Electron Cloud Ecliptic

Two other bot sketches...

Blue: Bot_tle Rocket. As you can see by the busted light bulb on his head, his ideas are not the brightest... like strapping a rocket to his back.

Orange: Beat_bot. He'll dance on, even if the music stops.

This is a logo, or "tag" if you will, that I made for myself a little while back when I really started into experimenting with physical mediums of visual art. When I tell people what I do, though, they ask where they can see my work, and I've never really had a good answer. It only seems right that this should be that place. Because this blog is ArtificeLux...

So there it is: this blog stretches back to a time I don't even recognize sometimes, but let's call this the beginning...

A first look at the soundtrack element of this project! So excited to have Josh McCausland’s massive talent creating the moody sounds of this dark sci-fi universe!

This song is entitled “Sensory Deprivation” and will feature on the Color of a Mirror original soundtrack, as part of my multi-disciplinary novel/soundtrack/design experience.

(Motion graphics and design by me.)

If you like what you see and hear, there’s only 10 days left in the Kickstarter! Check out the link below, and thanks for looking!

Jovian Sunrises

The lightning played freeze tag throughout the looming thunderheads, flitting first here, then there, capturing an image in the blaze of an instant.  Forked fingers reached like hands to touch each other, missing by what seemed to be, from the shoreline at least, only the narrowest of margins.  But the clouds weren't all that threatening, despite their distant, insistent rumbling; their color was a salty white against the charcoal sky of night, making them seem more like clumps of cotton than angry bruises.

Plus, they were receding, chased by the starlit heralds of day.

I had undertaken to race the sun, to beat it at its own game, spinning around the Earth as it does.  And I had succeeded in my challenge, arriving at those dunes nearly an hour before its initial hues began painting the backdrop of the world in pastel color once more.

But this dawn was unlike any other.

It wasn't the ire of Jupiter that broke the night.  No, it was the faces of the other Jovian gods--Uranus and Neptune--that melted the black in pools of cool sapphire and jade. They caught the sky in marbled perfection and turned it, ever so carefully, to day.

Waterfall.

(AKA Kissing Birds.)

•3RTL•

Ominous. Omen-ous. Portents of things to come.

Night Sky

Have you ever seen the Milky Way...

The Milky Way with naked eye?

Where all these other Earthly lights

Don't push and pull to cloud the sky?

The dusty trail

Like speckled paint...

In barren places

All but faint.

From nothing--Life.

From life--Nothing.

Brush pen... but with real pen.

One year ago, I was at Dragonsteel 2023 launching my noir science fiction debut novel COLOR OF A MIRROR.

Such a fun time, and I met so many cool people there. Crazy to think it’s already been a year.

Thank you to everyone who’s purchased a copy of the book, listened to the soundtrack, or left a review or a kind word somewhere. The support has been felt and much appreciated, and I love seeing other people enjoying this unconventional story!

It’s been a great first year, and I’m going to keep pushing to try and get the book out there through the coming months.

Also Book 2 🤐 Still a ways off on that, but it’s cooking. Can’t wait to share more!

-Dan

Subversive

“Hang on. I wanna see something.”

He glances in either direction, checking for traffic. Looks both ways again as he crosses the street, more furtively this time. Her footsteps follow, slowly, then quicker, as she jogs across the deserted side street.

“Somehow, I’m thinking this is going to be illegal...”

“Oh, don’t worry... it most definitely is.”

Around the backside of the crumbling wall--perhaps at one point it had been a room or enclosed courtyard of sorts, though now it’s little more than chewed gravel and a sparse collection of weeds even more insistent than the winter chill cutting through his gloves--a simple linework teddy bear, five feet tall and quite pudgy around the middle, sits with his back against the corner. The bright orange spray isn’t even faded. “Hah! Yes, it’s still here.”

“That’s so badass! And completely adorable at the same time!” She chuckles. “I’m feeling like this must have been you?”

“Feel like it might’ve been,” he grins back.