320 pixels (w) x 256 pixels (h), computer painting, using Electronic Arts’ “Deluxe Paint III” on an Amiga 500 computer.
Date produced: 4th November 1991

This is one of my earliest computer abstracts. I enjoyed being able to experiment with various painting modes on the computer, and save stages of development as I went along. The image was produced using a low resolution screen mode, so has been enlarged for display here.

I developed the forms from initial squiggles and random shapes. While playing around, I started to be see a couple of ideas forming within the shapes. One was a view of looking up at low cumulus clouds, the other was seeing the ‘forms’ as single-celled protozoa forms. I like the overall composition, and I like having the two ideas intermingling. I could imagine the edges of the forms slowly changing - like clouds moving across the sky. The way that the image developed, and its final appearance were felt to be indicative of the way that creativity ‘happens’.

This image uses a set number of specific colours (32 colours) that are typical of indexed colour computer images. The numbers of colours used in indexed colour computer images is usually a number that is 2^n (i.e. 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256), and this is usually set before such images are started. The smaller the number of colours used, the smaller the resulting computer file will be.