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Underwater wave photo with Celtic knot overlay

I’ve been playing about with paint-shop pro again and taking some of my old sketches and trying manipulate them and see what I can do.  Tonight I used a sketch I did a couple of years back when I was on a flight back from Vegas after a conference.   ’The fantastic 4′ movie was on (total rubbish), I couldn’t sleep and was properly hung over, the buffet champagne breakfast is a stupid idea.  Some fatty business guy had slipped off his shoes and bagged most of the row of seats.  I really wanted to sleep but couldn’t, so I drew a wave knot for most of the long flight home. 

The idea I had was to put a Celtic knot within a knot, I did the drawing in a little A5 notebook, so it’s a pretty tight space to work in.  

Knot in a knot sketchbook photo

1. I took my ‘3 simple curls design’ and drew it out with nice fat bands. 
2. I then divided these bands into 3 and marked dots at equal intervals along the 3 lines within the original knot.  This formed the grid for the inner knot. 
3. I applied a simple repeating unit to this grid to form a network within the knot.  I counted up the number of units to make sure it would be a single line.
4. I thickened the network of the inner knot and the outer lines of the ’super’ knot
5. I tried out interlacing but it wouldn’t work… why? 

By now it’s like 6am and I’ve been up for 20 hours of something stupid like that!

It didn’t work because the thickened lines forming the ’super’ knot edges are not a single or continuous entity entangled with the inner knot.  To the single knot it’s just like having random short lines crossing it’s network.  This means when you come to interlace the knot there’s not an equal number of overs and unders so you get interlacing errors.  Doh.  Oh well still looks pretty cool, I was still happy with the design, it looks complex and has a nice shape. 

I was thinking the inner knot could be painted like the foam that colours the face of a wave when a second wave breaks closer to the shore than the first.  Patterns within patterns kind of thing.

Anyway the paint shop work I did was as follows:

1. Photo the sketch
2. Adjust lightness and contrast
3. Airbrush out some shadows and unwanted pencil marks
4. Reduce to grey scale
5. Re adjust contrast
6. Paste as layer over a random picture I took from under a breaking wave (at Putsborough… AKA slush-borough)
7. Deformed the layer to make bigger
8. Set to about 50% opacity
9. Made the layer a ‘burn’ layer

I think it has a quite nice smokey effect… will probably try and make some other effects soon, it’s been fun using this old design… it took me away from a pretty rubbish flight I suppose that’s the beauty of pencil and paper over paint shop pro!!

Negative sketch of Teahupoo barrel view celtic knotwork

Here’s a sketch I’ve been working on over the last week or so, it’s inspired by a photo by Jon Frank of the monster wave at Teahupoo.  It’s taken from inside the giant tube Mick Fanning is racing away from.  It’s a pretty awesome shot, I love the way the wave is curling over and completely joins up with the spray from Fanning board.  I think the shot was taken up by Rip Curl or Billabong for an advert.

The knot in this sketch wasn’t really finalised, I didn’t resolve it to be continuouse or a single line, I really just wanted to try out a few different ideas the photo gave me. 

I’ve played with scale on the lines to give perspective and depth.  The sea heading off to the horizon I was playing with an arbitrary pattern when I made the network for the knot and then chose a rule for the crossing over points (which way the knot continued to lead or break).  The result looks quite computer generated, a bit like game graphics from the 80’s I think.  

I played about with the shot in paint shop pro adjusting the hue and saturation, lightness, contrast and then making the image negative.  The sketch original was done in coloured fine-liners.  You can see the steps I took in the sketch:

• Concept sketch
• Grid
• Network
• Line Fattening

Mick Fanning, Teahupoo, by Jon Frank

 I came across this photo in the Surfers Path Magazine, you can see more Jon Frank images here:

http://surferspath.com/photographer-folios/image_full/253/

Favorite quote from the artical:

“Most opportunities slip quickly away, but occasionally I will trap one in my little black box to keep.”

Best shot in the Folio is (in my humble opinion):

Silver Linings, Tahiti, by Jon Frank

It looks wild and stormy, I get the feeling the surfers alone in the elements.  It looks like a huge arena to be lost in!  Hmmm how much is a flight to Tahiti??  Still, I think this appeals because it invokes a feeling of what it’s like to be alone in a big stormy surf area, like a less than perfect but big ish day a Saunton, when there’s not many people out and you find yourself all alone. 

Like Tahiti, but cold, without the power and mushy.  Ok so not that much like Tahiti.

When I first launched my site someone asked me “what’s Algorithmic Art?  I’d like to click on that and hyperlink to a glossary”… well I don’t want to chuck someone out of my site and straight onto a wiki and a glossary is a bit dry to write… hence a blog!

OK, I’m going to talk briefly about maths, 1 paragraph, promise

An algorithm usually a mathematical expression referring to a sequence of steps to figure something out eg. working out the average (mean) of something…

1. add up all the data
2. divide by the number of data elements…

Now before I induce a coma, end of overly simple maths!

So it follows that algorithmic art is a sequence of steps to produce a piece of art.  Here’s a fundamental algorithm for drawing a Celtic tangle.

1. Create a grid
2. Join the dots on the grid to form a network
3. Check that no more than 2 line cross at any point
4. (optionally) check the knot is good, ie forms 1 line or has a long path with ‘no rings’ or short loops
5. Draw lines in parallel with the network lines (leaving gaps near the intersections)
6. Remove the network lines
7. Interlace the knot lines

Simple.  As each step is completed in turn the picture is revealed to the artist as much as the artist is creating it.

There are additional steps that can be applied to this process to create different designs… in time I’ll blog on these I’m sure!!

In the art world an Algorithmist (or algorithmic artist) is someone who creates art from a computer process often involving pseudo random variables (numbers generated by the computer which are very nearly random).  I would argue actually Algorithms are prevalent in art (and many human activities) … maybe it’s fair to say some other examples of Algorithms in art are:

• Photo stencilling: Take photo, cut stencils, choose colours, paint
• Wood carving: 2D design, mark outer edges of wood, cut in (along grain?), fine carving, sanding, varnish
• Impressionist painting: all strokes small and in same direction?
• Young British Artists:  think of outrageous idea, produce art, get response, if outrageous enough continue at step 2, else go-to step 1  (If Data off star trek was a Young British Artist ;-))

Perhaps these are techniques rather than algorithms???  To me an algorithm is a way of describing a mathematical technique to manipulate the world around us.  So why not describe art methods as Algorithms?