I snapped some pictures of a beautiful bull thistle on the Great Eclipse Camping Trip of 2017. Bull Thistle is not an Oregon native, it is an import from Eurasia. You see it all over the place here though. I have always found this plant to be absolutely stunning. Everything about it. The crazy spiky / hairy leaves and stem, the pineapple-looking flowers and the shock of purple hair which sticks out of the flowers - these guys are an Alien Invader with a capital ALIEN for sure. They make my tentacles vibrate. Alien pride. Represent.
I have mentioned on here a few times that I have been playing around with the Deep Dream Generator lately.
Bit of shameless self promotion - my best-earning post to date is a piece of art partially made with the Deep Dream Generator - check it out! We are still in the payout period! LOL
I bring this up here because I have made a few images with the Deep Dream Generator using some of these thistle pictures as both a style and as a starting image:
Thistle Playground
Thistle Playground - Carl Nash
For the Thistle Playground image I trained the neural network in the style of a picture I took of a playground near my house and applied that to a starting image of the thistle. Here is the picture of the playground that I used as the style:
Thistle Wave
Thistle Wave - Carl Nash
For the Thistle Wave image I started with a public domain picture of a wave from Wiki Commons and trained the neural network in the style of the thistle. Here is the original wave image:
