On drawing with code
People imagine the computer does the drawing. It doesn’t. It does the repeating — tirelessly, exactly, two thousand times without complaint. The drawing itself still happens in my head, usually with a pencil, usually on the back of something else.
Every piece in the work section started as a hand-drawn grid. Drift Field was forty-six rows of dots pressed harder and softer. Half Moon Study was an afternoon of spinning cardboard tiles. The code arrives second, as a way of asking “what if this, but a thousand times, but slightly different each time?”
Seeds are sketches
A seed is a starting number that decides every chance event in a piece. Change the seed, change the artwork — same system, different weather. I keep a sketchbook full of nothing but seeds and one-line verdicts: too nervous, too calm, the one. Lattice went through thirty-one seeds before the streets felt like somewhere.
Knowing when to stop
The danger of generative work isn’t ugliness, it’s endlessness. There is always one more parameter to tune. My rule: when I catch myself admiring the system instead of the picture, the piece is done and I’m just procrastinating. Plot it, sign it, move on.
If you’re starting out, pick one shape and one rule. The Half Moon Study is four fates per cell and a coin-spin — and it outsells everything else in the studio. Constraint is the whole medium.