Pollock-Style Process

Overview

This animation reimagines the energetic gestures found in Jackson Pollock’s work through a system of movement driven by variation and repetition. I was interested in the idea of a brush moving freely in space not with randomness alone but with structure buried in each line’s behavior. The strokes in this image appear to move as if guided by intent, twisting slightly as they lengthen, never quite repeating the same gesture twice. It captures the feeling of momentum and friction, like paint dragged across an invisible surface.

The idea began with a question: what happens if each mark is not just placed but unfolds over time, turning and accelerating as if it had a will of its own? I wanted the code to simulate motion, not just position. Each brush stroke is born with its own angle, speed, and slight rotation. Some bend gently, others stay rigid, and each selects a color from a defined palette before tracing its path. The final composition grows from the accumulation of these evolving movements.

To model this, I assigned every line a starting position sampled uniformly in a range centered at the origin. The initial angle is chosen from the interval zero to two pi. At each frame, the new x and y values are computed using cosine and sine functions: xₙ = xₙ₋₁ + cos(θ) × s and yₙ = yₙ₋₁ + sin(θ) × s, where s is the step size. A curvature term is added to θ so the angle evolves across frames: θₙ = θₙ₋₁ + c, with c drawn from a small set of values including 0, 0.005, and −0.01.

Color is sampled from a set palette, and stroke thickness is selected from a uniform distribution between 0.2 and 1.8. The evolving lines are plotted using Matplotlib and saved with Pillow as a 150-frame GIF. Even though the system is governed by formulas, the result carries an expressive spontaneity. Each frame becomes a moment in a longer gesture, and the math works like invisible gravity, subtle but constant, beneath the entire piece.