Eon Works - Art of Dawid Michalczyk

New abstract art

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 13:28:33 +0200

I have just added a new piece to the abstract gallery - Reflections. I completed it early last week but first today had the time to put it online. Actually I made some minor tweaks to it today as well. I always let the artwork age for some time, and then look at it with fresh eyes days later. That way it's easy to spot things that need improvement.

Traditional vs. digital abstract art

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 10:13:07 +0100

For the past couple of years or so I have been experimenting with acrylic painting. I'm mostly doing abstract work and eventually plan on doing space art and perhaps even sci-fi. Although I did some drawing and painting when I was a kid, for the past 19 years all my work has been digital. There are of course trade-offs to both approaches, and personally I prefer digital because I have been doing it for so long and find it far more practical.

One thing that became very apparent to me is the amount of experience I have as a digital artist. I take this for granted because I have been doing it for so long. This is especially true for techniques on how to do things. Nearly all of my digital techniques and methods of working are of no use in traditional painting. Of course the fundamental aspect of a picture are the same - composition, lighting, colors - but the actual process of getting things done is very different.

For me the process of creating digital abstract art offers many advantages over the traditional methods. There is no smell of the paint fumes and possible toxic side effects from inhalation; no paint build up on the canvas allows for endless modifications; no need to buy paint or canvases; much better and easier control of the composition and colors used; but perhaps the biggest advantage is the undo functionality that every digital art program has built in. I really missed that!

The biggest disadvantage to digital abstract art, or any digital art, is the lack of guarantee that a digitally made artwork is the only existing original. Countless and perfect copies can be made of the original artwork. Therefore there is no way to guarantee a potential buyer that he will receive the one and only original artwork. Perhaps in the future, new technologies will be developed that provide a guarantee of original.

For now I'll keep on experimenting with traditional painting methods and see where that will get me. But digital work is my primary choice and it's unlikely this will change. U3SJM5248T5E

Old images

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:34:26 +0100

Today I added to the gallery three images that I did back in the mid 1990s: Arctic spikes, Intruders detected, Sunset flight. They are all low resolution (640x386 pixels) and were done in the first version of Bryce. At that time I had a Mac, a Performa 5200 with 12MB of RAM and a 75Mhz 603 PPC CPU, which was much faster at 3D rendering than the equivalent Pentium. The fast CPU was actually the main reason why I bought a Mac instead of an Amiga. Initially I wanted to buy another Amiga with the new MC68060 CPU but they were too expensive and not as fast for rendering. All in all, the Mac was a good buy although the operating system was quite unstable.

Cosmic vista

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:46:02 +0100

I start the new year with a space artwork. I actually wanted to do a space landscape with an icy or snowy terrain, but as you can see, I ended up doing something different. The snowy terrain idea will have to wait for later use. By the way, I have added a few more mousepads to my Zazzle store.

One And All - new space video

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 11:11:03 +0100

To end the year with a nice collection of my recent and other popular space artwork, I made this video with the music from the latest Anosphere album. The track is called One And All and so is the video. You can watch the video on youtube as well. Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

New mugs

Sat, 10 Dec 2011 11:54:22 +0100

I have added many new mugs to my Zazzle store. Available in multiple colors and sizes, even in frosted glass! Dishwasher and microwave safe. You can choose which type you prefer in the easy to use selection menu. Ideal for drinking your favorite beverages. (Mine is water by the way).

200 light years away

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 10:32:26 +0100

In September 2011 it was announced that Nasa's Kepler telescope discovered a planet orbiting two suns. The planet lies some 200 light years from Earth. This inspired me to do this view from a planet orbiting around two stars that are pretty far apart. Original rendering resolution: 12000 x 7754 pixels.

New mousepads in the store

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 14:39:57 +0100

I have added many new mousepads to my Zazzle store. They look great and the quality is outstanding. I have been using them myself and have given some to my friends and they love it.

By the way, one really cool feature that Zazzle has recently added to the store is the ability so see how a poster or framed print looks like in different rooms with different wall colors. You can even upload a photo of your own room to see how well an image will work in your room. This is really neat!

