{"id":4976,"date":"2013-07-30T13:50:48","date_gmt":"2013-07-30T17:50:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=4976"},"modified":"2013-07-30T13:50:48","modified_gmt":"2013-07-30T17:50:48","slug":"paint-by-fractals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=4976","title":{"rendered":"Paint by Fractals"},"content":{"rendered":"

What shower of insults and rotten tomatoes are provoked up by such a play on the expression, “Paint by Numbers”?\u00a0 And yet, to those who know what galactic boundaries are quickly traversed by just a few (million) iterations of the simplest of fractal formulas, the phrase “Paint by Fractals” is nothing short of rocket-powered creativity.\u00a0 For those of you who aren’t sure of what I’m getting at just look at the pictures.<\/p>\n

~Click on images to view full-size on original sites~<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Double<\/a>

Double apparition of Louis XIV at the stairways of a Mini-minibulb in the Versailles of Mandelbulbs by Kraftwerk<\/p><\/div>\n

How does this one make me think of “painting”?\u00a0 Although the elegant curves and ridges of the mandelbulb suggest a rich picture frame, what catches my eye and makes me say, “Son of da Vinci!” is the background imagery on the right-hand side, middle to top.\u00a0 It’s the sort of painterly touch that one often sees in renaissance portraits like the Mona Lisa; misty, hazy panoramic landscape.<\/p>\n

\"Dodgeball<\/a>

Dodgeball with Flash Gordon by Sitting Duck<\/p><\/div>\n

Maybe the “painterly” style is just the preference for subtle shading and the appearance of natural light.\u00a0 I have no idea who Sitting Duck is.\u00a0 I think he’s one of the many new names drawn into the Fractalforums.com orbit through their recent contest.\u00a0 If so, then the contest has been a success.\u00a0 This image reminds me of the many sci-fi fantasy paintings done by Frank Frazetta<\/a> back when that sort of thing was popular, that is, before the advent of CGI when fantasy became reality.\u00a0 I like the overexposed areas of bright light and of course the multiple shades of rusty brown that would have caused even Da Vinci to start using a bigger palette –the old-fashioned, non-indexed type.<\/p>\n

For which of his paintings would Frank Frazetta have ever have written a description like this:<\/p>\n

Mandelbulb 3d DEcombinate of: Amazing+Surf Quaternion+CommQuat+IdesFormula | Bulbox+_AmazingBoxSSE2
\nSame as “Shiny bug transfixed by entomological pin” http:\/\/fav.me\/d69ot6g<\/a> but from another angle.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Truly, “Painting with Fractals” puts us in a completely different league.\u00a0 And language group, too.<\/p>\n

\"Eat<\/a>

Eat your Veggies! by indavisual<\/p><\/div>\n

This one caught my eye for what is probably the most important aspect of the painterly style for fractal art: creativity.\u00a0 The painterly style challenges the opposing style of precise, slick rendering.\u00a0 The painterly style is a reminder that art is a matter of impression and not precise, diagrammatic or photographic depiction.\u00a0 We applaud the skill of painters when they paint something that evokes great thoughts and feelings, but when a talented painter paints a great photograph and imitates a camera, then who cares?<\/p>\n

This one really shows how the distorting effects of whatever this guy did to this mandelbulb image can create something new and different where sticking to just the parameter settings of the program would yield something much more commonplace.\u00a0 The painterly style could be described as semi-destructive or even sloppy.\u00a0 The impressionist painters were described that way not because they actually were sloppy but because that’s how their work appeared when placed in the more established context of the (overly) realistic style of painting that came before them.\u00a0 Compared to a photograph, even the Mona Lisa would look “smudgy.”\u00a0 On it’s own, almost anyone can begin to see the artistry to such works as this one by indavisual (nice, multi-expressive screen name).<\/p>\n

And that’s what fractal art as opposed to fractal science is all about:\u00a0 artistry.\u00a0 Of course it’s not too easy to define what is artistry and what is merely tech-nistry, but it’s worth loosening the bolts on one’s mind once in a while and seeing what comes from a more expanded visual range.<\/p>\n

\"100511_by_pasternak\"<\/a>

100511_by_pasternak<\/p><\/div>\n

Rembrant-ish, but more than that.\u00a0 The radiating details that draw our eyes into the smudgy shadows are beyond the sort of hypnagogic visions that Rembrant’s own shadowlands ever depicted.\u00a0 Hypnagogic means just before you fall asleep.\u00a0 And Turner, too.\u00a0 This has all the subtle light shades and murky shallows of a Turner seascape with clouds, dying twilight and those things that only the eyes understand.<\/p>\n

