My robot and I paint a lot of portraits. This first portrait is one I did of my son at a “Prince and Princess Party.” It has almost 50,000 strokes and took more than 24 hours to paint. For those of you who are unfamiliar with my art robot, Zanelle, she is a machine I built to paint with a brush on flat surfaces. In the case of this portrait, the surface was a stretched canvas. A link to a you tube video of her painting can be found in the navigation menu.
This is my favorite portrait to date. Not sure why, but I think it is because of its subtlety. The colors are soft and well mixed, something very hard to control when painting with a robot. Elements of the painting are pointillistic, while other parts are cross-hatched. This too is an effect that is very hard to achieve with the robot. All in all I never know how my work will turn out until after my robot is about half way through painting it. And that is about 12 hours after it has started. There are simply too many uncontrollable variables when dealing with a robot, wet paint, and a brush on canvas.
The reason I enjoy portraits is that I am constantly tinkering with and adjusting Zanelle. Whenever I change something whether it be software of hardware, I need to do test paintings. Portraits prove to be the best tests. I am not sure why, but maybe it has something to do with how difficult they are and the technical requirements of achieving likeness.
For example, just about any robot can be equipped to make random marks on a canvas and the creator can call the resulting artifact art. But how many robots do you know of that can paint a portrait on stretched canvas with a brush and wet paint. I know of a couple that can paint portraits with a magic marker, and of millions that can with jets of ink (think of your printer). But the control and challenges presented by making a robot paint with brush on canvas is rare. I have only found a couple other. So as I improve my version of a painting robot, I have found setting the testing benchmark on accurate and emotional portraits to be very useful.
One more portrait. Not sure whether or not this next portrait is a self portrait. It is of me, but like most my work it was painted by my robot. On a side note, I am not even sure if it is a painting. Perhaps it is a print. It has brush strokes, but none were done by a human hand. Anyways, I just entered it into a juried art contest for paintings of self-portraits.
I wonder if it will even be considered.
Pindar
