Initially most of this series had a lot of chaotic detail, such as in the previous post, Metallic Flow #4. I like a messy arrangement of many small details. I made several, and even though each was quite different from the others, they felt too similar. I cut a dozen completed images from the series for that reason.

This one and the next, similar to the first Metallic Flow #1, has much lower density.

I snuck in a few extra colors here.

I overlaid blue/white on this one.

This series features mostly gold and silver palettes with frozen flow and turbulence.

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 Mish-Mash consists mainly of archived, unpublished pieces that I was saving for future series.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.