Digital Art: flowers/gardens/barnyards/landscapes/etc.

I have been collecting this type of art electronically and using it as:

1) wallpaper on my computer monitor (preferably centered or stretched, not tiled), or

2) slide show as screen saver (for example, a file can be made of one artist like Martin Johnson Heade's hummingbird paintings which were painted from the point of view of the hummingbird at the top of the South American rain forest canopy, with incredible landscapes of mountains and waterfalls in the distance and Passifloras and Orchids in the foreground)

The light from the computer monitor screen illuminates light-and-dark contrasts in sunsets, sunrises, moonlight, desert or woodland light, etc. beautifully. This is a wonderful way to ring in the flower/seasonal changes throughout the annual cycle. This is also a great way to get in touch with the "sage" within each of us, especially when aging or health changes impose their physical limitations upon us.

I was inspired to do this by Louisa's very informative and gorgeous posts in the Rose Forum and have been sharing my discoveries with friends and family. I hope others will share any ideas or knowledge they may have along these lines here too.

Today, I'll start with a 20th British artist I found by accident that my search engines don't recognize: Elvic Steele (1920 - 1997). The following website has three thumbnail images that can be downloaded, and the first one, "Butterfly Visitors" is sort of a mystic landscape of flowers including a lily and acidanthera hanging over a stream reflecting the changing light of either dawn or sunset:

http://www.leicestergalleries.com/
Click on "Archive", then click on "Search Archive and Image Library", then in the left hand column, under "Search All Artworks" type "Steele" in the Artist box. Click on thumbnails.

There are many other horticultural paintings by Steele on this website that were downloadable a few months ago, but today can only be viewed. I am emailing Gardenwife the Rex Begonia by Moonlight with prowling cats from the point of view of a white moth.

Do I have this copyright business right? That is, is it okay to post a website source for a painting on DG, as well as to email the images themselves to interested individuals for personal use?

I posted the link for a "Night Blowing Cereus" by Robert J. Thornton in the early 19th century in the thread at the beginning of today's DG newsletter, as well as in the Garden Bookworm section, under the book, Temple of Flora. This flower also hangs over water, but in moonlight with forested hill and castle rising above.

Tomorrow I will post a great source for Heade that encourages the open and free sharing of all its art as long as you give it credit.

Enjoy.



This message was edited Sep 8, 2004 2:47 AM

Wonderful links! I love finding artists I've never seen before. I do the same thing with wallpapers.

Gardenwife and Scooterbug, thank you for your encouragement. So I'll keep this up for a while. Today, I'd like to post the following website for MJ Heade's hummingbird paintings:

http://www.the-athenaeum.org/

The athenaeum promotes "scholarship and community building" in all the humanities by making art, poetry, historical text, etc. available to all for free that is past copyright expiration date and thus "open domain". Their website says, "You can reuse the artwork (but not our logos or original text) in any way, as long as you credit us."

Welp, their hummingbird paintings by Marvin Johnson Heade in the context of South American rainforest landscapes are to die for. Not to mention passion flowers and orchids.

I can't think of a better place to show the splendiferousness of what happens when gardening gets cross-pollinated with the humanities.

I just tried to post one of his paintings. It won't do. Help.

That's gorgeous!
http://www.the-athenaeum.org/art/display_image.php?id=34419

There are types of hurricanes, snails, sunflowers, galaxies, etc. that all closely approximate the same mathematical pattern: the logarithmic spiral. To see this one pattern materialize over and over in so many different “suits” makes fascinating wallpaper for your monitor screen. Following are a couple of sources to download images of this spiral’s wardrobe:

Darius already posted a link (explains the math, too) for shells and sunflowers (not to mention DG’s database) in Philomel’s 9/3/04 thread, “Aren’t Nature’s Patterns Amazing?” in the Photo Forum:
http://www.mcs.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/R.Knott/Fibonacci/fibnat.html

For Hubble telescope photos of hurricanes and spiral galaxies, go to:
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/watchtheskies/index.html
and click on “Astronomy Images” in the right column.
The “Astronomy Picture of the Day” will come up. Go to the bottom and click on “Archive.”
Type “spiral galaxy” or “Isabel” in the search box. Each image is captioned with a brief explanatory paragraph containing links that can take you into greater depth.

