Exercise in Mapping the Function of Color

Exercise in Mapping the Function of Color
Originally uploaded by randubnick.

This is a piece of digital art that I was playing around with tonight. I have been looking at mathematical graphs and illustrations, and thinking about lines and what they mean in math. For me, a line is a quick way to communicate the shape of a mountain or the gesture of the human form. To a mathematician, a line can quickly communicate a mathematical relationship -- different approaches to communicating something true about the world. Tonight I opened a file in Painter IX and began with the idea of making something that looked like a graph. I opened the pen digitizer tool and began making arcs. I can't say I had a lot of control over this tool (I almost never use it), but with trial, error, and a lot of "undo" commands, I made some shapes I liked. Then I decided to fill in the shapes with color, using the digital airbrush, and bringing in soft colors and blurred edges. Math and geometry shouldn't be consigned only to the textbook, the classroom, and the laboratory. Math and geometry are part of the world, and so they are part of art.