\"Calligraphy<\/a>

Calligraphy mountain by wackwang<\/p><\/div>\n

From the fractalforums.com gallery page:<\/p>\n

Description: <\/b>http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/wackwang007\/<\/a>The calligraphy of Chinese characters as single elements, expressed the relationship between global and local, which is the calligraphy and fractal embodied.And I make it feel like Traditional Chinese painting as a form of expression.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is not really a painterly example, strictly speaking, but the cellphone signature chop mark combined with the fractal cloud\/mountain\/trees structure does evoke a strong resemblance to Chinese art as the artist intended it to do tying it in closely to more traditional, non-digital imagery.\u00a0 I missed the 2d barcode (red mark) at first and only on closer examination realized it wasn’t a traditional Chinese signature stamp.<\/p>\n

\"Hardwired<\/a>

Hardwired Transcendence Engine by egress<\/p><\/div>\n

Smooth rendering and, once again, the smudgy-ness are the beginnings of painterly style.\u00a0 Of course you still need an interesting image and composition and all those other serious art things.\u00a0 The swirly cables\/wires and steel parts forms a nice composition as well as something with a little bit of a realistic touch that allows us to begin to think we know what we’re looking at when in fact we’ve been drawn into something strange and other-worldly.\u00a0 The cables in the bottom right are really fantastic.\u00a0 They look quite hand drawn although I’m sure it’s just the careful rendering selection that makes them look that way.\u00a0 This one looks like maybe it took some time to render.\u00a0 Does an airbrush count as a painterly tool?<\/p>\n

\"Orbit<\/a>

Orbit Mandelbrot No. 2 by element90<\/p><\/div>\n

The Buddhabrot is always quite a painterly looking construction so one has to really do something special to produce an exceptionally painterly looking one and element90 has done that here.\u00a0 It looks like parchment or skin or maybe thin aluminium.\u00a0 But the reddish\/burgundy shade which takes over in the smaller parts starts to suggest leather.\u00a0 Or is it a recursive construction of old “pop-top” pop can tabs?\u00a0 One can never be sure what the audience sees when looking at fractal art.\u00a0 Just be glad someone is looking is all.<\/p>\n

\"ATALANTA_FUGIENS_by_bo_dion\"<\/a>

ATALANTA_FUGIENS_by_bo_dion<\/p><\/div>\n

A detail from a painting by Escher?\u00a0 Once again, subtle shading from various degrees of combinations and permutations of light –isn’t that 90% of what oil painting is? — light?\u00a0 I like the combination of the sphere with the triangular shapes and squares.\u00a0 One would almost think it was a deliberate attempt by the artist to suggest a round square or something alchemical like that when in fact it’s a deliberate output from the formula.\u00a0 Of course the selection of this scene was the artist’s choice.\u00a0 Selection is a big part of fractal art.<\/p>\n

\"Cliffs<\/a>

Cliffs of Antartica by Kali<\/p><\/div>\n

From the fractalforums.com gallery page:<\/p>\n

Description: <\/b>Experimental Kaliset heightfield render.
\nBased on Knighty’s Mandelbrot heightfield implementation included in the latest Fragmentarium version.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is exquisitely painterly.\u00a0 Hard to believe it’s machine made, but then Kali has magical powers when it comes to working with machines like Fragmentarium.\u00a0 If this was a painting it would be acrylic: bright, modern and powerful.\u00a0 Colors da Vinci could only have dreamed of.\u00a0 Although, I think one would detect some mixed-media accents in the form of sketched-in outlines and structural markings.\u00a0 This could be pen and ink or pen and airbrush.\u00a0 See what I mean about Kali’s sophisticated rendering methods?<\/p>\n

\"MengerKoch23hrddh_4<\/a>

MengerKoch23hrddh_4 by ellenm1<\/p><\/div>\n

Ellenm1 has a rather interesting collection<\/a> of mandelbulb images on Flickr.\u00a0 This one I find to be the most painterly of the lot, however there’s a few other that remind me of Bosch and other famous painters not because of the lighting alone, but also because of the creative composition and un-precise, warped fractal imagery.\u00a0 To me, this is a face, the bottom being a monstrous mouth while the top morphs into a cut-away cranial dome.\u00a0 There are almost brushstrokes in some of the lip-things at the bottom.\u00a0 It’s refreshingly fluid and non-squarish.\u00a0 Perhaps that’s another painterly principle.<\/p>\n