For international orders just select the country you prefere to order from: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, South Korea, UK, USA.

Drifting Planes II

Sun, 20 Nov 2011 11:44:23 +0100

A new lovely addition to the Drifting Planes series of vibrant colors and forms interwoven in rectangular motion.

A few days ago I bought a new 2TB WD external harddrive. It's hard to believe how much space there is on it. I still remember when I got my first 30Mb harddrive for my Amiga back in the early 1990s. That was so exciting. I could load the OS from it really fast and store so many files. It was a huge improvement over a floppy.

Anyway, after partitioning and formatting the new 2TB harddrive, I set windows to check and fix all partitions for errors. This took about 6 hours... Then I had to copy all my files from my old 0.5TB harddrive which took about 7 hours because I have so many small files. And I couldn't copy all files at once from one partition to another because windows can't figure this out - after several minutes of preparing to copy it said: too many files (cancel). So I had to copy the files over several steps. But now, everything works fine and the new harddrive mounts faster and doesn't get as warm as the older one, which I will now use for backup.

Ancient stars

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 16:35:41 +0100

Ancient stars, a big moon, and a calm afternoon on foggy shores... a perfect vacation destination.

Some people have asked me about the 2012 calendar. Unfortunately I won't be doing a calendar this year. Due to the state of economy and very slow sales it is not worth the time and effort. I keep doing images because they help keep me going by nourishing the spirit.

Synergy

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 17:45:57 +0200

The interaction of elements that when combined produce a total effect that is greater than the sum of the individual elements.

Due to the sad state of economy, I have been wondering lately what is more worthwhile: 1) increase artistic output, thus more frequent updates with new artwork, or 2) focus more on promotional activities which will pay off once the economy will get better.

Actually I have been doing the first option for some time now. And now I'm thinking about shifting focus to the second option. There will still be regular updates with new artwork but not as frequent.

A million stars

Sun, 16 Oct 2011 11:37:09 +0200

A view from a hypothetical planet near a globular cluster of stars. A typical cluster contains over 100,000 stars but can contain several million stars - billions of years older than the Sun. In the Milky Way galaxy there are currently over 150 known globular clusters. Most of them are located in a halo surrounding our galaxy.

Strata

Sat, 08 Oct 2011 11:21:27 +0200

Strata is the third piece in an ongoing series of abstract renderings of the primordial. Lately I noticed that the more abstracts I do the more I enjoy the genre. There is so much freedom of expression... the unlimited possibility for exploring this largely uncharted visual dimension makes it even more exciting to work with. It is also more forgiving. When I'm low in creative energy I turn to abstract work, and something good always comes up and that lifts my spirit.

Desert moons

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 23:19:06 +0200

In the two previous space artworks there has been plenty of snow and ice, so I though about doing a space landscape of a dry and hot desert environment. At first I actually made a green sky with some funky colors and patterns on the rocky terrain. That looked unusual and kind of cool, but it was not what I wanted. So I remade the sky with blue tones, and made the terrain colors more desert like for this otherworldly landscape.

Deep time

Sat, 24 Sep 2011 11:50:34 +0200

I have been listening to Landmass by Steve Roach while preparing to put this new abstract online. It is a great ambient album. Somewhat different from his older work, and it's hard to describe the music. It has a metaphysical feel to it, a sort of quantum physics meets shamanism...

Anyway, for the past couple of years I have been experimenting with acrylic painting. If the economy doesn't get too bad I will start offering original acrylic paintings on canvas. Not sure how soon, as there is a lot of stuff I need to sort out first, but I'll let you know as soon as I have anything ready.

Cosmic sunset

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 20:08:50 +0200

A sunset over snowy space vista with a grand nebula above the horizon. It's been a while since I did any nebula work so I thought about doing one for this far away space landscape. Lately I started doing landscapes with a snowy or icy surface because that contrasts nicely with the dark sky. The blue frozen surface on the ground is also something new that I'd like to explore more in my future work. Original size: 7484 x 5100 pixels with a total of 397309 unique colors in the picture.

