May 2008 - Dark Minimalism - I am dedicating this piece to a very special friend & partner in crime - forgive me but this is an inside joke we started way back in 2006 - not only are we great friends but she truly supports & loves my Dark Minimalism pieces - I hope she likes this one too - here is her very special icon which she made herself please click on it so you can see what a fantastic artist she truly is - she not only creates great fractals but she is really hot when it comes to taking photos of flowers - I hope you will you will also enjoy her great drawings & really fun animations - Heya Lucy - I hope you like this one too - Ethel - now on to the details regarding how I made this piece & what is going on in it - black geometric format - division of space which I used 4 spirals & lines in each sprial - monochromatic non-color palette - I began this piece with a black rectangular medium width contour line - I then made a diamond shaped black contour line of the same width in the center - the rectangular contour line gave me a geometric format for the piece - I then used an Interactive Blend Tool from my art program - I moved it across the diamond & main square contour line - when I did this I created many concentric square contour lines of the same width as the main square one & the diamond shaped contour black line - I filled what would be the bottom part of a spiral image with black - I then adjusted the color settings so I would have a dark shade of gray which became black at the base of this part of the piece - I then adjusted the settings so I would get 4 curving spiral like forms - these forms divided the space within the geometric format - as the spirals becomes smaller as it nears the center of the image you can better see the dark shade of hand mixed gray I made just for this piece much better - you can also see the width of the black lines fanning out in the spiral - they divide each spiral like arm from top to bottom - I then used a stock square fill with black & white for the center of the black diamond contour line - being that I was filling a diamond shape I had to adjust the angle of the fill so it would be set at a 45 degree angle - I then adjusted the light settings so I could control how much light I wanted in the stock square fill - when I did this I gave the diamond shape both form & dimension - I then moved the form or image I created off to one side of the main work area - I then made a black background for the piece - this gave me a black geometric format - I placed the spiral form on top of it - when I did this I then once again worked with the spiral form & the color settings once again so I could obtain the final mix of the monochromatic color palette I have used in this piece - I had to do this so I could create an image that would be emerging from very dark place - thus the term Dark Minimalism can now be applied to the piece - this is an extremely clean & clutter free piece - it also has a very clean & finished presentation