Sphere # 13

[Diane Miller]

I was looking through some old B&Ws yesterday and found this one. It was done several years ago and has been languishing in the proverbial cigar box in the attic full of old prints. An orbital of a peeling industrial logo of some sort and a flatbed scan of some wisteria leaves.

The inspiration was from Huntington Witherill's portfolio of botanicals, where he uses a round object as a BG for several.

[Adhika Lie]

Diane,

I looked up Huntington Witherill: Very inspiring! And I think this one breathes the same air.

You know, I've never thought about the flatbed scanning. Well, it's genius. I love how it makes the leaves transparent in the image. If you don't mind my asking, what's the background pattern?

[Dennis Bishop]

You made a great choice -- and arrangement -- of wisteria stems, and I like how their curves interact with some of the curves in the logo. It works very nicely in black & white.

I'm glad you mentioned Huntington Witherill; I'm going to spend some time looking at what he's done.

[Diane Miller]

Thanks guys! This was the BG -- I'm not sure what it was and neither is my husband, who would instantly know if it's something aviation-related. It was in a bunch of "junque" behind an aviation restoration facility in Douglas, GA. (They were restoring a B-17 at the time.)

[Adhika Lie]

Interesting, Diane. How did you turn it into the swirly pattern?

[Diane Miller]

I'll do a tutorial on this, but here is the gist:

Flatten the image and change to 8 bit (Image > Mode)
Crop or distort to square (if you want a circle): Image Size, uncheck Constrain Proportions to distort
Filter > Distort > Polar Coordinates, Polar to Rectangular
Rotate 180
Filter > Distort > Polar Coordinates, Rectangular to Polar
(Trust me -- it works!)

You can make an action so you can try it quickly on any image. You can also make one with the steps backwards to deconstruct an orbital image -- just for fun. Of course it will have lost a lot of IQ because of all the distortion but you can see where something came from.


I learned it from Carol Leigh (http://carolleigh.blogspot.com/). Check out her blog for mind-boggling artistic creativity. (She's a cool lady, too!)

[Dennis Bishop]

Thanks very much, Diane. Now I know what you meant when you mentioned orbitals. It had quite and effect on the background. I'm going to have to play with some images to get and idea of what to expect.

[Diane Miller]

Thank you guys! I just put a tutorial on my web site.

[Anita Bower]

Thanks for introducing me to Huntington Witherill. I can see how you were inspired by him. An interesting approach. The interplay of lines and curves is fascinating. Very nice!

Thanks for the info on how to create an orbital. I would have never guessed the result just from seeing the original.