Early Computer Art

Here is a collection of computer art by me, my early work dating from the mid '80s when I already had a computer capable of 4096 colours (a Commodore Amiga), while PCs were struggling with 16 colours (EGA) and many still had only 4 colours (CGA) or were monochrome.

Select the thumbnail displayed to see the full resolution image, click on the image to return.

The AMIGA pictures are from old photos of the TV screen, pictures from the original files will be coming soon, I need to setup the machine again to access the files.

Alien Landscape 01

PhotonPaint
The hills in the foreground were generated using "Scenery", a public domain (PD) program I recieved in the post on a collections disk. Everything else was handcrafted by me using the amazing PhotonPaint, which was my prefered painting package as it did HAM mode (Hold And Modify = 4096 colours) really well. I also used Delux Paint which had some better drawing tools but didn't handle HAM mode.

Internal Abstract

PhotonPaint
An early study of molecules in a body, showing structure and molecular links, just a bit of fun but I liked this sort of thing.

Abstract01

DeluxPaint
Hand drawn shapes, then using the shaded paint fill feature to get the graduation.

My HiFi

DeluxPaint
Completely hand draw rendition of my first real HiFi, which I bought with my own money. So OK, it's no separates system but I was soooo pleased with it. It still have and use it today (mostly for PC or mobile sound), a good 20 plus years later ! The speakers could be attached to the side for easy transportation.

Abstract02

PhotonPaint
This time a colour abstract showing off the colour & shading abilities of PhotonPaint, remember this was at a time a PC could do 16 colours at best.

Blue Box in Mesh

DeluxPaint
DeluxPaint has some very good drawing tools including brush usage, replication, scaling etc. This entire image was created by me using a hand drawn box and mesh which I then turned into a brush and replicated at varoius scales to get the repetition, sort of like a fractal, but before I had heard of fractals!

Eye of Wisdom

DeluxPaint
The sky was generated with another PD piece of software called "Clouds" the rest was hand draw, to save time and effort, you can see the columns are all the same one but replicated and scaled.

Paris in Blue

PhotonPaint
Fractals hit the Amiga scene in a big way. The base fractal in this picture was generated by an Amiga Basic program I wrote based on mathematical articles. It took nearly 30 minutes to generate the final image I used in this painting, but it was not long before PD software (written in C or assembler) was out which could do the same in a few minutes (of course now it takes only seconds). I didn't have a C compiler at this time, but soon after I got SAS-C for Amiga (which was the same version as the O/S was compiled on - so by default the best to have).

Moon over Earth

DeluxPaint
I was always into space, so doing space scenes was predictable and fun. I particularly enjoyed doing the craters and cracks on the moon in this picture.

Reactor

DeluxPaint
I spent quite a bit of time doing this one, it was for a game I had planned but after doing this single painting I decided the whole project was too ambitious, would take too long, and gave up the idea. There were not real 3D drawing tools out at the time so I had to do all the 3D stuff by hand and eye, using scaling and replication to keep the workload down.

Space01

DeluxPaint
Another space scene, some of planets and a moon. All hand drawn.

StrangePlace

DeluxPaint
Another replication and scaling practice using the "Clouds" program for the sky and hand drawing the columns, again only 1 was drawn the rest are copies.

WindUp

DeluxPaint
Drawn using the brush painting abilities of DeluxPaint, simple now but ahead of its time back then.

Other Stuff

Landcsape #1

PaintShop Pro 4 SE
A recent landscape.