Gold and black acrylic plotting | Generative art diary

I’m an artist and creative technologist. I write about generative art, code, creativity and other interconnected topics. You can expect a diary on Fridays sharing the things I’ve been working on. Thanks for joining me here. 💖

Hello!

Momentum and motivation has been returning this week, gratefully, and I have been doing lots of making.

Art-ing is weird because it’s so obviously pointless but also, not. I saw a friend on Tuesday evening and she said “don’t take this the wrong way… but I think it’s impressive how you keep going with it” and we laughed because it sounds like saying you’re “brave” for wearing a particular skirt or something.

Most of the time, continuing feels like the default option to me. I don’t really think about not doing it. Last week that wasn’t the case. Sometimes creativity (or inspiration, motivation, whatever else) comes in waves. I think there are cases where you just have to wait for it to come back. This time I felt more like powering through, working on some ongoing things (Christmas cards out next week!) and some new things and at some point it started to feel more natural again.

Things I’ve done this week

Gold and black acrylic plotter paintings

Working with physical materials is often a good way to stir the muse, who I think can get lost when you’re interacting only with a screen.

I took a trip to HobbyCraft and came home with black and gold acrylic paint. I started with some experiments on standard printer paper.

I wanted to see what happens with repetitive marks so I coded an SVG that just has a grid of lines in a few directions. I think there’s something to be said for the feelings I’ve been having and the repetition of these marks.

The paintbrush is coded to go over and pick up more paint at random intervals, so it creates areas of light (less paint) and dark (more paint).

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I love the contrast between the fact that every brush stroke is the same, but also every brush stroke is different.

I’m not sure when the idea to add gold over the top came up, but if you just start making stuff then inspiration comes.

This is absolutely dreaammmyy to me but it’s still just on printer paper as a test. That means that the paper buckles when it gets wet, you can see the wobbles in this picture:

I’ve been meaning to try pre stretching paper but, when I was in HobbyCraft, I noticed they have art boards. They’re more expensive than paper of course but I figured I would pay to not have to spend ages taping wet paper to a board and so I bought some oil and watercolour art boards to try.

I tried the oil one first and you can see how it doesn’t buckle at all.

However, I don’t love what it does to the texture of the finish, I don’t really like how it interacts with the textures in the paint strokes.

I moved right on to trying out the watercolour board.

This also has a texture but I prefer the aesthetic of it. It’s more organic.

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I made a video about creating this piece, which you can see on:
Instagram | Youtube | Tiktok

Watch video on Instagram

I’ve bought some medium to try thinning the paint to see what that does to the texture too!

Last up in this week’s experiments, I made one with circular marks instead of lines.

In the black layer, every circle is exactly the same in the svg. I did take the paint refill away towards the end, creating that very light area in the bottom third-ish. I was kind of surprised how long it kept painting consistently though! The darker circles in that area are where I let it have some more paint.

When it came to the gold layer, I tried a few different things as the plot went on. I set the circles to be a bit smaller at first and used a much smaller paintbrush. Then around a quarter of the way through I recoded the SVG so that each circle was only drawn in part, and switched to a wider paint brush.

I also ended up going back over the top section with the wider brush.

Near the bottom of this piece is the most interesting to me, with the light repetitions of the black circles, partially covered with the gold semi circles.

I have the process of this one all filmed as well so I’ll get that edited next week so you can see it develop.

I am planning to have some of these (or whatever they develop into) available to purchase, and the experiments continue.

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Art memes lol

I also made a joke video this week about plotting. Maybe you will find it funny.

You can watch it on:

Instagram | Tiktok

That’s all, thanks again for joining me!

I’ll leave you with this shot of some painty tape and I’ll see you here next week.

Amy ⭐