Experiments to create digital painting tools, inspired by the styles of Willem De Kooning and Jackson Pollock
Self-directed
p5.js
Since my first year in college, I’ve been quite interested in the abstract expressionism art movement. The
process & outcome of action painters such as Jackson Pollock and Willem De Kooning always fascinated me.
Large gestures over a canvas, dropping / dragging paint using simple tools to create an emotionally
expressive piece of work.
I wondered whether the computer could create an expressive piece, if I enable it to make expressive gestures
on a canvas.
I initially started to break down the process of using paint with a flat rectangular brush.
A picture from my notebook, working out some calculations regarding the movement of a paintbrush.
Essentially, one decides a colour, puts the paintbrush at an angle on the canvas and drags it in a certain direction for some duration. This is what I tried to emulate on p5.js in some of my initial experiments.
A video of the initial experiment, with strokes starting from random positions being drawn for random lengths.
I also added some amount of transparency to the paint, since paintings are often made after layering strokes with different consistencies on top of one another.
A screen-recording from a piece called 'Laser Lights'.
I then realised that paintings with brushes or knives also involve rotation, i.e the painter rotates their wrist to put down a stroke, as opposed to just dragging it linearly. Adding rotation became the next pivot in my experiments.
Self-rotating brushes, with different speeds and random colours.
Another self-rotating brush, with the same colour and very low opacity.
Many self-rotating brushes, with colours derived from Jackson Pollock paintings.
At this point, I had created a system where tiny changes to the variables could lead to drastically different outcomes. For example, if I reduced the width of the 'brush' and let many brushes draw out, they resembled the texture of a pencil-hashed artwork.
2500 brush strokes simultaneously drawn at the same time, over 60 frames per second.
This is still an active area of enquiry for me and I'm exploring what other tools & movements could be translated into algorithmic processes.
(1/2) A couple inspired by Rothko paintings.
(2/2) A couple inspired by Rothko paintings.
Some action painting strokes.
A slight variance of the rotating algorithm, this time adding a blend mode to produce dark outputs.
Pollock painter.
4 screenshots showing different stages of the Pollock Painter painting.
A slight variation of the pencil-hashing program, making generative flowers.