2010 In Fractals

Here's my year in fractals.. Happy New Year! :)


January: Waking Hour

February: Aurora's Garden 

March: Drifting Memories

April: Nocturnal Hymn 

May: Memories

June: Dark Reflections

July: Raspberry Swirl

August: Oriental Sunset

September: Season Of Rust

October: Apparition Of Sorrow

November: Fractured Imagination

December: S C O R C H E D

Fractured Imagination

Somehow I've managed to catch a cold, and I don't like it. My throat and ears hurt and my head feels like my brain has been replaced with needles and cotton. Needless to say, I don't feel particularly artsy and creative. I opened Ultra Fractal 3-4 hours ago and tried to make a gnarl, but I didn't even manage to change the gradient before my brain decided it was time to take a break. Break of course means spending hours eating chocolate and watching shows about cats on Animal Planet. 

But even though I haven't been able to make any fractals today, I've still managed to do some stuff related to art. Despite not feeling well, I went to the city centre and bought a kneaded eraser, and last night I bought a really cheap graphics tablet online (it was on sale). I don't feel like buying a really fancy and expensive tablet yet, I want to wait a while and see if I enjoy digital painting as much as I used to first. I can't wait until it arrives though, I'm really excited and looking forward to trying it out. =D

Fractured Imagination

Inside Mandelbrot's Mind

Here's a post about two older fractals I made for Benoît Mandelbrot :)

As some of you might know, Benoît Mandelbrot died October 14th 2010 at the age of 85.
From Wikipedia: "Benoit B. Mandelbrot(20 November 1924 – 14 October 2010) was a Franco-American mathematician. Born in Poland, he moved to France with his family when he was a child. Mandelbrot spent much of his life living and working in the United States, acquiring dual French and American citizenship.

Mandelbrot worked on a wide range of mathematical problems, including mathematical physics and quantitative finance, but is best known as the father of fractal geometry. He coined the term fractal and described the Mandelbrot set. Mandelbrot extensively popularized his work, writing books and giving lectures aimed at the general public."

So, like many other fractal artists, I decided to make a fractal in memory of Benoît. The first fractal I made was "Apparition Of Sorrow", which was made in Ultra Fractal using the mandelbrot formula. The mandelbrot-shape itself was not visible in this one because I tweaked the formula a lot, but it was still a mandelbrot fractal. This one was quite popular on DeviantART and I'm pretty happy with it myself :)

A little while after I and many others had posted our tributes to Benoît Mandelbrot, the gallery director of the Fractal Gallery decided to arrange a Mandelbrot tribute contest. The contest required that the Mandelbrot-shape was clearly visible in the fractal, and after weeks of dabbling and tweaking in UF, I finally came up with this: "Inside Mandelbrot's Mind"

Although I didn't win anything, I'm still really happy about this one. All three images are from the same fractal and I put them together in Photoshop. At the time I was obsessed with triptychs and diptychs, so of course it was impossible for me to submit anything else for that contest =D

Any Colour You Like

This is my most recent fractal, "Any Colour You Like", made on December 25th. I'm not entirely happy with it, but I do like that it's not my usual style. I also like the colours and textures. I've had so much fun with the Cellular Automata colouring algorithms in mjw.ucl, they are really awesome as textures.
My boyfriend also helped me out a lot with this one, telling me his opinions about the colours and flowers etc. All in all it's a decent fractal and I kind of like it :)

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My New Year's Resolutions

It has been a while since last time I posted, but I just haven't felt like blogging lately. However, now I'm going to try to change my habit of being inactive and lazy, and try to post at least once a week, even if I haven't been able to make any good fractals. I'll just have to show you the crappy ones, which really won't be a problem because most of the fractals I make look terrible. For every good fractal I post online, there are at least 20 failed, disfigured monster-fractals lurking in my Render-folder, ruining my confidence and making me cringe everytime I look at them. They're evil I tell you! >=(

Also, in addition to becoming a better blogger, I want to learn how to use Blender (a free 3D-program). I've always wanted to learn how to make 3D-art, and I have finally decided to do something about it. Well, actually I have decided to do so a few times before, without much success. I downloaded Blender more than 6 months ago, but I just read a few tutorials, opened the program a couple of times, failed miserably at understanding it and kind of gave up. I kept telling myself: "I'm too tired and my brain is just not functioning properly today, I'll give it a try tomorrow instead", which of course lead to me never doing anything. Well, now it's all going to change and I'm gonna learn Blender. I've spent the last few days reading the Blender Wiki and admiring the gallery on the homepage, and I think I'll soon be ready to start creating 3D stuff myself. Oh joy!

And I'm finally going to buy a new drawing tablet for my computer. I used to have one years ago and I had a lot of fun making digital paintings and drawing with Photoshop, but it broke after a while and I didn't feel like buying a new one. However, now I feel like painting again and if everything goes as planned, I'll buy a tablet tomorrow. I also want to buy a kneaded eraser so I can start doing pencil drawings again, because I haven't drawn for a very long time and I miss it. I've always enjoyed drawing, but the last few years I just haven't found time or inspiration to do anything. But since my boyfriend is away for two weeks now and the next semester doesn't start until February, I think I'll have plenty of time to draw and be artsy. My boyfriend actually asks me quite often why I have stopped drawing, and I'm never really able to come up with any other excuses other than me being too lazy and uninspired to lift up the pencil =D

So, my New Year's resolutions for 2011 are:
1. Blog more often, at least once a week
2. Learn to use Blender and make (awesome) 3D art
3. Buy a tablet and start painting with Photoshop again
4. Do more pencil drawings