I am back to my terse, compact BritBook for a trigonometry lesson. Unfortunately, the chapter I face presents something about which I have no clue. It is about "the form a sinX + b cosX." Evidently it has something to do with the combining of two waveforms. I am so mystified that I must have recourse to one or more of my Friendly Mathematicians who will tell me what this is all about. After eight months, I am really eager to finish basic trigonometry and get on with my math and physics studies.

I am also returning to the production of non-commercial art. I am working on a set of small pieces which are geometric abstracts painted on a black background. I have become interested in painting on black since my work at Trader Joe's often involves doing store signage on black-painted Masonite boards. Here is an image of one of my better Trader Joe signs. These signs are "painted" with opaque markers which are not permanent; they wash off with detergent and water. This sign has since been erased. But with acrylic I can do more permanent work on a black background.

I have painted spacescapes on black backgrounds with an airbrush for more than 20 years, but I never considered doing more than that. Now I will be combining spacescapes with geometric forms, and maybe adding in a spaceship, a floating planet, or futuristic buildings. If they look good, I'll post a scan of one or two of these paintings on this Weblog. These have been my stock in trade over the years, and I show them at science fiction conventions. I have a convention coming up at the end of the month, Balticon, where I will be displaying some art on a panel in the art show.

I have often wondered whether I would miss doing art if I just dropped it as a major occupation and did math and physics as my main other work (besides my day job, that is). Evidently I do miss it, because I still want to paint and draw pictures. I am not a big believer in the "divine calling" or "unsuppressable talent" theory of artists. I have always believed that I do art, and chose art as a career, because 1. I was able to, given favorable economic circumstances, and 2. I liked doing it enough to continue, and 3. I found it easy to keep doing, and 4. I didn't get bored with it.

Some things about this list have changed, especially the economic circumstances and the boredom. Whether these will continue to change, I don't know. I still like doing art, and I still find it easy to do. But it is not, at this point, an exciting challenge the way math and science are for me. However nice my current pictures come out, I have done things like them before.

Here's how to create a universe on a panel of illustration board. Spray your panel with matte-surface black paint. I spray this over black board, so I don't have to do multiple coatings. Once the surface is good and dry, take a fairly big brush (big, that is, for artistic rather than interior decorating projects), the fiber part maybe about an inch long, and mix up some middle-grey acrylic paint. You can add some blue to the grey mix if you want. Take your brush and get a moderate amount of paint on it, not too thick but not too thin, about the texture of heavy cream. Hold your brush over the panel and gently tap the UNDERSIDE of the brush with another brush handle or stick. Droplets of paint will sprinkle from your brush onto the black panel in starlike "random" patterns. You can increase the magnitude of the "stars" by tapping harder, and more paint (larger droplets) will fall off. You can sprinkle paint closer or farther away, and concentrate on an area with lots of droplets for a globular or open star cluster. Or you could use that time-honored high tech art device, an old toothbrush, and put some paint on that, then scrape across the bristles while holding the brush above your panel. A galaxy of tiny particles will appear on your panel. You can then add a few stars of other colors like yellow, red, or blue, and top it off with a few pure white ones. I then go on to spray colorful nebulae onto the panels with my airbrush.

I don't use a computer to do this work, though everyone else who does space art does. I don't see the point of it; when a low-tech process like this does so well, why overdo it with expensive computer hardware and software?

I am always delighted and filled with wonder when I first sprinkle the paint onto the black panel. It's like watching the stars come out. I feel like a lower-echelon creator god, making the stars appear in a sub-universe. I suppose that once I have learned something about physics, I will want to design the physical laws of that universe as well.

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