Friends,

For quite some time indeed I have been itching to something as some small token of thanks for the constant support from one of my oldest and dearest friends here on dA (Old in the sense of my first watchers...). To many of us Debs is no stranger, far from it in fact. You are not a bona fide fractal artist on dA until you have been exposed by her!

Anyways, A little over a week ago I noted Debs with a very special request. I begged her for 3 high quality renders of a couple of images of hers that just bit me the moment I clapped eyes on them. Anybody who knows Debd and what she has been through with people ripping off her work will have some idea of how tall an order that actually was..... but then Debs is Debs...

Even though I was more inclined to think she would turn down my request, despite our friendship, she went out of her way to oblige. And believe me OUT OF HER WAY is an understatement to that end.... One render took 2 days and was totally dreadful (my fault as made a bad call on the render params). Anyways I finally suggested an adjusted set of params that produced the quality of render I needed (or minimum required for the project) for the montage I had in mind. Somehow or other we both survived....

So here is the basic recipe

To make this:



I took one of these



a few of these



and quite a few of these



Put all the ingredients in a blender with a dash of paint and texture, light and shade

and cooked the lot for about half an hour......

another ingredient; a by product of this recipe



was a tweak I suggested to Debs to initially try straighten out some of the bittiness in the original perspective... one to use as a crash test dummy for renders. The idea being to render quite small and play with the settings until we got something we could use and render out large. The only problem seemingly is that Deb did these on Apo 3d - an application I simply will not use because of its ridiculous render times.... so even the smallest renders take forever for anything half decent in quality!

So more Kudos and respect to Deb for everything in that regard.

To anyone familiar with the original renders I urge you to click on the thumbs above and check them out for yourself....I thought the improvements would be barely noticeable

But As Earl Brown (Hot Chocolate) sang once upon a time

Everyone's a winner baby, That's The Truth (Yes The Truth!)

So this Journal is dedicated to the marvelous works and marvelous efforts of a marvelous friend.

None other than

Update 020508

I am delighted to share with you all a beautiful gift just received from my dear friend Brigitte =Dragonfly113

Very beautiful it is indeed as is her very impressive gallery. For those of you unfamiliar with her work I recommend a visit!



Thank you so much again my dear

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Hi All.

Sorry I have not been here much of late to cope with comments and faves and stuff like that. Much of the last 2 weeks has been taken up with downgrading Leopard and Vista. Vista was a cinch and I have had Tiger back up and running and purring beautifully this last week. Vista on the other hand....



I´d like to thank HP and Micro$oft both for providing me with a challenge they must have thought was reserved only for their top technicians. Anyone else out there who might have a new HP with a dynamic HD and set up on a raid system will know what I´m talking about, not to mention the bizarre HD geometry that Partition Magic won´t work on!!!

Well Carpe Diem to both companies.... I ain´t gonna let those buggers grind me down! Further along the line I might give linux another go now that I have the drive back in a sensible state and we´ll see how that goes. For now I´m delighted to have ´returned the compliment. I can now use a range of Apps I had previously on XP which didn´t work on Vista and the vendors seemingly had no plans to upgrade. KPT for one thing does not give me any problems on XP and on Vista you couldn´t save fractals, gradients, nothing!

If Vista is supposed to be the future of Computing then I´m Bill Gates Lawyer!

I Think I have been seriously missing in action of late.... I totally missed out on a dedication that I have just been alerted to:

From my very good friend Karin a relative newcomer to dA and who is aready knockingout some fantastic work with it.

I love this piece:



if you have not visited Karim's gallery - I recommend it to all fractal enthusiasts and particularly UF'ers

----------------------------------------------

GET YOuR WORK PROMOTED AT THE ZOO!

1 week special Expose - this week only US $25,000.00

WIth all these hungry artists about someones gotta get fat - might as well be me!

============================================

Heads Up!!!

I just received an absolutely beautiful fractal as a gift from one of my very dearest friends here on dA..... none other than



I'm sure you will agree... i's beautiful!!!!





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UPDATE 16 de Abril 2008

Just a quick announcement: Santos is back and with some lovely new works

One of my oldest and best friends here on dA and a very fine Artist too

Visit him at:



============================================


GET YOuR WORK PROMOTED AT THE ZOO!

1 week special Expose - this week only US $25,000.00

============================================

UPDATE 11th April 2008

Just wanted to say a big thank you to Morgan



for this wonderful gift



Thank You So much M.... I really appreciate it!

Other than that it seems I am now finally back in Painter, and about time too. I am completely lost but am sure it'll all come back in time......

Guess the comments from

and

on



Might just have been enough to give me the much needed shove...



Thanks all

==================================
HI All..

Just a quick note of Apology to all. Despite the fact it might seem that I am very productive and ignoring you all, nothing could be further from the truth.

Truth is I am swamped at the moment. I am designing 2 websites. Just changed Webhosting from netfirms to godaddy (Great deal it seems to be too) - which is why graphics and stuff have disappeared from recent journals etc.

I am also still running around town trying to finalize my residency here in Peru.

In the past 12 hours or so we have had 2 pretty strong Tremors here in Lima. The first occured at 1.40am and a second much stronger one at 7.50am which lasted more than a minute and came in 2 hits. Scared the bejeepers outta me and the TV are suggesting this might have been an earthquake.... Guess we'll find out later on today....

I guess what you have been seeing from me in recent days seems like a lot - because you can actually be very productive in short sessions with the likes of the apps I have been using: Quadrium, Quadrium Prime and Fractal Explorer.

I plan to do a super-journal soon which will be my way of saying sorry for being so quiet! I also want to streamline my es gallery to get better balance and better represent my artistic tastes. There continues to be a heavy overdose of Apo images in there. Great as they are I want to strip a lot of them out. I plan to keep representative folders though for good friends from the Apo Community. Great to see some of them spreading their wings with Tierazon and FE of late. Makes my Job a lot easier and will make my future Journals that little bit river I feel.

Thanks a lot everyone for your continued support and for bearing with me during all this. You are the best!

Incidentally Despite the fact I got a DD for Scorpio Marble a while back Cornucopia Pitch continues ti be popular with just about everyone - Given the fact it never got anything like the same exposure as Scorpio Marble I would have to say it's your favourite piece from my gallery! Seems like the world loves (or is losing) its' marbles



My own favourite piece I think would have to be



which has been my Mac desktop for the past few weeks now, or



which has been my Windows Desktop since the moment I did the piece and for me is my defining piece of Fractal Art (note Fractal Art and not Fractal). Simply put I was shocked that it came out the way it did with that renaissance feel about it! I'm not even a fan of Renaissance Art save maybe Caravaggio.....

Forbidden Opal is a piece that demonstrates exactly why it was I got interested in Fractals in the First Place..... to generate fractals that I could feature or incorporate in my mainstream digital work. I guess I got sidetracked....heavily!!!!

Just goes to show how different tastes can be in this asylum! I like Cornucopia Pitch but it's maybe just a little too soft for my tastes. I love the greens though like so many of you do also. I guess they're very seductive!

SUNDAY

SUNDAY