\"tumblr_mjsuarRvm71rswrhdo1_1280<\/a>

tumblr_mjsuarRvm71rswrhdo1_1280 by jakeronomicon<\/p><\/div>\n

To see a world in a grain of sand… or in this case, a world on a shelf.\u00a0 If this was a drawer in a museum, it would be labelled “sunset”.\u00a0 This is the kind of image that gets written off as a preliminary render but is in fact quite an advancement over the more complex, precisely rendered kind of thing.\u00a0 Perhaps that’s because the artist, Jacob Bettany has only been working with fractals for less than a year and hasn’t picked up the bad habit of only making crisp scientific images with a fractal program.\u00a0 To render this more would be to render it less.\u00a0 To render this more carefully would be to render it more crudely.\u00a0 To render this richly would be to render it worthless.<\/p>\n

\"94bf751edf4f11e2af4522000a1f8f13_7<\/a>

94bf751edf4f11e2af4522000a1f8f13_7 by Jacob Bettany<\/p><\/div>\n

This one’s off Jacob Bettany’s Instagram site, a service I’ve got very little experience with but looks very art-friendly in its format.\u00a0 Although clearly a mandelbulb derivative, this image does not seem to suggest zooming into it any more than one would step closer to a canvas hanging on a wall to take in the brushstrokes.\u00a0 I like the color and the flatness to this one.\u00a0 Flatness is something often neglected in 3d fractals.\u00a0 This would be a watercolor if it were a real painting.<\/p>\n

Well, there’s plenty more I could show here but I think you get the idea of what the “painterly” style is all about and how it works.\u00a0 Hopefully more artists will take up the smudgy, over-exposed, flat and shadowy style a little more.\u00a0 Sometimes it takes real genius to see just how simple, and how simply made, good art can be.\u00a0 Especially in such a technology-laden, expert-heavy genre as fractal art where it’s much easier to make perfect photos than it is to make unique and stylish artwork.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What shower of insults and rotten tomatoes are provoked up by such a play on the expression, “Paint by Numbers”?\u00a0 And yet, to those who know what galactic boundaries are quickly traversed by just a few (million) iterations of the simplest of fractal formulas, the phrase “Paint by Fractals” is nothing short of rocket-powered creativity.\u00a0 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4978,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/orbittrap.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Dodgeball-with-Flash-Gordon-by-Sitting-Duck.jpeg?fit=500%2C500","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3009,"url":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=3009","url_meta":{"origin":4976,"position":0},"title":"Fractals: A New Medium","author":"Tim","date":"22 September, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I think I've found a better way to explain what makes fractal art so different than other art forms.\u00a0 The differences are there simply because fractals themselves are a different medium to work with.\u00a0 Fractals are different than paint and canvas or chisel and stone. In fact, fractals are probably\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=3009#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/orbittrap.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/Zon9.jpg?fit=500%2C500&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":406,"url":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=406","url_meta":{"origin":4976,"position":1},"title":"Fractal Art, Phase Two","author":"Tim","date":"3 September, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"What? You didn't know even know there was a Phase One? Well, let me begin there, then. At the dawn of fractal art.Phase One, the first stage of fractal art, has been oriented around software. 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Flame fractals were a very interesting new development because they had a whole new look. They were light,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/orbittrap.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/chaoticafractals-intro-featured.jpg?fit=407%2C234&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":348,"url":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=348","url_meta":{"origin":4976,"position":4},"title":"Stone-Cold Fractals \u2013 An introduction to the lapidary arts from a fractal perspective","author":"Tim","date":"14 October, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"(Editorial Note: This is our first Guest Posting. Orbit Trap welcomes submissions for Guest Postings from anyone on any fractal related topic. Publication is not guaranteed and is solely at the discretion of the editors. If you feel you are in a position to offer some special insight on a\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3103,"url":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=3103","url_meta":{"origin":4976,"position":5},"title":"An Art Form of Shape and Color","author":"Tim","date":"5 October, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"By looking at all these weird fish images my hope is that you'll stop seeing them as fish and start seeing them simply as objects of shape and color. ~Click on images to view full size on original site~ They have no need of being real, we can relate to\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/orbittrap.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/image03.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4976"}],"version-history":[{"count":36,"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5058,"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4976\/revisions\/5058"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}