Spine of Years

Spine of Years came about from one of my generative art sketches that initially reminded me of a cactus of sorts, and as I worked on it the idea slowly evolved from a representation of cactus spines to a representation of how recent years always seem so chaotic, so "full of spines".

We keep saying happily goodbye to the past year, mostly seeing the spines, the thorns that we encountered, but as time goes on, and the wounds of the year fade, we begin to remember fondly all the good things that happened, the memories we forged with our family and loved ones.

Therefore my artwork puts the emphasis on the flows and textures, with the "spines" being but part of the background.

The process itself is similar to most of my previous artwork (available on SuperRare):

First I created a Weavesilk ( www.weavesilk.com ) sketch, using it's generative design brushes and symmetry to create an interesting pattern.

I then imported this into GIMP to correct the symmetry of the pattern slightly, and work a bit on the contrast.

After that I used several different style images (all of them released under Creative Commons with commercial allowance. I prefer not to get stabbed in the back by a retroactive law on AI Artwork made using licensed works in 5-10 years, thank you very much !) and the Deep Dream Generator website ( www.deepdreamgenerator.com/user/pbock ) to create several AI enhanced/modified versions of the work.

The styling images are used by the AI as "inspiration", as Deep Style will search the given source image (the artwork) for the shapes and patterns in the Style image given. Once it finds these patterns, instead of just identifying their presence as most Image Recognition AI does, it will enhance, bring forth, the pattern it's found, making it more visible.

This allows for some very interesting patterns.

I created about 10 different such outputs, then choose one and reworked it slightly in GIMP, and that gave birth to Spine of Years !