I Spend 9 Months Developing An Algorithm That Can Draw

Almost one year ago I started working on drawing algorithms soon after that I opened an experimental design studio LinesLab that explores algorithmic art and robotics.

After about 9 months I finished a system that is capable of drawing in many different styles and allows to create a completely new style within a couple of minutes. The system automatically optimizes the drawings based on their size, used materials and the perceived similarity. Here are some results of the drawings I made with my pen plotter Karel. Each drawing is computed in just under one second and Karel between one or three hours to complete the drawings, depending on the drawing complexity, the drawing sped and the size of the drawing.

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This dashed style drawing is one of the more complex drawings. Each drawing consists of over 100 thousand individual lines. This one has over 120 thousand lines. Notice the texture of the fabric.

The mosaic style started as an experiment. I wanted to see what happens if I combine some of my styles. I like the result and included it in my system.

This style was the start of LinesLab. I wrote the code within 20 minutes to make the first drawing of Audrey Hepburn, and the result was quite good already. Later this style was the first that was integrated into the LinesLab system and the result was even better than the first time.

I am not a huge fan of the stippling style, I quickly added this style to the LinesLab system for a presentation for high school students. They loved it so much that I decided to keep it as a fixed style in the LinesLab system.

This is a little different version of the traditional halftone illustration. Each pixel does not change in size but in the number of lines that are drawn as a star.

Hatching is a very common technique in arts, so I just had to add this to my system as well.

I tried to do a different approach of the triangulation in this style. I was quite amazed how well the LinesLab system manages to bring out the small details.

I wondered how scalable the LinesLab system could be. So I tested the limits by making micro drawings. Each of those drawings is only 4x4 cm big. But I feel the results are quite convincing.

Again to test the scalability I made those tiny drawings as a tribute to La La Land.

Some styles that I made are too complex for Karel at the moment. This is one of those styles. A single line scribble drawing. I modeled this style after the results of my fellow researchers from Taiwan. But instead of using their code I let my system create the drawing.