Abstract Pictures: Some random pictures I made when messing around...

posted 1999-Dec-22

— updated 2017-May-7

Every now and then I make myself screw around in Photoshop and come up with something, just to keep creative juices flowing. The better fruits of this labor are below. Use them as you see fit (desktop pictures, anyone?), though don't sell or mass-distribute them without my permission. All pictures are © copyright Gavin Kistner. Enjoy!

Vanco Ognanov 09:44PM ET 2003-Apr-12	I like abstarct art very much and yours pictures are very good,how can I get some of them,I am form macedonia,but in the moment I study in Bulgaria
Anonymous 04:49AM ET 2003-Apr-14	cool pics!!!! i'd like also to do some pictures like you do... can you please tell me how... what software u ussually work with? please email me at buddycute@37.com thanks...
Gavin Kistner 10:19AM ET 2003-Apr-24	I used Photoshop alone for all pictures except "Impressioned Flame" and "Rainbow Cloud", which were done in Fractal Design's Painter, and "Approximation of Joy, Degree 3", which was done in Adobe Illustrator. As for how—well, several of the pictures ("HoriBall", "Roseflections", "Turbulent Toroid", "Klein Bottle for the Masses") are all based off of performing the Polar Coordinates filter many times to get that fractally wave patern. For the round ones, I then edited one channel at a time and rotated or flipped that channel differently from the others, and then would change color modes (from RGB to CMYK, say) and perform the same effect one channel at a time. A lot of the other pictures are based on slapping down some colors and then repeatedly changing color modes (RGB->CMYK->Lab->RGB->etc.) and at each stop rotating the hue a little bit (e.g. 37°) so as to slowly introduce rounding errors in the math which produces interesting effects. "Sunset in the Milk" is a good example of this.
Gavin Kistner 10:24AM ET 2003-Apr-24	Oh, and I forgot: "Lightning Strikes Thrice" was an old project I did in Bryce, also some of the selective focus was applied in Photoshop afterwards.
Anonymous 05:56AM ET 2003-Jun-23	I thought the website lacked pictures. Pretty crud
No Name 10:53AM ET 2003-Jul-20	i think your pics are fab, hae printed some up and are hanging in my lounge.
Gavin Kistner 11:11AM ET 2003-Sep-20	Just thought I'd brag and point out that SkySet-a was created entirely in Photoshop (while sitting on a plane looking out the window)—no photographs were used in its creation. :) (Well, I thought it turned out nicely. :p)
Kelly 06:05AM ET 2003-Oct-03	These pictures are good, I use some of them for my desktop wallpaper. It is a good idea to print them and hang them on the wall. Great site :)
Anonymous 04:48PM ET 2003-Oct-27	your stuff is real cool
Irvin 08:57PM ET 2003-Dec-06	it is very abstract,i'll use this as my wallpaper now-8:57pm
Tali 03:19PM ET 2003-Dec-08	cool this people are very creative!!!!!!
Char 10:31PM ET 2003-Dec-12	Um.. on one of the last pictures, I think the name is Turbulent Toroid, when you click the link it goes to a freak nasty picture. My friend had that as a background for her website. She signed in and saw THAT picture and.. what the.. please fix it!
shikwentah 04:00AM ET 2003-Dec-23	alright, i would like to apologize if i messed up your website.. im not sure if you recieved the other message i wrote because i dont see it. i really didnt know it was screwing up anything, im not real good with computers, and i didnt know that it was harming anything of yours. i thought it was pretty rude that you changed the picture to something nasty instead of just telling me. it seems as if you assumed that i was doing that on purpose. i think you should have been flattered instead of pissed off and just shouldve told me right away and did it politely instead of doing what you did.
Anonymous 09:04PM ET 2004-May-13	your pictures are awesome..im just a beginner student of art and i love it. if you could e-mail me and tell me how to do some pictures like this it would be great. thanks!
