My year in art, part 6.

I have described two operating modes. One is experimental freedom, just do something and see where it goes. The other is setting some rules and boundaries and then explore that limited space in detail. I like both, not at the same time, I bounce between them. The current series, Lazy Nights, is solidly in the "rules" camp.

This site has been around for over 25 years. The last full reset was in 2019. In the last 4.5 years I put together 42 different series. (Wordpress calls them categories.) There is a wide range of free rein series and rule based series. As I look over the history, I like the rule based, bounded, series better. I have several ideas I hope to explore for future rule based series.

OK, too much talking. I have about ten more pictures planned for this series. I will be posting them with little or no comment.

My year in art, part 5.

I started the Workshop 202306 series in June. Workshop was a cross between the wild freedom of the Experiment series and the rule-limited Rectangles series.

My intention in Workshop was to isolate different 'features', then experiment with slight variations. And in some cases try different ways to combine different features. So Workshop is more goal oriented than the Experiment series, but it keeps the no-boundaries, follow wherever it leads attitude.

Next came the Curve Textures series, which stated as a focused study from some Workshop items. And then quickly diverged in wild directions.

Mish Mash Rush came out in August. As explained in the introduction there, I was pressed for time and needed to queue up a month's worth of posts for an extended period away. The blog software lets me create posts ahead or time and schedule the publication date. Mish-Mash consists mainly of archived, unpublished pieces that I was saving for future series. I dusted them off, cleaned them up, made some minor tweaks and finished and published them.

My year in art, part 4.

I started the 50000 Rectangles series in May. Up to that point everything was either experiments or short series of related items pulled from the experiments. Most of the experiments were discarded in the background; only my favorites made it into this blog.

The 50000 Rectangles series started with a few pieces from the Experiment series. This time I did not just finish and publish those items. I stopped and asked, what is similar and what is different in these pieces. It seems obvious now: lots of overlapping rectangles. But it was not obvious at the time. In fact, it was not a process of finding what is similar, but rather one of deciding what is similar. It could have gone many different ways, I decided to make the overlapping rectangles the constant for the series.

The text in the 50000 Rectangles series describe the design decisions in detail. In summary, everything has lots of small rectangles. Typically 5 sets of 10000 rectangles each, but the exact numbers vary. Within a set, all the rectangles are similar. Between sets, color, length, orientation, density, and skew change.

The rules did not arise from a sudden light-bulb idea that popped into my head. They evolved over several steps. Even when the rules seemed done, more tweaking was required. For example size should vary, but only within a limited range. Too large, and few dominate the whole screen. Too small, and they are hard to see.

None of the originals that were the seeds for the series made it into the final cut.

My year in art, part 3.

Towards the end of March I followed Experiment 2023.1 with Experiment 2023.2. (I was not putting a lot of effort into names.)

In series 2, I still operated with the freedom of anything goes. But unlike the previous set, I started having fun. Now the struggle was not coming up with something new. I was full of ideas on things to try. Every experiment suggested two more things to try, and I was trying to go down all of those paths. At this point, the art is not ready to publish, just colorful sketches. Now I had to force myself to slow down on the wild experimentation and exploration and pick one thing to polish and finish and publish each day.

Several items in the series have a textured look. I bury detailed patterns in the images with a small addition of light and shadow. Two series followed, Textured Fractals, and Textured Scribbles with images that were originally planned as part of Experiment 2023.2

My year in art, part 2.

About a year ago, October 2022, I stopped posting to this blog. That was after two years of almost daily posts. I am not sure why I stopped. I suspect all the usual excuses apply; artist block, burnout, lazy, busy. I started up again in February with the short series Monochrome Minimalism. My focus was on abstract shapes, without color. Something easy to get going again.

Experiment 2023.1 followed, which consisted, in part, of coloring the shapes in the previous series. Both of these were a bit of a struggle. I did not have anything specific in mind. I was not trying to create a particular mood or image. I just creatively splashed the screen. If I liked the result and thought someone else would find it interesting, that was good enough. Still, despite that freedom, it seemed more like work than hobby to meet my self-assigned goal of one post a day.

I will however talk about this series in relation to other work I have published. Here is a list of all the art series published so far this year:

Monochrome Minimalism (February, 7 posts)
Experiment 2023.1 (February, 17 posts)
Experiment 2023.2 (March, 36 posts)
Textured Fractals (April, 9 posts)
Textured Scribbles (May, 8 posts)
50000 Rectangles (May, 33 posts)
Workshop 202306 (June, 29 posts)
Curve Textures (August, 21 posts)
Mish Mash Rush (August, 37 posts)

(tl;dr) I need to do more themed series.

The series description from Lazy Nights #1 fits everything in this series. I could point out that this one has a bright blue drip. But that is too obvious. It is better if you notice these things without me pointing them out. So I am going to suppress my urge to over explain.

I do not have a good place for this one. So I am dropping it in here

The next two are related somehow. But I do not know how to describe them

A Close-up.

Eye of the storm.