Connecting the dots | Generative art diary
Connecting the dots | Generative art diary
Graph-based art for nonsense enthusiasts
I write about generative art, code, creativity and other interconnected topics. You can expect a diary every Friday sharing what I’ve been working on, some things I’ve found interesting, and links to my longer articles. Thanks for joining me here. 💖
Hello!
It’s been another week of stuffing art in around the edges of my life. Having this newsletter has actually been proving very useful in forcing me to at least make some progress every week so I have something to show you.
The next couple of weeks should be a little better and allow some time for explorations into new projects. I have three exciting print/physicals things making their way through the idea → reality process, and I’ll be dedicating time this weekend to those, so I should have things to share on that next week!
In the meantime, here are some…
Things I’ve done this week
I rolled out handwriting into another diagram style - the graphs. These come in two styles. One has wobbly, data areas, like this…
And the other has bars like this…
The area style has been the most appealing to me lately, but perhaps the bars will re-emerge at some point.
Ever since creating the graphs, I’ve gone round and round a bit with how to use labels on them. These older examples (with the earlier handwriting style) show a few things I’ve tried.
I like the horizontal dotted lines, but I’ve been thinking I’d like to keep all the diagrams in the same orientation (portrait) and, in that case, there is not really room to label horizontal lines to one side.
As an aside, I’m enjoying how different the newer WIPs feel compared to those older ones. The handwriting changes the vibe a lot of course, but also the small alterations to the quality of the lines are having quite an impact on the overall effect. There’s also a consistency that’s developed across all the different diagram styles which is making me very happy.
Back to the labels - most recently I’ve been experimenting with including named axes, and labelling a few specific points on the graph lines.
I think this is effective, although I need to do some more work to make sure the labels always feel well placed, and to better align the label words with the label lines.
This “debug mode” image shows the collision points and areas which are currently in use. You can see it’s already deleting quite a few potential labels (marked with red collision points) which would have been placed awkwardly over the graph itself, collided with another label, or gone off the edge of the canvas.
So it’s 90% of the way there, there are just a few scenarios currently where labels look a bit awkward. I need to fine tune the alignment between the labels and their lines, and the way collisions are detected.
The label code is also used in several other places, like the segmented circles, so I need to be careful not to mess up how it looks elsewhere. This is a common theme for this project, due to the number of elements being reused across quite different outputs.
Another thing I came across this week was this cool straight line effect, which showed up when I made a small error turning the lines into shapes.
Might keep it as an option. The bugs → features pipeline is strong.
Things I’ve enjoyed this week
Loving the textures on Matthijs Keuper’s blobby acrylic paint experiments, where he’s using a solder dispenser to apply heavy amounts of paint while plotting.
Eerie atmospheric paintings by Rob Evans. Particularly ‘Refuge’ caught my attention.
I’ve only just started it, but I’ve already found Make Art or Die Trying by Stuart Semple has provided some good moments of inspiration. (I heard about the book via Daniel Catt)
That’s it, thanks again for joining me!
I’ll leave you with this close up of an embroidery I made years ago, and I’ll see you here next week.
- Amy ⭐
These are beautiful! The bar graph WIPs remind me of the a city skyline. Well cone! Have enjoyed watching this collection take shape