Gavin Kistner 10:44AM ET 2004-May-20	Well, of course each picture is unique, but a lot of them use the same exploratory technique. Very roughly: 1) Make a big blank canvas. 2) Make the paintbrush really big and slap down a base set of colors 3) Rotate the hue by an 'akward' amount (say, 37°) 4) Convert to Lab color mode, and rotate the hue another akward amount (e.g. 13°). 5) Keep repeating steps 3 and 4, swapping back and forth between RGB and Lab color modes. The purpose is to try to take advantage of mathematic rounding errors to create odd compressions of color where they blend. 6) Also try repeatedly applying various filters. Ones I commonly use: Dust & Scratches (smoothes and rounds things out without blurring), Unsharp Mask (used repeatedly and strongly can bring out odd edges), Gaussian Blur (to soften things up when they get too harsh). The above is a simplification of much of the process, and only covers the manner in which perhaps a third or so were created...in the end, it mostly comes down to playing with Photoshop a lot, and keeping working with a picture until it's ready to go or ready to be thrown away :) Although I love they way they turned out, few pictures were created with a goal in mind...I simply played with the picture until something started to emerge that I liked.
Star* 06:53AM ET 2004-Jul-16	I liked your pictures, but prefer to get my hands dirty with some acrylics or oils. The best pictures come from a place that you yourself can not explain. That my friend is real art. It can take a life time to create or 10min sitting in a restaurant drawing on a table. It happens when you least expect it to.***
Lea 11:51PM ET 2004-Aug-07	This is awesome stuff. I always try to create stuff like this with my paints, and its awesome I can use this for my backrounds now. Thank you, you are wonderful. :D
Kaz 12:41AM ET 2004-Aug-18	I love your pics, they are just what i was looking for. Congrats for something fun to look at.
Kimberley 11:18PM ET 2004-Sep-05	I thought the pics were great. I'm using the Swirls one for a background on a flyer I have to do for school. Thanx!!!
shorty114 04:42PM ET 2004-Sep-17	Think you could zip all them up?
Anonymous 11:30AM ET 2004-Oct-19	i love the pictures its perfect for my home work!
Anonymous 11:30AM ET 2004-Oct-19	i love the pictures its perfect for my home work!
Krys 06:39PM ET 2004-Dec-01	Very inspirational work. I prefer to use pastels and oils myself, it gives more of a real feeling of involvement in the creation of a peice. I find computers a little too distant in that sense. I'd like to see more of your work, the ones above you say are "the better fruits of this labour". You might be quite surprised though, the ones you don't necessarly like could be ones that are most enjoyable for others. Once again, nice work.
sk8rboi 05:29PM ET 2005-Mar-16	cool... :)
bunny 11:50AM ET 2005-Apr-04	crazy thats trippy man. I LOVE IT!
Shannon 06:28PM ET 2005-Apr-29	These are really awesome pictures! I was looking for a cool picture for the wallpaper on my computer and I definitely found some. I look forward to seeing more!
lizzieerdman 07:23PM ET 2005-May-09	we learned about this in art class one year . seeing it on the web makes me see how interesting it is.GREAT JOB GUYS!
Anonymous 09:30AM ET 2005-May-18	I love Abstract Pictures they express such a feeling. Everyone sees somthing different in them.
Haloiu Adrian 07:48AM ET 2005-Jun-27	i like your pictures! make more!
PMS 04:40PM ET 2005-Aug-25	What a great site ! The pictures are really awsome I must say. Great screen savers
brit 11:44AM ET 2005-Oct-17	hey nice pics but wt r u called the person who made them
anonymous 11:16AM ET 2005-Nov-08	i really luv ur pics! dey r really fascinating to see! make some more! i want 2 see more!
anonymous 11:17AM ET 2005-Nov-08	i hate ur pictures thay are so ugly do not make some more or else!!!!
Anonymous 11:19AM ET 2005-Nov-08	hiya nina, maz and ferrari (if u r on dis web!) see u 2moro at skool! from anonymous
Timo 12:14PM ET 2005-Nov-18	Great Pictures Gavin, The FractalBlur-m and TequilaBanana are my favorites. I love abstract art... -Very interesting how different people see different things it them. :) GreetinGs
Deja 02:09PM ET 2005-Nov-21	i love your pictures their so nice they make a statment
Jack Deckard 12:12PM ET 2005-Nov-26	Thanks for putting the abstracts on the net. SkySet b is now my background, but I change this weekly. Your art is appreciated.
Anonymous 11:58AM ET 2005-Nov-28	:) Hello to every1 out there! Hope you read my comment! I know it is boring but next time I'll write somethin' better! See Ya! Answer bak on dis web and I'll check next time! Hopefully you'll have a message 4 me! :)
Angelina 08:56AM ET 2006-Jan-12	thats nice good job keep the hard work up
Hannah 06:24AM ET 2006-Jan-15	Nice pictures, but a few more could be added. This is pretty poor.
Anonymous 11:28PM ET 2006-Jan-23	nice, how do you make those?
Anonymous 10:30PM ET 2006-Jan-31	these pictures are sooooo cool
Boris 07:29AM ET 2016-Sep-24	Very Cool!