- Works
- 6
- Views
- 61
- Likes
- 0
- Updated
I was raised by a single mother along with my two sisters. Being the only boy I was always rather independent and spent most of my time out in the nearby forests and creeks. I always enjoyed drawing, but I was never any good at it. My passion for exploring the outdoors switched to art after I had seen my uncle drawing Dragon Ball Z characters — this made me want to create my own characters and stories.
I quickly became obsessed with art and my mother made sure I had all of the supplies I needed. Growing up, artwork had quickly become my main hobby until about the age of twelve, this is when my mom brought home a desktop computer. Playing on the computer was an amazing thing for me. I could learn anything I wanted at the touch of a button. Through free art programs, I discovered that my characters and stories could be translated into the digital world. I even attempted to make a game using blender 3D which, at the time, had a form of visual scripting where you didn’t have to code. I played with this all the time, bringing my artwork to life with 3D and drawing programs.
At the age of 14, I moved from home a thousand miles away from my mom and sisters to a very small town with a population of fewer than 1,400 people. In small towns, there is a very distinct atmosphere, more community-focused, and I had abandoned artwork and computers to spend more time with friends. I lived with friends and their families in this small town until I graduated high school, and went off to join the military.
The original concept of Entangled was inspired by text art, also known as ASCII art. I wanted to create something which had characteristics of text art, but without using any text to create it. This concept evolved drastically and the finished product only has a minor connection to ASCII, that being the pattern displayed in the background of the artwork, which is made up of hash marks combined with noise.
For me, the final product of any generative piece never fully represents my initial vision. Throughout the creation process I do a lot of experimentation, this often has unexpected results which sometimes I find appealing. For Entangled, one of these happy accidents was what I am calling "abstract growth" , which also inspired the title of the series. This abstract growth started as small weeds, but through experimenting with random values, created these long abstract lines that became entangled with the rest of the composition.
I experimented with a lot of different compositions, less trees, more flowers/ plant species, but none if it felt right. I thought of the concept of being Entangled with nature and decided the trees should be the main focus, where the branches could wind around and fill the majority of the space. Adding more nature to the ground layer distracted a lot from the trees so I decided to make the ground simplistic and focus more on filling the canvas with the leaves. This created more space in the ground layer to see some basic geometry which gives a nice contrast between the unpredictable lines of nature and the structured shapes which fill the ground.
