Queen Radiolaria

I've not really much to say about this painting, except that I felt almost compelled to draw it after having seen the wonderful scientific images of Radiolarians drawn by Ernst Haeckel in 1904 (look here to appreciate his tremendous works).

For the anatomy reference, I credit the photographer Marcus Ranum (Mjranum-stock at DeviantArt) for using his pic.

I tried, after finishing the picture, to set Vibrance at high values, I think that it gives very nice colors, seen in a normal computer screen, without getting strange saturations effects.

And some close-ups:



Painting fractals

Even if it is often too complicated for my neurons, I think Mathematics is one of the most beautiful creations of the human mind. And, among of the most beautiful visual representations of Mathematics, fractals are surely the most intriguing, at least for me.

The good news is that you don't need to be a Mathematician or a skilled Artist to paint wonderful fractals. A couple of years ago I discovered the free program Chaospro, a German production, which can be downloaded here. You just choose the function, modify its parameters, look at the result and then zoom in the detail you like. Another feature in the programs helps you with colouring and other effects. Some fractals can take long time to be calculated and somewhere there are some bugs, but possibilities are endless.

It is this program I've used to make the logo of this blog. Here follow other examples of what I did in my evenings. It is sometimes very surprising to find familiar shapes in these creations, as a broccoli or bacteria.