Photoshop, because of it’s much broader range of use in photo manipulation, compositing and prepress, is the subject of far more instructional material than Painter, which is much more focused on the direct creation of digital art. Those of us who love to work in Painter are always interested to see books on the subject, and are always hoping for a greater range of instructional topics and approaches.

Secrets of Corel Painter Experts by Daryl Wise and Linda Hellfritsch is a welcome addition to that list.

The book is subtitled “Tips, Techniques, and Insights for Users of All Abilities”, but I think it’s best suited for those who already have a grasp of Painter basics and are looking to take their skills to a more advanced level.

The book calls on a range of digital artists who are working in Painter and are recognized for their expertise in their field. Each chapter in the book is devoted to one of the 17 artists and focuses on an aspect of Painter techniques in which they are proficient.

Each artist is profiled, with background on their work and influences and a brief question and answer, as well as relevant links. The main feature is a step by step instruction on the technique or process that particular artist has been called on to demonstrate, along with a gallery of the artist’s work.

In addition, the artists also frequently contribute more general tips about their Painter working process.

Many of the artists included are familiar names in digital painting circles, drawn from the fields of comic art, illustration and concept art, as well as fine art and photography, and include John Derry, one of the original team that worked to develop Painter in its early stages at Fractal Design.

The accompanying DVD is a bit less that I might have hoped for, with mostly mid-resolution and a few high resolution images of the artists’ work, but not conveniently arranged for browsing. It is nice, however, that the DVD sections for each artist include clickable versions of their “Favorite websites” links from the book.

Corel Painter is a very powerful and flexible application, and can also be complex and somewhat daunting, with over 900 brushes by someone’s count and numerous other tools and settings. Secrets of Corel Painter Experts is not meant to be a comprehensive manual, but a focused series of instructions on specific techniques from working professionals.

(Images above, Andreas Rocha [main cover image], Waheed Nasir, Wonman Kim, Brian Haberlin, Benjamin, Thorston Wolber [2 images], Chet Phillips, Mike Thompson, Dwane Vance, John Derry, Pete Revonkorpi)

Of them, the one I find most interesting is Selected ~ 2011, a series of animated GIF images in which familiar artworks by Botticelli, Leonardo, Magritte, Munch and Fuselli are represented with with principle elements missing; their formerly occupied space represented in the image by an animation of a selection marquee (sometimes known as “marching ants”), as found in image editors like Photoshop, Fireworks, GIMP and others.

The image above, and detail below it, are still screenshots of the animated image.

When viewing the gallery for Selected, be aware that all of the pieces are on the same page, but arranged horizontally, requiring the use of a horizontal scrollbar at bottom to view them.

Guppy also has a blog, More Sight on which some of the pieces appear.

[Via BoingBoing]

His work, however, has enabled others, from dedicated computer artists to dabblers, to create the multitude of stunning images we know as ‘fractals”. In the process, he deepened our understanding of nature and the concept of infinity.

Benoît Mandelbrot died this morning at the age of 86.

There is a bio on Wikipedia, from which the images above were taken. They are part of a set of images in which each is a magnified crop from the last (I’ve skipped some in the sequence above).

For more, see my previous post on Benoit Mandelbrot, in which I give a better overview of Mandelbrot and his contribution, a brief explanation of fractals and links to images and other resources.

[Via Kottke]

Hodgkin’s paintings, drawings and prints are inspired by the tracings of “exotic” particles, strange bits of matter born in the miniature cataclysms created in the bubble chambers (or “cloud chambers”, I love that phrase) in the heart of the great atom smashers like the Tevatron at Fermilab or the Large Hadron Collider.

These particles, the examination of which is one of the gateways to our understanding of the fundamental nature of space/time, exist for only the briefest blips of time, increments so small they defy understanding.

The tracks that trace their fleeting expression in this world are the paths they take out of the collision, usually in graceful spirals and curves with their own strange beauty (you can see a couple of actual images here and here).

