Sketching Piet Mondrian’s Artwork with Processing 3 (IDD631)

Last week, we learned how to interpret abstract pieces of artwork and tried to recreated it using sketching skill that we learned using Processing 3. The in-class workshop was to recreate the artwork called Piet Mondrian’s “Composition with Color Planes III.” on Processing 3 using Java.

Piet Mondrian’s “Composition with Color Planes III”.

In the workshop, we worked together to come up with the algorithm that creates random rectangles and colors (pink, purple and yellow). By using two-dimensional for loop and if-else conditions, we had created the sketching that closes to the original artwork, but it wasn’t good enough.

In-class workshop sketching

From the initial code that we wrote for the workshop, I continued to improve the sketch to look alike to the original Piet Mondrian’s artwork as much as I can. Firstly, I removed strokes of the rectangles. Then, I create a noise that looks random. The noise itself will make the sketch more realistic and similar to the original. I use the same method (2-dimentional for loop) to create noises. Also, I use the random function to create a random noise color, width, and height. The code will generate tiny rectangles on the screen.

Here is my result:

Here is my code:

void setup()
{
 size(1000,800);
 background(255);
 color pink = color(242,169,180);
 color yellow = color(208,157,39);
 color purple = color(168,172,210);
 // 12 pink rects, 12 purple rects, 6 yellow rects
 // 5 rects per column
 // 5–7 rects per row
 rectMode(CENTER);
 noStroke();
 // drop rects for 5 rows
for(int i=0;i<5;i++)
 {
 // draw out row
 int rectsPerRow = (int)random(5,7);
 int rowSpace = height/4;
 int colSpace = width/rectsPerRow;
 for(int j=0;j<rectsPerRow;j++)
 { 
 //noiseDetail(8,0.65);
 int x = 0;
 int y = 0;
 int w = 0; // w = width
 int h = 0; // h = height
 x = j*colSpace;
 y = i*rowSpace;
 int maxWidth = colSpace;
 int minWidth = colSpace/3;
 int maxHeight = rowSpace;
 int minHeight = rowSpace/3;
 w = (int)random(minWidth,maxWidth);
 h = (int)random(minHeight,maxHeight);
 float colorPick = random(0,5);
 if(colorPick<2)
 {
 fill(purple);
 }
 else if(colorPick<4)
 {
 fill(pink);
 }
 else fill(yellow);
 rect(x,y,w,h);
 
 // add noise into each rect 
 //rectMode(CORNER);
}
}
 
 //Create Noise
 for (int k=0;k<width;k++) 
 {
 for (int l=0;l<height;l++) 
 {
 fill(random(200,255), random(200,255), random(200,255), 15); // gray color noise with 15 value alpha
 float noiseWidth = random(0,4);
 float noiseHeight = random(0,4);
 rect(k, l, noiseWidth, noiseHeight);
 }
 }
save(“mondrian.png”);
}