Nocturne

2006

24” x 47”

Brushstrokes: 12,569

Nocturne, an acrylic painting by Paul Kirby

A rare thing to see from painting robot Dulcinea – a piece of art that is representational and not abstract. This moody vista came to be as an homage to Turner, Whistler, Monet by Katherine A. Lochnan, a book that explores the relationship between the style and artistic mindset of these three great painters. The usage of light informs us that we are peering into the dark as we enter the world of the painting.

Nocturne by Paul Kirby

All This Math

Each element of the painting (waves, mountains, sky, and clouds) was mathematically created with a three-dimensional wire-mesh in a virtual world. The wire mesh was created using fractional Brownian motion (fBm), as was discussed in the “Yellow Pointillism” painting.

Paul wrote a 3-D graphics pipeline in Lisp, which allowed for transporting each element (such as water) from model-space, through world-space, camera-space and display-space to eventually robot-space.

Nocturne painting by Paul Kirby

Paul calculated the lighting and reflections with Lambert’s Law of light behavior. Finally, he removed rear-facing and obstructed surfaces.

A light source from behind the viewer’s left shoulder suggests the viewer is peering from the light into the dark to recreate the emotive effect of Whistler.