Circles within Circles

Inspired by an article in Computer Arts - a must have subscription for me.

Technique:

Wow, where to start, this picture is almost nothing but technical stuff.

Firstly, the golden frame. Build it using simple lines and curves. Make ovals and slice arcs out of them for curved lines. Hand-draw if you can! Use bezier curves if you understand them. Then select the whole piece and apply your chosen 3D technique. There are many of them, the simplest is simply to bevel it.

Secondly, each of the circles has some component within it. At this resolution it is kind of hard to see, but there is a lot of detail in there. Paint, draw, filter, munge, process and twiddle (those *are* technical terms!). Finally, adjust the opacity to give a little taste of what lies underneath.

Thirdly, take the whole framework and make a drop shadow of sorts. This is not your reqular drop shadow effect, which starts from the edges of the object and fade outwards. This is the whole object converted to black, blurred and then reduced in opacity to give the "shadow on a wall" effect.

Fourthly, the background also includes samples of the same metal framework at different sizes and rotations.