Two years making daily art

April 14, 2017 5:15 AM

Making Things is a page of pulsing, shimmering geometrical animations and designs made with Processing. The artist, Saskia Freeke, has also written a thoughtful article about making daily artwork.
posted by Wolfdog (7 comments total)

People who follow through and stick with projects are amazing.
Sure wish I were one more often.
posted by DigDoug at 6:53 AM on April 14, 2017 [4 favorites]

She's definitely gotten better over time, which is really fun to see. I've decided to name some

That little thing that pops up on video games to let you know autosave is saving
germs
microsoft vaporwave
slowdancing worms
golf
brady bunch theme song
posted by FirstMateKate at 9:32 AM on April 14, 2017 [1 favorite]

It wasn't until I started working in Processing that I learned how completely beautiful and versatile sine waves are.
posted by Sreiny at 10:19 AM on April 14, 2017

Also, it's always refreshing to see artists with strong aesthetic sensibilities work in creative coding like we see here. The code behind these animations aren't generally particularly complex, but they look good and are interesting. A lot of the time the complexity and beauty of the code holds weight over the final visual outcome. That's why a lot of the Processing work can kind of look the same. She does a good job.
posted by Sreiny at 10:22 AM on April 14, 2017

These are cool!
posted by carter at 11:24 AM on April 14, 2017

The habit of Making A Thing Every Day is a good one to have. I had something similar for most of four and a half years, when I'd work on my graphic novel pretty much every day, and usually manage to finish two pages every week. I haven't had it for the past year and a half; the combination of a colossal page that took six months to draw coinciding with a death in the family, and then moving to non-drawing tasks (running a Kickstarter to print it, printing it, shipping it) destroyed that habit.

I miss it a lot. I'm trying to rebuild it now that spring is here. It's hard, especially since I'm still not completely done with the non-drawing stuff for that book.

I hope this woman gets to keep on having her habit for a good while longer. I find I'm a lot saner when I have this kind of habit.
posted by egypturnash at 2:11 PM on April 14, 2017 [1 favorite]

I started doing something like this last November with sketching: the Pokemon Art Challenge. It feels good to start my day by making art.
posted by WizardOfDocs at 2:59 PM on April 14, 2017