Under “Isabel” scroll to 2003 September - Logarithmic Spirals Isabel and M51.
Links in this paragraph lead to tours of many fascinating spirals. Click on “Equiangular Spiral”, then click for JAVA code and then follow prompts for moving different types of spirals around their axes. Or go to the bottom of the page and click on “Famous Curves Index.” My math is not far beyond $2 = 1 iris fan at Frank’s, but I was still able to appreciate these patterns – you can see them in your mind’s eye as you look at many of NASA’s images of galaxies, etc, not to mention snails and sunflowers.

At the risk of sounding cliche or trite, far out. Things as large as storms and gallaxies and as minute as snails, all of creation has such order. That's some pretty heady stuff to be pondering at 4:00am.

This post is inspired by the 9/11/04 Forum Photo of the Day: Datdog’s Begonia Escargot, which catches the mood so well of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s (1804 - 1864) “Rappaccini’s Daughter” from Mosses of an Old Manse and other stories. This spooky tale is wonderfully illustrated by Datdog's photo with its beckoning shadows, silent angel, lush scrolled begonia leaves against time-patina-ed metal fence palings and sculpture suggestive of mariner’s astrolabes of centuries past. Hawthorne was so good at horror. As a descendent of one of the victim’s of the Salem, Massachusetts witch trials in the summer of 1692, he is said to have had an especially finely tuned appreciation of the juxtaposition of ordinary daily events with their subterranean undercurrents (Stephen King and Ann Rice are two modern followers of this mind set). However, to appreciate 19th century fiction, you do need to slow down for those slower times and perhaps depend more on subtler facets of your imagination.

What is fun to do is to read this little short story in its little 2" X 6" (approximately) window pane on your ‘puter monitor screen against datdog’s photo as background wallpaper. What’s even more fun is to keep changing the wallpaper in the background as the story’s scenes and character’s unfold. (Imagine wallpaper from 19th century paintings done of North or South America (American Hudson River School, of which Heade was one) before they were developed/paved over/etc. And then imagine reading journals of the discovery of same by the early explorers against that wallpaper, some of whom can be downloaded from http://www.gutenberg.net/ .)

To create wallpaper on your ‘puter monitor screen, right click on the image and then click on “Set as Background.”

To download Hawthorne’s Rappaccini’s Daughter:

1) Click on http://www.gutenberg.net/
2) Scroll down and click on “Find an eBook”
3) At top of page, in Author box, type: Nathaniel Hawthorne and hit enter
4) Scroll down to just above “Titles” and click on page 1 out of 0 1 2 3
5)Scroll down and click on Mosses from an Old Manse and other stories
6) Scroll down and under “Files” choose zip compression and click on “ibiblio P2P” under Download Links
7) Click on “save” (I title document by author’s last name first, etc.) and either have a file ready to save to or a disk

I hope you enjoy this and share your ideas for this thread, too. Will post snails next (tracking down sources for these will take some time).

Datdog's photo is in the Tropicals forum: http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/456132/

Are you looking for paintings of snails?

Off course maybe a little but wouldn' it be a nifty program to have Dave design a thingy that made the Random Photo be our desktop background, changing every hour or so?

I used to have a program that did that from satellite images of earth and you could specify how often it changed. It was swell.

Maybe in his 'spare time'. lol

Off course maybe a little but wouldn' it be a nifty program to have Dave design a thingy that made the Random Photo be our desktop background, changing every hour or so?

I used to have a program that did that from satellite images of earth and you could specify how often it changed. It was swell.

Maybe in his 'spare time'. lol

BTW- love all of your research, links and ideas, bluespiral!

Gardenwife, Yup. Snails today, petunias tomorrow. As an aging mortal, there aren't enuf hours left in my life to explore all the possibilities in the mission I stated in the first post. I wuz hopin' y'all would chime in.

Daisy, thanks. I like your idea and would like to see it on 'puter monitors in horticultural programs across the land. The last one I had to stare at had one word (repetition kills my memory cells - I don't remember what it was) cycle over and over across the screen. Argh.

So, without further ado, here come da snails --

More Spirals: Snails

Ida Rentoul Outhwaite (1880-1960) Australian children’s book illustrator:
http://www.spritefaerie.mysitespacepro.com/IROuthwaite/ida.htm
Save The Nautilus Fairy which is in the lower left corner.

Georgia O’Keefe (1887-1986) American
http://artcyclopedia.com/
In the “Search Artcyclopedia” box, where it says “enter artist name”, type “Georgia O’Keefe” and hit enter.
Click on “Continue to O’Keefe page”.
Scroll down to the San Diego Museum of Art and click.
Scroll down to “Pink Shell with Seaweed” by Geogia O’Keefe - 1937 and click on image.
Click on image again to increase size, because this makes better wallpaper, and save to disk or hard drive.
(I find it easier to access the San Diego Museum of Art through Artcyclopedia. Once you are there, this museum has a great encyclopedia and bios of artists.)

I can’t find the artist for this next snail. It is copyrighted by XenoDream Software, LLC:
http://xenodream.com/index.html
On the menu bar towards the top, click on Galleries.
In the left column, click on March 2004.
Scroll down to Snailplane and click and save.
I think this one is 3-dimensional fractal art.

(Note: To make wallpaper, click Start, then Control Panel; Dbl click Display; single click Desktop; Click arrow on Position; choose and click on Stretch (which distorts image, makes DH feel like someone is dragging their nails across a blackboard, but by filling entire screen makes a self-contained universe I find satisfying. It’s all very personal. Center works if the image is big enough.)

You can right-click on the website, but due to wear and tear on the website that I don’t understand, some webmasters would rather you save an image to your own disk or hard drive first.

Note: Art on these websites is constantly changing, so there’s no telling how long from date of these posts these images will be available. But, I think these ideas and references are worth saving for future suggestions when that happens.).

I accidentally found the King James Version of the Bible interpreted through Fractal Art by Philip Northover at the following website (while looking for sources of snails I had):
http://pnorthov.future.easyspace.com/
Scroll down this page and click on “Bible”. It is stunningly beautiful.

The following free tutorial might be of interest in understanding what fractals are:
http://www.fractalarts.com/ASF/Tutor1.html

That is neat, that Bible page. I'm not sure what all of them have to do with specific books, but I'm sure he was inspired somehow on each one! http://pnorthov.future.easyspace.com/html5/kjv.htm

Some where, in someone’s autumn, woodsmoke finds its place in those smoky hues of violet/gray-purple asters, something to which Gertrude Jekyll liked to devote one of her seasonal gardens - edged in silvery leaves of pinks (Colour Schemes for the Flower Garden, by Gertrude Jekyll, 1983 ed.). Other silvery leaves mingled with the “white, lilac, purple and pale pink” asters and other “flowers of pale yellow and yellowish white” gave their counterpoint in “two or three distinct places.” The other flowers included snapdragons, marigolds, dahlias, glads, ageratums and anemones. Other “silvers” came from grasses, artemesias, lamb ears and phlomis. As huge as Jekyll’s gardens were, she designed gardens of all sizes, down to a tiny miniature garden in a trough for someone who asked, who had no land and no “means”. This is a great thing about Jekyll’s ideas - they are so adaptable to so many different situations.

