Here is "Bizmac," number 980D in my catalog, all done. I added plenty of color. If you don't like purple and green together, then this picture is not for you. But I was so sick of that standard primary blue and red that I use for my nebula and space pictures. This is all digital. No paint was spilled over this picture. And once I figured out how to use the "edge finder,", a tool which can fill in shapes made by intersecting lines, Photoshop went along quite quickly, though it gave my fidgety iMac (and me) the vapors a couple of times. There are plenty of printing options to bring this set of pixels into the world of paper and ink.

There is mathematics in this, too. There's a parabola or two and many wider curves. Also, the edge finder works by breaking a curve into smaller and smaller straighter segments, eventually becoming a set of points, just like in calculus. I haven't forgotten calculus!

The name "Bizmac" comes from a 1956 RCA computer. In those days, RCA still made computers, but stopped soon afterwards. These geometric designs were popular in the '50s and '60s. Things that were considered banal and tacky in decades past are now chic again. Digital chic, this time around.

"Bizmac" is done in Photoshop CS4, with Adobe Illustrator CS4 for the geometric linework. 14" x 11", or in pixels, 4200 x 3300, high resolution for printing. May 2010.

Posted at 3:08 am | link