When I wrote my list, i did not number my points. This is not a list where you go, 1:check, 2:check, it is just a small number of the numorous questions that any artist may or may not ask him or herself while working on a project. This means, thinking about what you are doing, why you are doing it, what you learned or dicovered and how you can use it in any future work. This goes for any artist and in any style he or she chooses to work. Abstract art is not mindlessly throwing paint on a canvas, Jazz is not blowing any note without any structure at all. And fractal art can never be just clicking away. Tim you are right by saying that "fractal software is my paint, my instrument, my camera....". It realy is. This is the central point of making art with fractals. But if it is our paint, our instrument and camera then we better learn to control them, to make them perform as WE want and not wait for beautiful accidents to happen. Now, I am an artist, I had six full years of academy and a degree that tells me so. It's been about 13 years since I first became interested in fractals, but it is only for about 3 years that I am trying to use this medium as my only art tool, and it's the hardest medium I ever worked with. Why is that? Working with a medium like fractals is working with what Keith calls "patterns and shapes". He is absolutely right about that. The hard part is that there are so many patterns, so many shapes to discover, in so many formula, so many flame parameters, so many colour algorhytms etc.. This is why, even MORE than in traditional art media, we need to document, register and learn from every trip into fractalia we make. To learn which patterns, landscapes are possible, you must first discover them. And this is the fascinating and almost spiritual trip we are having, walking through out-of-this-world landscapes. We stop and click our digital camera. Later on, we are not merely satisfied with the landscape or pattern and go about re-arranging them, giving them new colours. We are now on our way, we think, to become fractal artists. But are we? I would suggest that at this stage, we are still subjected to being passengers on a fractaltrain with an unknown direction. Sure, we can stop the train when we see something beautiful, record it, change it to our liking, but when that work is done, back we go on the train looking for another spot of interest. And without knowing it, this medium has become the art itself. No longer are we out to control our fractals, we have fallen for the trap filled with ready and instant beauty. Now we are converts to the fractal religion, a religion, like all religions, where non-believers and questions are frowned upon, where conventional art-skills and rules don't apply, where the work itself is resting in an intellectual vacuum. I still believe that there is a big future for fractal art. I know that when I see how Keith and Rick are working on it, I see it in the works of Harmen and Kurt (Rumple), I see it in the work of Jos and so many others. But if we realy want to bring fractal-art into mainstream art, then we have, in my humble opinion, a long way to go. A road we better not ride on high horses... Dirk