Inspired by a gorgeous Factory Girl movie poster deconstruction, I decided to try my own luck.
The above illustration shows the construction, layer by layer, of picture #5 from my recent Finale installment. There are also a wallpaper for this image.
Basically the structure is this: Clouds > Twirly clouds > More clouds > Background trees > Bottommost meadow > Color > Contrast > Trees > More trees > Glows > More glows.
finale — stopping point: the temporal end; the concluding time;
This month it will be exactly 6 years since I started making installments; monthly themed collections of five. With this 72nd installment I will have made a total of 360 different illustrations since the beginning. Coincidentally, that’s a full circle. This is my time to stop. My little project feels complete.
Finale is a very personal and retrospective celebration of 6 years of work. It is a compilation of the elements from the period that made me proud; the elements I want to remember this little Noscope project for. Saturated landscapes, surrealistic trees and pseudo-random elements. It is also a pledge to uproot and fly to other interesting places.
Change is good. While this is the last installment for me, it is not the end. Noscope will remain in it’s current form. There won’t be any more installments, but that doesn’t mean I’ll stop doodling. Formats will change; new projects, new ideas. It feels good to move on. I can’t wait to get doodling again.
360 illustrations in a book—would it sell? Either way it’d be a book. That means my parents would finally understand what I was doing. Hmm. I also used to befriend a huge turtle. I wonder if he wants to be friends with me again. We’ll see.
This will also be a sad goodbye. The welcome routine of these monthly sessions, it was a valve that ventilated my brain from otherwise corporate nightmares. There were those special nights when everything fell into place and felt right. There were the tough ones, the ones that only felt right after I had finally gotten it out of my system. I will miss those sessions.
Thanks to all of you for following my little—rather introspective project—for so long. I’ve gained many friends from it, I hope to keep you still. Special thanks to reinsamba of the Freesound Project for the ambience.
Now that I’m stocked with a pseudo-random generative engine, I might as well milk it and see how things look if I feed it colored blobs and specks. “It looks like 60ies curtains”, my sister said. Well, that’s good enough for me.
Sun-Tzu wrote “all warfare is based on deception” a long time ago. Ironically, when Colin Powell tried to sell the war package to the UN back in February 2003, he accused Iraq of “denial and deception”. Who was the deceiver? There was talk of weapons of mass destruction, wasn’t there? Oh, and freedom fries, 9/11 connections and the glorious hanging of the previous leader of Iraq.
While Colin Powell didn’t manage to convince the UN, he did manage to sway the danish head of state. As a result, we followed Bush on his crusade and fought in his name. We broke it, and we bought it. The result is a mess.
I spent this weekend with good friends, eating good food, reading, drinking a few beers and sitting by the fire. It reminded me how important the lazy sunday is. Simply, taking a break from things, watching the specks of dust move around in the light.
The Floralia was an ancient Roman festival dedicated to the goddess Flora. It was held in April or early May and symbolized the renewal of the cycle of life, marked with dancing, drinking, and flowers. – Source
If all goes well, the New Year has just set in, and this is auto-published one minute past. If not, I hope it gets published at all. I don’t trust these machines.
Except of course my own machine, the Von Neumann engine powering Floralia.
Happy New Year!
In Norse mythology, Audumla (also Audhumla, Audhumbla, Old Norse Au?humbla) was the primeval cow. Unlike many other Norse names, the name of Audumla has not been deciphered, nor does the Norse sources tell where Audhumla came from, but it has been assumed that she came into existence at the beginning of time through shaping of the melted Niflheim ice in Ginnungagap, much like Ymir. – Source
As suggested by my sister way back in my Meadow installment, for this one I took inspiration from the norse creation mythology. Scandinavian landscapes, stars, trees, northern lights and of course my favourite animal: the cow.
The drawing engine is powered by my generative Von Neumann engine.
