When I first got involved with computers, one of the things that most intrigued me was the use of computers to generate art. Having very little physical ability and eventually losing the use of my hands completely, traditional artistic media were beyond my grasp. But like many aspects of my life, technology comes to the rescue and allows me to do things that would not otherwise be able to do. Computer graphics gives me the opportunity to express myself artistically despite my severe disability.

In the late 1980s I got involved with an online project called the Persistence of Vision Ray Tracer or POV-Ray for short. I began contributing code to this open-source freeware program that allows you to create photorealistic images using nothing but a text language and a lot of computing power. Eventually I became the team manager for the POV-Team and even published two editions of the book entitled “Ray-Tracing Creations” which sold several thousand copies but is long out of print.

In 1995 I created my first Christmas card using my ray-traced computer-generated artwork. I’ve created a new image every year since then as well as used ray tracing for other graphics projects. In this blog I plan to share my images as well as explanations of how my artwork is created. Some of it will be articles about how they were created and others will be video demonstrations.