Red Moon Chronicle interview

Sun, 28 Aug 2011 17:45:37 +0200

I have been interviewed by Wayne Gerard Trotman at Red Moon Chronicle. Wayne is a British author, filmmaker, artist, photographer, composer and producer of electronic music. We talk about digital art, my learning process, my favorite artwork, and other interesting matters. Make sure to check other interviews at the Red Moon Chronicle as well, which include the highly respected sci-fi artists like Syd Mead and Chris Moore!

Snowy vista

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 11:08:31 +0200

Snowy vista is the latest addition to the ever growing space gallery. A tranquil view of a snowy landscape on one of the planets in the vast universe.

Another news is that Zazzle, the print on demand store I use, is well on its way to world domination, as it has opened online stores in even more countries around the world. So if you live in one of these countries, and I know many of my regular visitors do, ordering can't be more convenient: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, South Korea, UK, USA.

The explorer

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 15:29:52 +0200

The surreal gallery has been updated with a new addition: The explorer. Every person is an explorer of his own life. Sometimes one ventures into areas of experience or understanding that are entirely different from every day existence. Such explorations expand the perception of reality.

I rendered this image at the highest resolution ever: 12000 x 8177 pixels. I could go much higher but images so large are very heavy to work with.

Mekanika

Fri, 08 Apr 2011 13:38:55 +0200

A new abstract has been added to the gallery. Mekanika is the first one done on the new monitor and it looks sharp.

I've been adjusting the monitor settings even more and ended up not using the monitor profile that my calibration device created. Just setting my monitor to sRGB mode actually gives better results than using the calibrated profile. If I only started with that it would have saved me few days of hassle...

New Eizo monitor

Mon, 04 Apr 2011 21:04:33 +0200

My CRT Samsung monitor, which I have been using for the past 7 years, started to flicker recently and sometimes made some buzzing sounds. So I decided it was time to buy a new LCD monitor. After few days of research I ordered an Eizo ColorEdge CG223W at the cost of $1700. The ColorEdge line from Eizo is specifically made for professionals who work with images. I calibrated and profiled the monitor to ensure color accuracy and am happy with it. The only thing that bothers me is that some of my images now look too saturated. Actually everything looks more saturated and some of my images have color saturation that is unacceptably high. I'm not sure if that's because LCDs in general produce brighter and more saturated colors, or perhaps it's simply the old annoyance that all monitors display colors a bit differently. But it sure is nice to have more space on a wide screen :)

UPDATE (2011-04-05): I did some more calibration and profiling and arrived at an almost ideal configuration. Everything is still a bit more saturated compared to my CRT monitor, but the colors are more consistent now and the images on-screen are practically identical to their printed versions - which is the most important thing. Now I can sleep better :)

Fantastic Visions - new art video

Sun, 06 Mar 2011 16:46:45 +0100

Since Cosmic Voyage is such a great success with over 32 000 views on YouTube, I decided to make a new and better video showcasing my artwork. It took me about a week to create, and despite long rendering times it was great fun to make. I rendered a few animations based on some of my 3D images and included them in the video. To spice things up a bit I also did a few cool effects - as an extra eye candy boost :) The wonderful music was composed by Anosphere.

It was fun to make but the whole process reminded me why I don't do animations. The rendering time takes forever. Just to give you an example, the first animation sequence in the video, the one with the "Fantastic Visions" sign, is only 15 seconds long but took over 12 hours to render at 640 x 480 resolution on my 3Ghz dual core CPU. Then I always need to tweak something and start rendering again... Fortunately the other 3D scenes didn't take that long. May you enjoy this one :) You can see the video on YouTube as well.

Cheerful structure

Tue, 08 Feb 2011 13:19:33 +0100

I finished this abstract a couple of days ago. It was real fun to make with all the vibrant colors and angular structures. I find such colors uplifting to look at :) I have been thinking about doing some distinct 3D abstracts but somehow never got around to it. Maybe next time. I also got a couple of ideas for new surreal images. So the surreal gallery should have a new addition soon.