Code

I create most of the images on joebartholomew.com by combining programming, drawing, and mathematics in critical places. For conceptualizing, coding can work as well as drawing. I paint and draw, but I write code to create drawing tools. I use these tools in a browser to make digital art, sometimes generating archival inkjet prints, sometimes transferring the images to paintings.

Starting with a small set of graphic functions, I have created and am gradually enhancing an eccentric digital drawing system. Dependent on linear and trigonometric functions, and always influenced by programmatic constraints, I create graphic tools shaped by simple geometry. Through explorative sketching and coding I design tools to generate unit images which are repeated, twisted, scaled, and morphed. I create digital drawings rendered through a conventional selection and adjustment process just like traditional drawing except in the tool set I use. Tool and media selection determine a direction for the concept, and rendering reveals whether the concept is any good.

The code I write rarely predetermines the result. I write functions for tools that I can use over and over, seldom programs that spit out a whole drawing from code. The functions aren't meant to generate whole images independently except as a demonstration of what might be possible. Decision making happens during the rendering as much as the design and coding of the tool set.

I make available not only the functions I create and use in drawing, but also the code I write because I'd like coding to be considered a part of the creative process serving drawing. Appreciating the code is akin to having an interest in a certain printmaking technique.

I've explored the act of making a mark on paper or canvas, the actual stroke from start to finish, a splat or dab or drag of a pen along a straight edge. Attempting to break the action down, code it so it can be mimicked with a mouse or plot points, testing and refining the code has become as much a part of the art for me as drawing.

If "Music is sort of mathematics that you can hear," (Jean-Benoît Dunckel), then this art is sort of math you can see.