Unsettling Symmetry

As usual, the "x" has something to hide

DIGITAL ARTTEXTURED PHOTOGRAPHY

Fran

5/25/20242 min read

After a few quiet days on the blog, as I am in the process of collecting textures for my next pack, which will feature old and stained paper, I took some time to work on another piece.

I had these two photos of an old fire extinguisher and didn't know which one to use:

I finally decided on the photo where the object is tilted because I was able to mentally visualize where I wanted to go with it. The extinguisher itself, I would say, doesn't need any manipulation with textures because it already has that wonderful rust taking over everything, making the paint peel off completely, like the skin of a healing wound.

What I did was to duplicate the layers and flip them, first horizontally and then vertically, until I had four layers forming an X. Once this was done, the piece already looked very good (I've always liked those mandala-like shapes that result from the superposition of multiple layers of the same rotated and mirrored image).

For the background, I used a texture of rusted zinc sheeting, also rotated and mirrored four times, to maintain continuity with the foreground. Finally, a red wall texture to give uniformity to the scene, a blue texture with very low opacity to slightly soften the warmth, and an aluminum texture to add a patina.

But the keen observer will know that I didn't stop there, as they will have noticed that once again I couldn't resist making a ghostly cameo in this work.

Have a great weekend, I hope to make the most of it to continue working on my texture pack and also to think about my next photo manipulation.

Texture Attack: fire extinguisher straight
Texture Attack: fire extinguisher straight
Texture Attack: fire extinguisher slanted
Texture Attack: fire extinguisher slanted
Texture Attack: Unsettling Symmetry digital art by Fran de Souza
Texture Attack: Unsettling Symmetry digital art by Fran de Souza