Looking Outwards 06- Section A

Kaitlyn Chow

I was inspired by Tyler Hobbs’s watercolor paintings that I found in his article “How to Hack a Painting.” I specifically looked at his piece Linear II (Welcome Back) which looks like watercolor. I thought his piece was really cool because he had to use a lot of intentional layering and calculations to get that watercolor effect but he also used a bit of randomness to keep it interesting.

His artistic senses are really shown because watercolor is very flowy. This contrasts from coding on a computer where everything is defined and it seems hard to get it flowly. However, watercolor is usually slightly random because the paint flows and spreads based on the water and the paper.

For the main shape, he makes rough edges by including very tiny details. So, it appears to be textured. Combining these with a low opacity, it creates the edges that give the signature watercolor effect.

It is interesting because he described how there is, “a lot of carefully applied randomness in these [pieces].” So, he artfully sprinkles randomness in his paintings so that we would see something different each time.

Here is the link to the piece:
Linear II (Welcome Back), 2017, Tyler Hobbs