Disclaimer for the art section

Since this is my first post in the art section of my blog, let me start with some general remarks.

Art. So I’m an artist now? I would not necessarily say so. But in recent years I found painting and working with colors in general to be as relaxing as doing sports or making music. Let’s face it: all our beloved computer stuff, as much as we enjoy it, is quite similar to the stuff we do at work. So in order to relax after work or to recharge our batteries during the weekend it’s always a good idea to just empty our heads, grab a brush or instrument, and play by the ear.

In addition painting also provides you with two more things: a toolkit to express yourself and a general feeling for colors and aesthetics. The later is quite important for computer projects too. Have you ever been at the point where you programmed some neat logic/backend but lack any idea how to design the interface/frontend? Well, having a nice package is half of the game and if you want to sell your product, be sure to make it as appealing as possible.

That’s being said, I do not intend to write about my (physical) paintings, color theory etc. but only about the digital art I’m doing in between. (So keep that in mind before judging me based on the nerdy stuff I post here 😀 )

So if you are interested in painting too, be sure to check out the tons of tutorials on YouTube and the totally awesome page of Will Kemp. (Just one hint: materials matter. You don’t need high-end equipment, but you won’t be able to paint watercolors unless you buy thick paper and a appropriate brush for at least 4€)

About the piece

Alright. I’m definitely not a fan of providing an interpretation, but I can give you a little bit of a background story for this one.

One of the oldest and certainly the most holiest war in the computer community is the so called editor war. It basically boils down to the question of whether to choose Emacs or vi as your favorite editor. But the Emacs community didn’t stopped there. They pushed it to the limits and founded the so called church of Emacs with Richard Stallman (the original author of Emacs) to be its prophet St. IGNUcius.

Since I’m a passionate Emacs user myself, this little project is my homage to the (humorous) cult. I’m a little bit afraid to get crowned ‘king of the nerds’, but this idea was just too weird to not implement it.

You can see ten different colored versions (in the Zenburn color scheme) of my Emacs’ start-up screen. This pop art-like montage I call Moses receiving the Ten Commandments on top of mount Sinai.