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Phyllotaxy - the arrangement of leaves

Phyllotactic spirals form a distinctive class of patterns in nature, depicting the arrangement of leaves on a plant stem. The basic patterns are alternate, opposite, whorled or spiral, many of them arranged based on consecutive fibonacci numbers.

more on geometrymatters.com/archive

Resource: Map-Making Brushes/Icons

Here’s another resource courtesy of my D&D campaign planning! I decided to put together some Photoshop brushes to make map creation easier, since I have a crapton of maps to make. The above example is still a somewhat rough work in progress, but it gives you a decent idea of what you can do with the brushes. Once I had the outline drawn, it only took about ten minutes to fill in most of the geography and other details (naming things admittedly took much longer lol).

Each brush in the set is hand-drawn by me, so they work well if you’re looking to quickly create a digital map that still has an old-fashioned look. They’re also hi-res enough to use with maps that you plan to print out, as that was my original intent when I made them for myself.

These could work nicely with the world map template I made last month— I used them to trace over a generated map to give it a hand-drawn feel that was more in line with a Dungeons & Dragons game.

What this download contains:

A set of Photoshop brushes with built in brush settings

A .psd file of the original hand-drawn icons in case you want to edit/remake/etc. anything

A hi-res .png of the icon file in case you don’t have Photoshop or otherwise want to make brushes for another program

The brush/icon pack is available for download here.

As with all my content, this is a free resource, but if you find it helpful and have a couple spare bucks lying around, please consider making a small donation to help keep this blog running and creating original content!

Knock-Knock 2015.2.6 by sasisage

Heinrichite

Ba(UO2)2(AsO4)2·10H2O

Locality:

Schmiedestollen dump, Wittichen, Schenkenzell, Black Forest, Baden-Württemberg, Germany

Field of View: 1.84 mm

Coll.& photo Ko Jansen

Pyrite - Huanzala Mine, Huallanca District, Dos de Mayo Province, Peru Watch Video

Dark Souls III : Design Works : Dancer of the Boreal Valley

Early Medieval pattern-welded Sickle

Reconstruction by Thorkil

The sickle was based on an antler sickle case found in Stargard Szczecinski, West Pomerania (Poland). The original was richly decorated with geometrical motives, popular at that time. Thorkil’s version is a very faithful reconstruction of it, with all circles, dots, triangles and lines made on natural deer antler.

The decoration was hand engraved, then coloured with natural dark dye for a contrast and stronger effect. The sickle blade’s is pattern-welded (damascus) steel. It was hand forged (in charcoal fire) of 20 twisted layers. The cutting edge was forge-welded to pattern-welded part.

Source: Copyright © 2017 Thorkil

Light and Shading Tutorial

The above is an angel aura geode sphere. It’s so pretty! (Source)

Hand carved Chinese dark red jade group figure of wild horses. Each horse is finely carved with high detail. Breathtaking translucence to this deep red jade. 19th century.