In Search of Summer Things In the World of Fractal Art, Post 2: Summer Moonlight Water Lilies and Ripples

This is the time of year when sunset and moon rise overlap easily, and so you can see things blooming at the water's edge in mingled light ... such as this water lily on a still, calm night.

(Of course, it's summertime. Ponds often have mosquitoes, and I LITERALLY had to kill one while working on this post ... they seem to even be drawn to fractal ponds, but, no mosquitoes at my art ponds!)

This fractal has a very humble beginning:

That's it. That's all.

But with a fractal, it's not where you start. Imagine having a little pool of paint, just that size, but bottomless, and at your will, you can spread that paint out over millions of strokes over different shapes of canvases. This fractal is among the smallest "pools" I have ever started with, but from here, the figures could only get larger.

I liked that, a lot ... it showed a kind of reflective symmetry of things above and things below... couple of transformations later I arrived here ...

Gorgeous reflective symmetry and shape ... wrong colors, but I could see what it could be, so, after putting some time into working the palette, I finally got my lovely water lily, floating in the sunset-moonrise light of a summer night...

Now, imagine that after I had contemplated this beautiful water lily and its companions peacefully floating in the rising moonlight, I decided to pitch a small stone into the lake as it is covered in reflections of purple and pale gold as the moon is not yet high in the sky and silvery yet, but still getting the hues from the barely set sun...

Ripples on the pond .. the water lily was the 15th transformation, but I went back to the start and kept that palette, and then adjusted the palette slightly as I began working with circular stroke sets... just a subtle difference, more gold, less green. This was the 18th transformation.

The way things are, a lot of us may not get to lounge on warm nights by lily ponds (but hey, the good thing about that is at least that the mosquitoes don't get to eat)... but I hope I have given you a nice art trip!