Not sure why I chose to do a painting of Jesus with my painting robot. I have been doing a lot of portraits recently, and his face just came to mind. I love how there was a Shroud of Turin like quality to the painting as it was being made. The video above compresses about 12 hours of my robot painting into 20 seconds. You can watch the image of his face as it began to appear on the canvas. At points it is just a phantom image, until finally the face becomes clearer and clearer. I am regularly recording the entire painting process with a camera suspended right above the paint brush. I plan on including the movies with the painting on any purchase.
Above is my most recent painting. A pop art portrait of Jelly Roll Morton as a Teenager. It is a large piece (62″x52″). It is currently for sale on ebay and comes with free framing if you are interested.
Kenny is a 44″x35″ (9 framed canvas 14″x11″ canvases) robot painting that I have been working on for the past week. I am doing more and more portraits these days. Also, I am doing larger and larger scale work. This painting took my robot 4 days to paint. Keeping the paint wet was the challenge. If you are interested in a large scale modern portrait, drop me an email at pindar@pindar.org.
One of the most popular subjects for paintings by Zanelle, my painting robot, is famous robots from popular culture.
C-3PO Triptych, 40″x16″, Acrylic on Three Canvases
Though not as popular as R2-D2 paintings, C-3PO definitely has his fans. This painting was made by my painting robot using a scan algorithm. All strokes are perfectly vertical. this piece has been on exhibition at the Corcoran alongside a similar R2-D2 piece that sold. All my art work is for sale, of course. Check out my online store (link in the sidebar) for purchase information…
Below are a couple of recent portraits made by my painting art robot Zanelle. Unlike the typical art robot, she is capable of representational imagery. She paints with a brush on canvas. A video of her painting can be seen at www.vanarman.com or in the links tab on this page. The robot and I paint portraits for $200 a face. Email me if you are interested in one.
The first painting below is of a couple getting married.
Below is a present for a wife.
And below is a portrait commissioned by a father for his son.
I just finished with an interview about my art robot for an international television show. It was an interesting experience. I have done interviews before, but rarely do the interviewers seem to get what I am doing. These guys really did.
Anyways one of the things that they asked me to do before the interview is demonstrate how my robot paints portraits. They suggested an image of Einstein. Below is one of three samples I made for the feature. It is 12×16 on stretched canvas…
I will post the other two portraits later. They are of the same image with different brushstrokes. Below are some pictures of the production and crew in my studio. My studio has never been cleaner…
Anyways, I will post details and a link to the feature once I get it from the producers. You never know how you will be portrayed in media until you see the actual story, and it is always interesting to see what people think about you.
I am just posting some pictures of my robots latest R2-D2 portrait. The first picture was taken after Zanelle, my painting robot had been working for about an hour.
This next picture was taken at around the 8th hour.
And this final picture is of the completed painting.
This R2-D2 portrait took about 12 hours to complete.
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.
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.
Art and Robots 