PDN Fanatics

Welcome to my gallery.

Please feel free to comment not only on my areas of strength but also on areas for improvement. Feedback is a powerful mechanism for improvement.


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Latest entry for the SOTW 30: Theme is Archaic





Merry Christmas, everyone!


Poll up now: http://paintdotnet.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=32811&p=311106#p311106
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Ylla looks out from her beautiful glass room into her garden. Water splashes over the the roof & down the walls. This is her favourite room. She has set two chairs by the glass door. She will sit & look with the stranger from her dark disturbing dreams. She can already see the tears they will shed for what is yet to come. The end has begun. Two worlds. Inevitable & futile. Again she cries for them both.

Background Information:
The works (more to come) are based on the book, "The Martian Chronicles" by Ray Bradbury. It is really a collection of short stories so it doesn't always make a lot of sense as a novel.

You can read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martian_Chronicles

I have taken a lot of artistic licence. The Ylla's section of the book goes something like this:

Ylla is a Martian woman trapped in an unromantic marriage. She has dreams or visions of the Earthmen coming. Her husband pretends to deny the reality of her dreams. She develops romantic feelings towards one of the astronauts. Her husband becomes bitterly jealous & kills both of the astronauts as soon as the two man expedition arrives.

My version is like this:

Mars is not in fact a planet that is barren but much of it is underground with a thick heavy mist that hides the lush beauty of the planet from potential invaders. It also protect them from the heat of the Sun.

The two chairs represent both Ylla & her romantic lover, & the two worlds. She arranges the chairs to imagine herself with her lover sitting & looking at the beautiful garden in blissful peace. As she sits she sees not the imagined blissful peace but death & destruction, including the death of her lover.

Her tears show on the outside of the glass in the garden, also representative of the devastation that will take place to the planet itself. There are more red tears because Mars loses the war of the two worlds but only just. Earth takes a heavy toll too.

So as you can see, Postcards from Mars is not a light & pretty work despite the colours but a railing against man's inhumanity. A protest, a plea for understanding & acceptance for what we don't know yet or understand. It has many parallels.



Follows on from Ylla's Tears in the Postcards from Mars Series.

After years of planning, two astronauts are finally on their way.

Ylla knows they are coming & so does her jealous husband. She knows too, the devastation the launch of the expedition ship will bring to the inhabitants of the nearby towns.

Why didn't they listen to the lanky young professor?

The launch turned the deep winter landscape into an inferno. The moon turned black. The snow melted instantly causing massive avalanches & floods that killed thousands. The devastation was brutal.

Ylla heard a whisper that perhaps the acceptable risk was a bit high after all.

Ylla cries for them all.

And so they came.



During the course of one summer’s night, the vast majority of the Martians, like Ylla, begin to pick up random thoughts from Earthmen in their dreams. Through these dreams they become exposed to all manner of human life. There is a tendency to focus mostly on the American way of life as another expedition launches forth bound yet again for Mars.

Groups of Martians begin to adopt some of the American culture into their everyday lives. While some choose to adopt clothing fashions, others are more inclined to adopt the music. Most Martians were happy to listen to Earthmen’s music but some were intent on reproducing it. They replicated and learnt how to play the musical instruments. It wasn’t long before they started holding concerts just like Earthmen.

Unlike Ylla, the Martians were not aware of where the dreams came from or their meaning. For a time they were happy in their way of life, completely unaware of what was about to happen.



The Martians receive the second expedition with indifference.

However, there is one group of Martians in an unusually sparsely furnished building that greet the expedition with a parade and songs. The expedition wonders at this. Except for the Martians it is just like the parades and songs from Earth. Some of the Martians explain to the expedition captain that they are from Earth also or from other parts of the solar system.

Initially, the captain is astounded at these revelations. There are inconsistencies in the Martian’s stories and a feeling of dread begins to spread through the crew members. Nothing is as it should be. Finally the captain and his crew begin to understand that these Martians have telepathy. Most disturbing of all is that these Martians are able to access the hallucinations of the insane. The expedition is in an asylum!

The Martians believe the Earthmen are nothing more than a very detailed hallucination of the insane. The psychiatrist in charge tries to convince the expedition that they are nothing more than that. He focuses his efforts on the captain, encouraging him deny that he is from Earth. The captain refuses and is declared incurable. As an incurable he is killed by the psychiatrist.

