Procedurally Statemented

Not much on today, but I did write my statement for my procedural painting series. Yay me! I mashed all the thoughts into a wordy list  and for a first draft I made all the little letters line up into words. Luckily the words fell into basic sentences. Behold all the words......

Procedural Painting V1.0.4, Oil on canvas, 36 cm x 28 cm

Procedural Painting V1.0.4, Oil on canvas, 36 cm x 28 cm

Procedural Paintings.

The procedural process series is a series of works looking at the use of algorithms to produce art. The algorithm is primarily a computer based term and relates to the ideas of generative art. I use the algorithms to produce non-objective art devoid of artistic ego. My only input is in the design of the algorithm. The algorithm has grown to encompass mostly of the formal elements of 2d art, line, colour, shape, tone and opacity. The algorithm controls the placement and frequency of the elements. My role is only to follow the instructions supplied. The work is intentionally ambiguous in its meaning, but the themes within it refer to illusion of choice, information in the digital age, the data trails we leave and the concepts of emergence.

Procedural Painting V 3.1.2 (WIP), Oil on Board, 20" x 20"

Procedural Painting V 3.1.2 (WIP), Oil on Board, 20" x 20"


The variables in the algorithms are calculated using a series of dice roles, this has kept the process as analogue as possible. Each work has its own spreadsheet of data.

The process has become quite time-consuming so the actual process of calculating the variables is being encoded into a compute algorithm written by myself. The algorithm will only spit out the actual data to be used.  

Print-a-geddon

Well hello again. It's another post from me. The week has been a busy one, both art wise and life wise ( I say life and mean housework. I don't want to bore you with the details so I won't.) My main news is I have begun a series of test linocuts.  The response to which has been more than favorable.

Below is my print station. I would work in the cave but that means cleaning up my oil painting messes.....so the table wins. 

Printstation Zero.

I was hoping  to get more of the printing finished, but thats not how it worked out.  So I'll be getting that sorted this week. I have a few pieces of lino to use, and experiment with.  I'll try some portrait, landscape and more dice work. Oh I should say the prints below are based on a simple algorithm I devised. I'll just run off and get the fun spreadsheet. BRB!
 

The spreadsheet gives the DIRection of the line, the DIStance of the line and which linocutter should be used to cut the line. The numbers beside the DIR and DIS are dice that are to be used to calculate variable. STG means Stage, LYR means Lay…

The spreadsheet gives the DIRection of the line, the DIStance of the line and which linocutter should be used to cut the line. The numbers beside the DIR and DIS are dice that are to be used to calculate variable. STG means Stage, LYR means Layer. That probably doesn't help at all. Spreadsheets are fun!!

Below is a gallery of prints made by the algorithm (they are all the same linocut, but with different inks) 

In other news I made more paintings and kittens are still cute! I'll post the paintings tomorrow. 

Algorithmic Art

I want to try to explain once and for all what it is I’m doing with my Procedural Painting series. There is alot in the actual process of planning and creating the work and I have tried to write the rules of my algorithm down. The only part of the algorithm I have previously written down have been the tables I use. The tables are at the bottom of the ‘Pseudo code’.

Procedural Paintings the ‘pseudo code.’

Before we start on this please remember all of the random variables are calculated by rolling dice.

This is an example of the ‘code’ I have used for my paintings in version 2.0. Each version has a different set of coding rules. I have stripped back some of the complexity of the ‘code ’ because the first draft was horrible to look at and just unreadable.

The first thing is to decide how many paintings will be in the series version. For that I roll 1d6 ( I roll 1, 6 sided dice) and consult table 1. Then I roll the dice that has been chosen. That will decide the number of painting s in the series.

For V2.0 I decided to use coloured grounds on each of the canvases. So for each canvas I rolled 1d8 and went to table 2.

Each painting consists of Layers, Stages and Steps. The Steps have 3 sections to them:

  1. Direction -which can be either 4 points of movement or 8 (see table3)

  2. length – which is calculated using table 1 and rolling the specified dice for the value.

  3. Thickness of brush stroke – see table 4 details of each brush stroke, its length, direction and thickness.

The stages are either linked together or separated based on an odds evens roll. Each new start point for a stage is a random point on the border of the painting. At each new start point of a stage the opacity and tonal values of the paint is randomised.

When all the stages in a layer have been completed. A random number of rectangles, the size , opacity and tonal values of which have been randomised.

The next layer and its stages and steps are painted over this, and so on until the last step has been followed.

Over the course of a painting mistakes will happen, I might misread a line and paint a step right 5cms instead of left. If this happens I follow the steps to the end of the stage for both the mistake and the correct series directions. The mistake is dry-brushed to highlight it as different.

I hope that is manages to clear up some of the process. If you need more clarification then please ask away.

(edit- I added the image below and the tables lost their format, so I  took a screen shot instead.)

The image below has the tables referred to in the text.

The paintings below have been created using variants of the above algorithm. 

Smashing Times.

Yesterday was a bit adrenalin fueled. My trusty little car was given a hug by a HGV. By hug I mean it shunted me at the traffic lights, I'm grand, but I was so buzzing off adrenaline sleep was difficult to come by. 

Consequently I was bleary eyed and knackered today. I shuffled through the housework and flaked out. However being the heroic figure of a man I am I went into my clean Cave of Paint and bashed out a tasty slice of art. It's an abstract based on procedural process.

Here it is in stages.

 

  Boom. That is me for tonight. Stay roughly where you are.