NaArMaMo Day 7

[altariel]

Just a doodle today, while watching back Lewis and needing not to use my branez.

Comments

[gauroth.livejournal.com]

What lovely non-wobbly lines. I remember doing similar doodles at school (usually in Science lessons) but nothing that looked so elegant and balanced. I really like that.

Eta: my lines were always wobbly!

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Yes, this is my classroom doodle as well! They take about an hour, just long enough for a lecture :-)

[katlinel.livejournal.com]

It makes me think of mazes and knot gardens.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I'd never thought of it as a maze before, but I suppose it is labyrinthine. No minotaurs!

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

The first thing it suggested to be was a fingerprint - admittedly one with unusually straight lines rather than curves.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Ooh yes, I like that.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I like that! It's really very complex and mazey. How and where do you start?

[altariel.livejournal.com]

If you look in the centre of the page, you can make out a big shape made up of a circle on the left joined to a square on the right. I drew that big shape, and then filled it in (although you don't just follow round the outline, you break it up with new shapes).

The rest of the page was done by breaking it up into sections of a similar size, but trying to strike out lines in an unexpected fashion, and in a way that it would create sections that would be interesting to fill in. It's all boxes and circles, although I went wrong at one point and ended up using an unbroken single line to fill in one section. Oops!

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

I used to do something very similar but with a single unbroken line. Used to drive my teachers mad.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I've never tried doing a whole page with a single unbroken line. (There's a bit in this one where I lost track and ended up using a single line, but I'm Not Telling Where *g*)

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

I think I was overfond of labyrinths as a kid.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Good icon choice. Did you ever do those books of intricate patterns - what are they called? - they were patterns built up of small geometric shapes that you could colour in.

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

Geometrical tilings? Oh, yes indeedy.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I had a hunch you might :-) I loved doing those too, found them very soothing.

[kerravonsen]

Oh, I used to do things like that at school too. 8-)

[altariel.livejournal.com]

It can fill an hour or two very nicely :-)

[toft-froggy.livejournal.com]

It's like one of them optical illusion thingies. I could go blind squinting at that and trying to make a dolphin appear.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Look into my eyes, look into my eyes, not away from my eyes, into my eyes...

[greylin.livejournal.com]

Does this relate in any way to how you write your stories? A bit of plot here, a bit there, think of a way to join them together, another bit pops up in between ...

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Hmm, now that you mention it...!

[greylin.livejournal.com]

It's so beautiful that I would like to wrap my Christmas presents in it. Will you be taking orders?

(Edited twice for idiocy!)

[altariel.livejournal.com]

All hand-drawn! I could charge a fortune!

(If You Liked This, You May Also Like kerravonsen's reciprocal doodle, downthread.)

[kerravonsen]

Your doodle inspired me to do this:

[altariel.livejournal.com]

How beautiful! How did you go about creating it? (I know nothing about doing digital art.) I am writing about Cardassia at the moment, and that's how I imagine their abstract art to be: intricate and interconnected.

[kerravonsen]

Thank you!

and that's how I imagine their abstract art to be: intricate and interconnected.

Cool!

How did you go about creating it?

With lots of trial and error!

The basic idea is:
1. random dots on the canvas
2. select the outlines of same
3. grow the selection
4. convert the selection to lines
5. fuzzy-select the area outside the lines
6. shrink the selection
7. convert the selection to lines
8. repeat from 5 until the whole area is filled.
9. Then use those lines to make a bump-map out of - light-and-shade (technical stuff)
10. tweak a lot until I got the background I wanted -- the grey "stone" look
11. tweak a lot with lots of stuff, until I decided it would be fun to make glass-ball images to put in the centre of the circles
12. made the blue glass ball image, and duplicated it lots of times
13. decided I wanted a smaller one as well, in a different colour (red)
14. duplicate that lots of times
15. decide I didn't want every single circle to have a glass ball in it, so tweaked it until the mix was something that pleased me.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

It really is extremely beautiful: my eye seems to dance across it, following troughs and rises. The glass-balls are a brilliant idea.

I'm writing a scene set in a Cardassian garden with decorated stone benches and walls in it, and if it's OK with you (and I can fit it in!), I'd love to get a description of this in. Would that be OK?

[kerravonsen]

You seem to have made a comment which is no longer there, but, sure, I would be delighted if you wanted to describe it in your garden scene. 8-)

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Whoops, I must have hit a wrong button, sorry! I shall do my best to get a good description - and you and I will know it's there at any rate!

[gair.livejournal.com]

Ooh! Liney!

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Lines and lines and lines!

(ETA: I misread that at first and wondered why you were calling me a "limey".)

[gair.livejournal.com]

But you are a limey!

And hee, also (in the Great Study Tidy-Up/Journey Through The Past one of the things I found out that I'd forgotten is that gerald and I used to call each other Tubbs and Edward a lot in the early days of our relationship, though the exact reason why is lost in the mists of time.)

[altariel.livejournal.com]

It was a sort of feeble and bewildered, "But aren't you one too...?!"

mraltariel and I like to use, "We didn't burn him!" as a response whenever we can.

[glitterboy1.livejournal.com]

That's quite a doodle! I never manage anything quite that complex. It makes me want to walk around it, like a maze.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I got a bit absorbed...