I stand,                                                                 waiting for power to flow,                                                                     from sky, to ground, down ribbons of charge                                    zagged into flash and sound.

I watch the signs, the sighs of air, deep rumbled                              groans of noise. There are now ways to see the moves                      of clouds and wind that pound.

But though I wait in stifling heat,                                                        no moisture hits the ground,                                                                the sky stays dark, not lit, not sharp.                                                  The storm has turned around.

No excitation of the land, no rivulets of rain,                                   no exultation of the skies,                                                                      no lightening strikes abound …….

Well, I think that explains how I feel. I have sat and watched lightening on many occasions, it is one of the things I love. To sit safe while the maelstrom whirls around the house. But like the photo of the clear sky above, nothing seems to be happening tonight.

Oh well there is  a small meteor shower due this weekend so I might see something…..

Found, old online drawings…

 

 

 

It’s been a while since I saw these. I drew them a few years ago on an old art site called sketchfu,.

Well guess what popped up on my FB page tonight? I had forgotten about these. But they are some of my favourites (I always loved Tony Curtis) …

The others are an attempt at drawing Michelangelos’ David, earrings and an Apple drawn in a challenge we used to do at sketchfu. And a drawing of a Manet painting…. the title is forgotten, no doubt someone will tell me.

Yes its great to see them again, hopefully I will be inspired to paint instead of drawing. But if not at least I know they are still around

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Something spooky?

For the last few nights the Moon has been close to Venus ….FB_IMG_1524173492793FB_IMG_1524173482026FB_IMG_1524173492793so I took these on thursday night with my phone camera..IMG_20180421_001900_423

And each one showed up the Moon, but Venus was very faint, and the bright light on the canal warehouse was shining so bright that you can barely see the pixel of light that is Venus.

But then I like duplicating photos, and there was one with the moon glimmering through the branches of a willow tree so I decided to use the layout app to switch one photo through 180 degrees.

Much to my cheer I realised the glimmers look like eyes! The branches and leaves like hair, the roof looks like shoulders.. it could be a monstrous alien……

(I also see faces and animals in patterned wallpaper)

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Fork candles

the confusion of words, such as The two Ronnies sketch: four candles or fork handles…..a poem.FB_IMG_1524173502338

Can you hear the difference?

Fork….or Four…Candles…or handles….

See the word, unheard, the difference.

Imagine a fork shaped candle?

Or four spade handles…

Words change, morph, but stay the same.

Homophones, it sounds like, confusion, illusion.

Playing games to gain our trust,  learn the difference, yes we must.

So four is not fork and candle is not handle but together they mangle talk (not tourque).

The Same, But Different

Someone looked at the twisted tree photos and said they were lost in the intricate tangle of branches.

So I decided to use a sketch of a tree I did to show how each picture changes depending how it is twisted. …IMG_20180418_124018_988IMG_20180418_124209_725IMG_20180418_124355_473IMG_20180418_124517_484

Twisting each of the 4 images to end up with 4 separate designs…….

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So which would you prefer? A close curved centre, spread out branches, accidental perforation or parallel lines?

Each has its merit. Some of them remind me if my blood vessels at the back if my eye, visible when a strong light shines. Others with the indentations remind me if a postage stamp.

Add colour and we are in a whole new realm.

Art, design, abstraction…it makes your mind work and stretch…

Turning walls into butterflies…

I’m not going into details or explaining this one…

I am just leaving this here so you can see how my mind works…

One thing leads to another

Colour and contrast shade the image,

Tones flow, bricks swirl, wood cracks and peels as the paint falls.

The carapace hardens and is split, butterfly spills out.

Tiny tiles of scales glint through old webs of moss…..

Glossy silver and gold, hold the eye, iridescent, shivering…..

Commission’s welcome

Please feel free to contact me if you would like a picture.

I love painting as you know and I pride myself on detailed work. I am not a photo realist but I think my portraits are pretty accurate and my landscapes are intricate.

So if you feel you would like to invest in something artistic, that is your choice, your vision, let me know.

I am currently working towards exhibiting a few peices at Spode, and an exhibition in June at Etruria in Stoke on Trent. I am happy to consider painting landscapes and portraits and I am also able to paint in various styles, so if you would like an abstract painting perhaps I can help? I also paint animals, so  pet portraits are also available, just ask….

 

 

The problem with web based drawing sites!

Join an art based website at your peril!

I joined a site  and happily drew there for years. The site tools were simple to draw with, a colour picker, variable sized pens and opacity,  lovely,  no layers to mess with. I and many others enjoyed the site which saw a steady rise in use…

The problem as it got too popular. What was meant to be an art site got a lot of attention from bloggers who would write stories under the drawings. The moderators found it difficult to control, and the owners, who had started up another site, were giving less and less attention to it.

I enjoyed drawing challenges there, some of which are shown above. Honing my digital drawing skills. I was happy with what I was doing and made many friends. Sadly though, the site was eventually closed. The owners tried to transfer people across to the new site, but it had too many tools,  there were lots of things to do, but the site did not have the same feel as the old place. It seemed aimed at a younger audience. Eventually it too closed, to reappear as a different site where you could search for your old drawings but they were hard to find, and you coukd not add new work.

Luckily I had downloaded some of them before this happened. As with other sites, be careful to back up your drawings or they may be lost.