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Samuel Zimmerman


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   hot!  check my Summer 2018 Update!   |   More Dogwafflers of the Moment

Hello. My name is Samuel Zimmerman.

I have a new website with my art here: 
https://www.samuelzimmermanart.com

I started drawing at the age of six when my mother introduced me to colored pencils and markers. At ten, my father bought me my first oil and acrylic paint sets. Through my teens and twenties I studied classical painting methods on my own and assimilated many “old master” techniques into a personal style that is also influenced by expressionism, surrealism and Art Nouveau. During my thirties until now, I've created a broad variety of personal works and commissions including portraits, landscapes, fantasy art and science fiction related themes. Though I've experimented with various mediums such as graphite, water color, acrylic and tempera, my favorite has always been, and remains, oil.

In my mid forties, I began my journey into the world of digital art when an old friend introduced me to Photoshop. I spent about a year and a half familiarizing myself with the software and developing my own approach, first to reworking photos of paintings I'd done, then to collaborations including website design, book covers and works involving other artists and authors photos and text.

The collection you see here is what I call my “Extrasolar_Sam” series. It began in 2014 when I was looking for a gratifying, relatively quick way of creating quality artwork that incorporated two things I've always loved — landscapes and science fiction. The idea was to use my photos of clouds and various random objects and textures to produce unique images I could never have created from scratch. That same year, I began using Gimp, which is free, open-source photo editing and painting software I use more than Photoshop these days because of some of its distinct features.

I also began looking for 3D terrain software to help develop the vision farther when I came across Project Dogwaffle. I currently use Howler 10. A unique feature of its 3D designer is you're not limited to just using plasma noise to build a height map. If I want something a bit more exotic, I'll use various Dogwaffle filters, photos of wood textures, tree bark, a piece of chewing gum on the sidewalk, whatever gets an interesting, alien look. Anything can be a height map!

Center of Worship

Center-of-Worship


For example, "Center of Worship" began with Filter / Render / Zrings combined with the spherize tool, then transferred to 3D designer. I was playing around and came up with this organic looking, alien cityscape. The process of just exploring Dogwaffle can produce some fascinating and unexpected results! The trees were each created individually using a preset from the foliage menu, then modifying it in Particle settings / Foliage, to create the appropriate look. I love that every feature of this program can be customized!


The Conversation


In "The Conversation", and the foreground of "Air port", I flipped the height map upside down to add to the effect.
the conversation, by Samuel
                Zimmerman


Airport

AIRPORT.jpg



I used plasma noise to create the mountains in "Spirit of Outreach", and "Sanctuary". The base of the structure in "Spirit of Outreach" started out as a tree from the foliage menu. The temple in "Sanctuary" was created using a circular gradient in 3D designer. 

Spirit of Outreach

Spirit-of-Outreach.jpg


Sanctuary

Sanctuary.jpg


Solitary Tree

Solitary-Tree.jpg


"Solitary tree" is an example of a flatter, desert-like environment made in 3D designer. Plants and tree were from the foliage menu and modified in Particle settings. Each was created as a separate file to be assembled later. The sky is from one of my photos.


Home Away From Home

The source material for the terrain in "Home Away From Home" was a close-up photo of a piece of ply wood. The "home" was created in Dogwaffle using Filter / Render / Wood texture / Spherize, with some additional effects created in Gimp. The sky was another of my photos.  

Home away from home


Once I have the components for a picture, I assemble them in Gimp. I like to create multiple color, value, texture and other layers I can modify individually. Recently, I started using Topaz for Photoshop to add additional dimension and detail.

Many thanks to Philip and Dan for a program I will be exploring for many years to come!

Visit my new website:

https://www.samuelzimmermanart.com

Other examples can be found at

samuelzimmerman.deviantart.com

https://lenkaslist.com/extrasolar

My shop

https://www.zazzle.com/Extrasolar_Sam




Samuel Zimmerman
(Brother Sam) oneheartabbey.com

PS: here's my latest piece:








Summer 2018 Update

Hello again. Here's an update.

I have more artwork here:
https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/1-samuel-zimmerman.html

My art is for sale on various settings, including
  • traditional wall art on select media (wood, metal,...), but also
  • practical and 'useful' arrangements such as home decor (pillows!),
  • stationary items (greeting cards, notebooks),
  • lifestyle items like yoga mats and battery chargers for your smartphone,
  • beach related (beach towels, tote bags) and more. 
It's all in the spirit of making my art fit into your life, and fit your life into my art. Hello art! And hello life!

Have a look. If you like my art, what better way to share the spirit than by buying a gift for yourself, or a friend of yours, with a practical and meaningful piece of artwork?


The first (portrait of a woman) is a portrait of my dear friend, author Kimberlyann DeAngelo. It's a photo I took of her and added the sky background. This was done in Gimp.



The second (portrait of a man) is an oil painting I made of a friend who later purchased it as a gift for another friend.





"Community" and the other two are part of my "ExtrasolarSam series, which is a unique take on other worlds. The terrain was created in Howler's 3D Designer. The individual "community" members were created with a combination of Browse for Media - Unique, Organs2, Foliage and others.




 "Rare Bloom" is another example of utilizing Dogwaffle filters to create an alien terrain and sky in 3D designer.




"Temple of the Shadowlands" is more personal.
 I have recently been diagnosed with cervical stenosis. The MRI scan of my brain and upper spine that revealed it was exhaustive, taking nearly two hours and resulting in over 150 images. I decided to create a new series of digital works I call "Mindscapes" that will incorporate many of the MRI scans into landscapes. This is the first one of the series. The source material for the flames I then modified in Gimp was in Howler's Browse for Media > Unique > Oil Fire.