The psychiatrist believed the crew would disappear with the death of the captain. When this does not happen he kills them also. The expedition’s ship remains leading the psychiatrist to believe that he too is mad and kills himself.

The second expedition’s ship is sold as junk. The Martians continue their existence as it always was. Ylla looks skyward and her tears fall.



The Earth is in crisis. The constant threat of atomic warfare is the driving force behind the space exploration program. People’s behaviour is becoming increasingly erratic and unreasonable.

One such man reasons that as a taxpayer he should be allowed to travel as a passenger on the next expedition. He reasons that taxes fund the space program and as a taxpayer it is his rocket too.

The man, known to the public simply as “The Taxpayer”, causes a great deal of unrest and panic with his speeches about the catastrophic effects of atomic warfare on Earth. He reminds them of the bloodshed that is already occurring in smaller national battles and shows very graphic pictures of the cost to human lives.

Authorities are concerned that this kind of thinking may spread among the already agitated public. They charge him with numerous public offences and treason, quickly whisking him off to isolation in prison. The public is somewhat calmer, reluctant to suffer the same fate. Little do they know the real fate of The Taxpayer.

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If you want help, you can post in "help me make something".

If you want to make your own gallery, here is fine.
Maybe you should change this thread title to something like....barbieq25's gallery or something.

Thanks, Ash. Is changed.
At the moment I am having too much fun just learning by working through the tutes & exploring options but I will add anything that I think is worth the upload...

Edit: Yeah, now I have to work out how to do this...ummm...Gallery with only a sig? Nope, so here goes...

These two were created using the tutes...again not sure about the lighting but they please me at least.

I like the sig, very effective IMO

and great job on the 2 abstracts, I especially like the 2nd one ... is that Ash's eye tut in there ?

Thank you & yes it is.
As I said, been working thru the tutes to gain some insight & then experiment like there's no tomorrow.
Love your work too...just my cup of coffee...

i really like your sig its a nice effect and something a bit different, i also like the far out space-scape...

Here are some more I have been working on.





The second one will be my avatar - at least for now. Would rather I knew how to bend the image so that it follows the curve at the back of the orb. Thanks heaps to all the lovely people who write tutes!

Comments welcome.

Thanks about my work
The experiment bit is a good idea. Along with the tuts this is how I learnt a lot ... the hardest part is remembering how I achieved something. There's still some things I haven't got a clue how I did them

RE: Your sig ... on another thread I found myself sat here just clicking on the individual squares

Edit ... nice domes, the mustang (?)one works really well

Double edit ... do you mean bending the text to follow the lines ?

Thanks for the positive feedback...

Bending the text so that it follows the curve at the back of the orb...so that it looks like the text is forming the back wall of it. Hope that makes more sense.

Clicking the squares? Oh dear, methinks sometimes we spend a little too long on the pc...I have printed off quite a lot of the most relevant tutes & organised them into a folder with dividers & made a quite nice cover...some of the images were done in Paintshop Pro - had that program for years & never got the hang of it Oh yeah, back to the point - the sig doesn't look too bad printed either. Merci tres bein, Monsieur Mondrian!

I had to google Piet Mondrian
Your sig is a nice take on his works.

For the text, Sargon'/ Yellowman has written a great tut on 3D text on the official board ... not sure if it's here, as well ? Or you could use the Tube Oblique plug-in

Welcome to the forum. I simply love the abstracts, especially #2. it will be nice to see someone else doing some abstracts.

ciao OMA

I thought I commented in your gallery, but I guess I didn't. Anyway, I meant to say how cool the abstracts were. And your sig is nice, too. I hope you're enjoying this forum.

Welcome to the board, I like the two abstracts, and your sig and the avatar are nice too, waiting to see more from you, some more complicated drawings

Thanks Helen & Oma. Abstract is my thing. Poor Welshy had to look up Mondrian. I did some work in high performance vinyl & then was introduced to his art. Some of our works were so similar it was scary & yet I had never seen his work.

Sargon, I too, am looking forward to the day that I can get my head around more complex compositions. Trouble is that my forgettery is better than my memory. Woe is me.

Great bunch here. I know I am keeping good company!

After going through some more tutes & taking on board the comments & suggestions made I have redone the gecko & combined it with some other tutes (thanks to all of you who write them!)

First attempt...yup have now worked out where I went wrong.


Second attempt



I tried the 3D cube with a different picture on each side & this is what I got...must have missed something...not an altogether displeasing result...but I imagined that I would see cars from all sides?