ASCII art

Drawn in characters.

This is my corner for ASCII art. Some pieces are imitations of other works — old paintings, the Moon, pictures from space telescopes — and others are purely my own ideas.

Open any piece to step inside it.

01 Own idea

Blossom on the Summit

“In the cherry blossom’s shade
there’s no such thing
as a stranger.”

Kobayashi Issa

02 Own idea

Blossom by Day

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.”

William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

03 After Jacques-Louis David, 1801

Crossing the Alps

“Character is destiny.”

Heraclitus

04 After the Hubble Space Telescope

Pillars of Creation

“We are made of star-stuff.”

Carl Sagan, Cosmos

05 Own idea

Lamplight

“Wanderer, there is no road;
the road is made by walking.”

Antonio Machado, Campos de Castilla

06 Own idea

Black Hole

“And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

07 After Michelangelo, about 1512

The Creation of Adam

“Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.”

Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism

08 After NASA’s maps of the Moon and the Earth

Luna and Terra

“We came all this way to explore the Moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth.”

William Anders, Apollo 8

09 After the Spitzer Space Telescope

Cepheus B & C

“Look round at the courses of the stars, as if thou wert going along with them.”

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

10 After Thomas Cole, 1836

Destruction

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

George Santayana, The Life of Reason

11 Own idea

The Eye

“I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature

12 After the James Webb Space Telescope

N159

“One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

13 After the Ferrari F40, 1987

Hairpin

“As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.”

Seneca, Letters to Lucilius

14 Own idea

Midnight

“The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.”

Rabindranath Tagore, Fireflies

15 Own idea

Rose

“A thing isn’t beautiful because it lasts.”