In heaven, or under ground.

I was thinking about a painting by Jan Van Eyck I saw last time I was at the Met. I'm interested in the composition and how it utilizes the canvas space vertically. Its more interesting to me than a panoramic view especially for conceptualizing this sort of theological subject matter. I'm also inspired by Van Eyck's fevered visions of the heavens the Earth and hell.

The Last Judgment

I had something in mind that was much more abstract but shared the intricacy and adapted the composition. I was hoping to emulate the magnificence of this painting in some way, as I remember how engaging it was to me at the time I noticed it. I have a lot of strange ideas floating around in my head. The heaven earth and hell concept is amusing but personally irrelevant. I chose to depict a place where uncertainty does not exist: in heaven, or under ground.

First I made these two impressions, the first of a cemetery, the second the spirits of the dead. Both of these are perspectival yet supernatural.

These are complex fractals that are distantly related to the Sierpinski triangle (image below). I originally had this form in mind because of the trinity sort of effect it creates seems significant in spiritual context.

I combined these with some Julia fractals I've been designing to get the majesty and intricacy I envisioned. I took some inspiration here from the complex geometric landscapes of M. C. Escher. My forms are much less angular and asymmetrical but still visually disorienting and as

a result engaging.

Relativity

I spent a long time coming up with my own formula for a grand fractal of this sort based primarily upon Julia/Julian transformations. This is my favorite result of these experiments, but it's admittedly imperfect. There is some residual haloing and asymmetry, and although my attempts to remedy this were successful, the side effects made my fractal designs too obtuse and weighty.

This piece was adapted from an established equation for one of these fractals that I imitated in basic form (notice the perfect symmetry and more substance than is typical of my work.. At that point I embellished it radically and designed my own effects and patterns to differentiate it.

I was experimenting with different coloration and effects to see some more dynamic impressions of my landscape, in the spirit of Monet. While my subject matter is not quite as traditional I see an impressionist aesthetic here. It seems like this is becoming an ironically impressionist version of an expressionistic piece.

Impressions: Rouen Cathedral

I was having a lot of trouble getting these drafts uploaded. The file sizes were massive so these are pretty low quality in order to make upload possible. After trying a bunch of times these are still showing up on the page wildly different than the way they are supposed to. You can get a vague Idea of what I'm going for here but the colors and everything are really messed up. I'll try to get this sorted out and keep working. I have some other ideas for different landscapes I may try as well.

Update: I think the issue is the way I reduced file size by just compressing the images rather than changing resolutions, I'll see if it works the other way so I can get the proper images up here.