Author: tma9433

How are you planning to incorporate random elements into your work?

I really like how I incorporated randomness into my own work. I feel like making my art project have random color and shapes makes it more visually appealing and it makes it look more vibrant. In my lighthouse project, I integrated random stroke weights and colors in the background to represent how light dynamically illuminates the beach. This randomness supports the theme, but too much in my opinion could make the artwork unclear. While randomness adds energy, some structure is needed to keep the message strong or else it becomes too overwhelming.  

Where do you feel is the optimum balance between total randomness and complete control?

The best balance between randomness and control depends on how much structure is needed to keep the artwork clear while still feeling dynamic. In my lighthouse piece, I use random stroke weights and colors to show how light spreads, but I keep the lighthouse itself structured to maintain focus. Too much randomness would make the image chaotic, while too much control would make it feel lifeless. Casey Reas’ Eyeo talk supports this idea, explaining that rigid systems become static, while too much chaos loses meaning. For me, the key is using randomness in a way that adds energy without taking away from the main idea.

Concept:

For my art project, I wanted to try and incorporate some of the material we learnt from the previous assignment. So I tried to make an art project where a part of it is moving randomly and has random color, while the rest of it is still. I implemented this using for and while loops for the most of it.

When I started looking for inspirations, I tried to think of something that I like. So in the end I decided on doing a simple lighthouse because i like the beach:

Although I had a picture for inspiration I tried to make my drawing more vibrant and colorful to represent how the lighthouse lights up the whole beach:

Code highlight:

I used for loops to create the outlines for the red and white stripes in the lighthouse, where the arc decreases per a specific distance. And when it came to the lines in the background, i made the code so that it chooses a random color and strokeWeight from a specific range. I tried to make that using a while loop so that the background does not become overwhelming and continue forever, so i set it to run till a maximum frame.

if (currentFrames < maxFrames) {
    // draws lines while under maxFrames
    let i = 0;
    while (i < 5) {
      // random color with transparency
      stroke(random(150, 255), random(150, 255), random(150, 255), 150);
      strokeWeight(random(1, 3));

      let x1 = random(width);
      let y1 = random(height);
      let x2 = random(width);
      let y2 = random(height);

      line(x1, y1, x2, y2); // draw a random line

      i++; // increment loop counter
    }
    currentFrames++;
  } else {
    background(180, 220, 255); // reset the canvas
    currentFrames = 0; // restart the frame counter
  }

Reflection and future improvement:

At first I tried to make the waves move but I couldn’t figure out how to make it have that illusion of it going back and forth so instead I decided to keep it and make the whole painting more vibrant by making the outlines of all the shapes have random colors as well.

 

 

Concept:

For my first assignment I tried to make a self portrait of myself by implementing different functions we learnt in class like ellipse, rect, fill etc. but I also tried to add new functions that I discovered like push, pop and rotate to make it easier to create a different variety of shapes. My inspiration for the self portrait was my iconic ‘eyebrows raise face’ because I thought it would be funny. I made the overall color scheme of the portrait to be grey so that it reflects the emotion shown on the face. 

I first tried to figure out what shapes would best fit the idea I had on my sketch, and from that I started by creating the face and hijab around my head:

Even though I had a specific idea at first, I had to adjust a lot of things so that it worked in the end, like when it came to the hijab. At first i just made it into an ellipse but found that i couldn’t layer the bangs with it so in the end i figured that making it have noFill and increasing the strokeWeight still creates the effect I wanted:

Code Highlight:

When it came to the lips in my portrait I tried to make a realistic lip shape by overlapping the ellipses and triangles to create the shape I wanted. It was particularly hard as i had to adjust the points specifically so that it created the shape i wanted:

//lips
push();
noStroke();
fill(255, 105, 120);
ellipse(195, 250, 15, 8);
ellipse(205, 250, 15, 8);
triangle(218, 255, 211, 247, 200, 252);
triangle(190, 253, 193, 245.5, 181, 254);
ellipse(200, 255, 16, 10);
triangle(190, 248, 195, 259, 181, 254);
triangle(210, 250, 205, 259, 219, 255);
pop();

Reflection and ideas for future work or improvements:

My sketch had basic shapes so I was limited to specific shapes, I could have attempted to make complex shapes from the sketch. But at the same time there were alot of things I could have done in a much simpler way, like when it came to placing and rotating the bangs, i had to play around with the numbers to get it to where i wanted it to be, so i think finding an easier way to do that would benefit me in the future for my other assignments.