JRC-1138 background tile part 1

The initial template, about half way finished

What began as an experiment to offset a single cog, soon became an entire cog assembly

Things are heating up now, both literally as the summer approaches and figuratively as I spend more and more time playing with my new computer and wacom tablet. Drawing on the computer never really appealled to me as I had so many other projects that were more interesting, and I was worried that I wouldn't be able to draw 'third hand' as drawing on the computer seemed to me. The fact of the matter is, I am becoming quite fond of my wacom and I've even taken to drawing things in Illustrator. Since Wednesday (26th May) I've been painting a thematic background for my primary blog. In previous attempts at making a tiled back ground, I'd floundered, mucking about with layered montages and drawing with a mouse. Now, I've made my shapes in CS4-AI, painted them, and made the tile in individual layers using the offset tool in CS4-PS. The result is very satisfactory, though I'm not finished yet.

The initial tile design was just going to be three cogs on a 900x900 pixel tile, but this developed into a complex pattern of interlocking chains. This then turned out to be unfeasable however as I'd not fully understood the nature of the repeating pattern. Instead of two chains I settled instead for one and I also began to add a lot of other curious details, inscriptions, a gauge and various feed lines. The idea became to create a repeating 'machine pattern' of some complexity, without losing the sense of an actual machine, though with a touch og age and decay about it.

My primary inspiration, though I have deliberatly not consulted any of his pictures since I began this project, was Oscar Chichoni.