It’s Abstract Friday

I’ve got a bunch of abstract 2d pieces that I’ve created.  I’ll be posting these occasionally.  They are cluttering up my hard drive and I must get them out.  I don’t know why I make these images, I just do. Perhaps it’s just a form of entertainment, or maybe my left brain has taken total control.  Or maybe it’s my right brain.  After reading the wikipedia article, I am totally split brained.

These images usually contain no underlying meaning, if you see something in them I’d be interested in your interpretation.  The Halloween iPod post was an exception, I’m not afraid of absurd interpretation.  Let me know what you think, and if I should post more.

Click to zoom to a larger image.

What I see?  This reminds me of burnt reeds. At one point, I toned down the colors to match, but then later backed off because I found the color range more interesting and I didn’t want to marry it to that concept.

Random thoughts related to photography

Reversing a previous track, instead of eliminating noise, here I felt like amplifying it.

This photo of Josh, Scott, and Eric (the later two are barely visible) from 2008 in Squamish, British Columbia. The original capture is below. Obviously, both versions have issues. It’s all subjective, but I like the grainy image better.  It conveys the subject better than the original.

Sleepy Hunting Hollow

I am such a hack.  I don’t like to piss all over the classics, but worse has been sacrificed in the name of humor.  Here’s Plymmer in a poor picture ripped from mtbr, photographed at Hunting Hollow, mixed with background art from Disney’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”.

The mtbr thread du jour (The kitty on the hood in this thread is a reference to a previous hack of mine here. Other than needing more pictures of kitties, these jokes are way too inside.)

Also, here’s the source to the Disney background: Animation Backgrounds

My Halloween Costume 2009

Here is my Halloween costume for 2009, I’ll be the monster with the ipod.  Feed me candy!

What’s on the playlist, you ask? Buttsqueezer, via 5000 Fingers of Dr. T. http://www.doctort.org/tunes/index.html.

Cal Trans Orange is the New Black

How’s that cookie? Looks yummy.

Yeah, I’m enjoying it.

Nice party hat.

Could you morph my sweater to orange so it will match my Cal Trans hat? I do look good in Cal Trans orange – thanks so much.

You’re teasing. Right?
. . . .

Happy Birthday Roomie

The visitor of neighborhood cats, the lover of abstract art, the drinker of soy milk, my roommate is having a birthday today.  May her birthday be better than anything ever broadcast on Lifetime.

Here’s the card I made for the occasion.  I think she liked it. Bravo, she said.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium

I recently visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium. There is a new exhibit “The Secret Lives of Seahorses” which was worth the trip. Although it is a fairly small exhibit by Aquarium standards, it makes up for it with variety. Two species stood out, the Leafy Sea Dragon and the Weedy Sea Dragon. Both have such unexpected shapes. See for yourself:

Leafy Sea Dragon

Weedy Sea Dragon

Like much of the wildlife in today’s world, seahorses are threatened.

Beyond the Seahorses, the Outer Bay exhibit is one of my favorites. The dark blue water fills the visual periphery as shiny fish flash by. This is the closest I will ever get to the habitat of a tuna or a shark. It’s calming and satisfying.

Outer Bay

My last visit was 15 years ago, and there is one significant change from previous visits: Cameras are now everywhere. Folks were snapping with every kind of camera that you can imagine. The conditions are far from ideal: low light, moving subjects, acrylic distortion, and reflections. The Aquarium website encourages photography, but I wonder how many people are disappointed with their shots, especially from cell phones. Of course, I’m no different and got a few okay shots.

Fishy, Fishy, Fish.

I wonder what it would be like to have the roles reversed. Give a crab a camera, change the world? I’m going to need to make a return visit to get my camera back.

One More Bad Spock

The line: “Sir, there is a multilegged creature on your shoulder.”  might be a little obscure unless you’re a trekkie.  So I made another one, hopefully more accessible.

Bad Spock

Bad Spock Drawings is a fun blog that I bumped into while randomly surfing.  It’s a long running blog featuring some intentionally amateur renditions of Mr. Spock.  I thought I could do that.  In fact I know I can do that.  So I started thinking, what does Spock do to keep his skills sharp? You know, super human strength, the ability to mind meld, the vulcan nerve pinch, and so on.  This must be a challenge for Spock, especially during downtime on the Enterprise, where there are no fellow Vulcans to get down and all Vucaney.

That mind meld is a useful tool.  There must be some Vulcan koan about an unused knife, and how it cannot sharpen itself.  So here I imagined Spock being Bad.  Under the isolating circumstances, he would be forced to mind meld with himself.  I wonder if Vulcans get hairy palms from such activities of ill regard.

And then there’s that neck pinch thing.  There’s obviously some technique here, or else Bones would learn it and there’d be no need for anesthesia.  But again, Spock has a serious problem.  Crew members of the Enterprise would not simply volunteer just so the Science Officer can get his timing down.  Once again, Spock must focus inward.

Ultimately, I decided that Spock was just bad in another sense.  Thus I present Sidewalk Chalk Mohawk Spock.  This is what I eventually submitted to Bad Spock Drawings.

Live long and prosper.

Darth’s Eyes

I see my blog is getting pingbacks from MeetTheGimp, which I did not expect.  So I might as well proceed in posting the second image that I mentioned.  This uses the same warp-polar technique as the elephant, although it plays more of a supporting role here.  This image was buried in a previous post, with some modifications, so I thought I’d highlight it.

I guess I’m stuck on a sci-fi theme.  And yes, as Rolf and Philippe guessed, these images are not always a direct line to an outcome.  For the elephant, it was about 10 minutes from a blank page until I knew what I wanted to paint, finishing took another hour or two. So it was not a completely right brained process. Had I not used the technique previously, that might have been a different story.