Jekyll derived much of her inspiration from “cottage gardeners”, a class fast disappearing as industrialization and railroads swept through the countryside in the last quarter of the 19th century in England. Moving just ahead of builders and wrecking balls, the artist Helen Allingham “immortalized” these gardens and their hundreds of years old thatched cottages and the countryside about them in her watercolors, often working in the outdoors with just 9 colors on her palette. So, I would like to direct your attention to the following website http://www.helenallingham.com/Links.htm of The Helen Allingham Society and two paintings in particular:

1) Allingham’s marriage to the poet William Allingham brought her into a literary circle that included Alfred Lord Tennyson, and if my memory is working at this moment, I believe this is a watercolor she did of Tennyson’s garden. Click on the website, scroll down to and click Gallery I, and then the watercolor, called “A Garden in October, Aldworth”, should be in the 5nd row from the bottom, 2rd from right.

2) This watercolor is called “Michaelmas Daisies” and it should be in Gallery II, 2nd row from bottom, 3rd from left.

There are hundreds of Allingham’s watercolors here, from a primrose path into a woods to little hedged gardens of wallflowers, pansies and alysum to walled gardens in high summer in yellows and oranges of nasturtiums, glads, yarrow and sunflowers, to many more.

It was in these cottage gardens, when Capability Brown’s landscaping style made so many flowers unfashionable, that flowers survived that otherwise would have been lost. And I do think that, in present times, flowers are due for another rescue by gardeners from the landscapers.

Following are some of Edouard Manet’s (b. France, 1832 - 1883) paintings of flowers and gardens, with directions on how to find and save them for your personal galleries (The entry at the bottom has biographical notes with interesting presentation):

http://www.the-athenaeum.org/
To access Manet’s paintings on this site, click on website; In right column, click on “View artworks”; At top, in alphabet, click on “T”; Scroll down and click “The Bench”; Near top, Click on “All artworks by Edouard Manet”
(This website has the most comprehensive collections of artists and best quality images to save for wallpaper, screen-saver slide shows, etc.)

The following paintings by Manet on this website are of gardens and often different activities in them. There are also some still lifes on this website for this artist, which are great to have on hand during cabin fever time in January and February. Contrasts between different artists really show up in their still lifes.

TheBench_aka_My Garden_1881
Young Woman among the Flowers 1879
Young Woman in the Garden 1880
Monet Family in the Garden 1874
Chez le Pere Lathuille 1879
The Grand Canal Venice aka Blue Venice 1874

----------------

http://www.artnet.com/ag/fulltextsearch.asp?searchstring=Manet
This painting comes up right away when this website is clicked.
(This site changes frequently, so “The Cat and the Flowers” may not be here for very long.)

Manet, Edouard_Le Chat et les Fleurs_1870_etching

-----------------------

The following entries are at websites under artcyclopedia as given below:
Under http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/manet_edouard.html

Manet, Edouard A Garden Nook at Bellevue 1880 -
Click on the above website for artcyclopedia and scroll down to E. G. Buhrle Collection. Click on the image of this painting, then click on the title of this painting and save.

This next site on artcyclopedia has a very comprehensive listing of Manet’s paintings as well as much biographical information. (However, other websites, The Athenaeum in particular, afford images with more kilobytes which make better wallpaper and screensaver slide-shows.)
Scroll down and click on My Studios; then click on “Paintings”. The column on the left has many of Manet’s paintings along with explanatory captions.

Manet is wonderful, one of my favorites.

Josephine Wall is a contemporary fantasy artist who speaks to the child within all of us for whom petunias, moths, honeysuckle, stars, and spider silk are still infused with magic. My favorite, “An Even Smaller World” reminds me of Darius’ thread, “My Grandmother’s Apron” in the Jokes and Chat forum, which could use a few more stories right about now.

http://www.josephinewall.co.uk/josephine.html
Pass cursor over image to see title

Click on Gallery and then click on “Fairies”
An Even Smaller World – greatest petunia painting of all time
Tigermoth
Caught by a Sunbeam - daisies
Oak Fairy
Silken Spells
I thought I saw a fairy

Go back to Gallery and click on “Goddesses”:
No More
Breath of Gaia
Queen of the Night
Crystal of Enchantment

Go back to Gallery and click on “Air and Water”
Earth Angel
Flight of the Linx
Wings
Andromeda’s Quest (morning glories)