I like looking at and making shapes, designs, and patterns. In the 1990s it was exciting to generate fractal images using a computer program. Do any more bizzarely complicated and intriguing shapes exist? Probably not. Later I became fascinated by the shapes of tree leaves. It's amazing how varied in form the leaves of a single tree species can be. I found none more varied than White Oak leaves. After looking at leaf outlines for a while, I decided to use the outlines to compose other shapes. Using six-fold symmetry, I generated a series of "leaf-snowcrystals."
Currently, I am making plane-filling, symmetrical patterns using Photoshop. Photoshop has an automatic tiling feature, but I don't use this. I usually start with a small tringle, in which I inscribe a line design. I reflect and/or rotate the triangle to generate other copies which collectively compose a larger pattern. The larger objects are joined together seemlessly to cover the plane. Looking at the initial, small triangle, it's difficult to see what the larger composition will look like. This fact illustrates an observation made by E.H. Gombrich in The Sense of Order that "Patterns emerge more often than they are thought of."
