Pascha Draconus Inexorablus

Castling Text Prompts

  artifice culled from formulations abounding in minimal summation  

   an abomination of articulations about a ministration of national art 

The Last of the Thrones of Pele

written & illustrated by Shaun Lawton 

    The text prompt I used in the Outpainting of the golden image of the upside down throne depicted here was "the throne of life cradling an oasis of water in an electrically charged atmosphere," but then after a few quadrants had extended the panoramic display both up, down and across, I carefully selected one of the four variants offered for each successive part of the expanding puzzle, and then I added "in flowing plasma" for the final, bottom portion of the strange canvas you see I have tried my best to  digitally paint using a variety of AI tool methods.  (Without my Griffin Mandala template, the wriggling, wormlike details of tendrils entangled in the murky darkness in between those interstices of light would never have manifested.) There's a lot going on in the above composition, which leads me to ponder over whether I should perhaps continue Outpainting from this expanded image in all four directions, making it larger and more fascinating, at the risk of potentially deteriorating it's allure or mystique into more senseless abstraction.   

    Yet in that direction lies another reason to ponder over the development of this image. The core of it is a closeup of an IKEA lamp I took a snapshot of in my kid's bedroom one night. From this digital photograph I extrapolated variant images after running it through various AI filters and tools, primarily Deep Dream Generator and DALL*E.    This may not be considered great art atm but I think it looks great and I'll be damned if I'm going to stop exploring with the array of digital tools at my disposal, on account of how wildly focused I am on seeing what can be dredged up from the depths of our most obscure collective consciousness. 

   I'm having the time of my life here and now with this hobby and I'm looking forward to where the rapidly advancing software takes us next. I've already set this image as my PC wallpaper and the details I'm catching in just the lower section alone are quite interesting enough to keep my attention pretty riveted tbh.  One thing to point out is how I haven't even bothered to upscale this image, but that comes from a strictly artistic decision on my behalf.  I prefer some of the initial variants and their more primitive renderings over the well synthesized and homogenous efforts from AI's hybrid upscaling effect.  

   If I can avoid that it will leave me with a gallery of images operating on a threshold just below that popular waterline. A layer lurking just underneath the surface. I'm as bored with the majority of over familiarized, glossy super hi-resolution digital art being passed around as the next plugged-in websurfer; an art form legitimately admired by scores for its sophistication alone.  Obviously I'm choosing another path given the same tools at our disposal, the whole wide world seething around us in all its variform menu of routes and options. 

    Looking at the whole thing here, the resultant image at the top of this article, it's pretty much a head trip, on an individual and global level.  I'm left speechless in admiration for the strange terrain the AI algorithms helped me map out, or I mean it the other way around, it was I who helped the AI to shape the fantastical configurations of this fictional landscape of the mind. A newly formed territory taking shape as if it were its own rapidly developing exoplanet. 

   Captured in these twisted formations fleeting faces can be glimpsed, profiles with eyes staring out from their trapped position, along with the serpentine volcanic pillar configurations with one in particular who's features seem etched into a totemic smirk, in some way an emissary of Pele; in a setting with a sense of a terrific force exploding in a maelstrom of creationism across the raw elements of magma, water and land. There's a sense of the apocalyptic in an elemental way with this painting, and there are still new creatures manifest from the pareidolia inherent to the composition. 

   The explosive suggestiveness captured in this vivid imagery of titanic forces at work in nature should at least hold some weary passers-by interest for a spell.  I'd wager that meets the objectives of art. Oh, well.  At least it's keeping me happy and occupied. These bewitching abstract images lure my imagination into writing down descriptions of them into characters and settings, while keeping one thing in the singular forefront of my mind: words forming text prompts shaped the images which feed back into fueling the setting and characters in my stories which will always be told in words.