Taking these spirals, curves and lines as a starting point, Hodgkin creates images that are partly digital, then inkjet printed at a fairly large scale and painted into with oil enamel or watercolor.

The resultant images carry some of the mathematical geometry of the original cloud chamber inspiration, imbued with the artist’s range of color and value choices, and are somewhere in between representational and non-representational, as well as in between art an science, and in between nature and imagination.

Dainis Graveris has collected 60 prime examples, in this case all generated using a freeeware flame fractal program called Apophysis (Windows only, unfortunately), and posted them on the 1stWebdesigner blog. The article is listed as “Part 1″, with the rest presumably to follow soon.

Many of the images are linked to larger versions, frequently on deviantART, that show some of their intricately recursive worlds-within-worlds details (see the detail of the last image, above).

Credits, in this case, are often just screen names. (Images above, Gibson125, babymilk and parablev.)

For more on fractal images, see my previous posts listed below, particularly my article on Benoit Mandelbrot.

Update Part 2 has been posted and is a list of links to 33 Apophysis tutorials.

What artist has not at some point resorted to “I’ll just try this and see if it looks better.“?

You might say that, in light of Darwin’s model of natural selection, nature itself does the same: make a genetic mutation or two, or a billion, and see what works.

Swedish programmer Roger Alsing has created a playful experiment in “genetic programming” applied to image making, in which he wrote a small program for rendering 50 translucent polygons into an image area.

He set it to mutate slightly with each iteration, so that each pass of the program produces a different distribution of the polygons (the “genetic mutation”).

The fact that the polygons are translucent allows for many smaller subtle shapes within the composition, produced by overlapping areas of color, like laying an area of yellow glaze over both blue and green shapes in an oil painting.

At the end of each rendering sequence, the program uses a “fitness function”, basically a small routine to compare the resultant image pixel by pixel with a target image, in this case an image of the Mona Lisa.

Based on the “fitness” of the image, the program keeps either the new “dna” or the existing “dna”, whichever is more like the target, as the basis of the next mutation and iteration.

Trial and error. Survival of the fittest.

There is a selection of images on Alsing’s blog showing various renders, from which I’ve pulled a few representative samples, above. (For those who are programmatically inclined, there is also a faq with some of the basics.)

Under each of the sample images is a filename that shows the number of times the program had to run to reach that particular image.

The one at bottom-right shows 904,314 incidences of “I’ll just try this and see if it looks better“.

[Via Kottke]

It’s a poster for software-asli.com, the creative credits are: creative director : Hendra Lesmono, art director : Andreas Junus & Irawandhani Kamarga, copywriter : Darrick Subrata and photgrapher : Anton Ismael.

The mock up is actually quite large, as you can see in the accompanying Flickr set that shows how they assembled it. Be sure to view the full size image to get the real effect.

I love the little details like the fact that the grabber hand glove is smudged.

[Via BoingBoing]

I find these kinds of images, created by manipulating the paramaters by which certain mathematical functions are interpreted, to be endlessly fascinating; both for their intricate beauty, and for the intriguing relationship they have to natural forms, organic and inorganic.

Most of the images in the article are linked to originals on Flickr, where you can view large, high-resolution versions; and get an appreciation for the delicate latticeworks of color and form, and the descend-into-infinity nature of their recursive relationships .

Many of the Flickr sets are part of photo streams that are associated with the Club Apophysis group pool, named for the open source fractal flame Windows software, Apophysis.

The COLOURlovers article also includes some nice examples of fractal patterns found in nature, with images of plant forms, seashells, river basins and coastlines, and goes on to mention and show some of the winners from the Benoit Mandlebrot Fractal Art Contest 2007, named for the mathematician who coined term and created the original mathematical expressions on which images like these are based.

See my previous articles on Benoit Mandlebrot, the Benoit Mandlebrot Fractal Art Contest 2007 and Flame Fractals.

(Above: fractal images by longan drink, exper and Lynn)