2-19 new feature: space toggles auto draw so you don't cramp your fingers during long sessions :) *Featured* 2-18-2021 HUGE THANKS!! and totally unexpected. It was my mom's 70th birthday yesterday, she taught me this technique almost 40 years ago. I told her about this project, the feature, all the "Happy Birthday"s and she was very grateful as am I! It will be a bit before I can see and respond to messages, getting so many so quickly! This is a program for drawing with dots. 1- click to draw loosely with black dots, randomly filling the page 2-when/if you see an image appear in the dots stop drawing for 2 seconds then click the button that appears and the pen will switch to finer dot control. Refine the image you see 3- pressing C cycles between black, grey, and white dots Tips.. Don't expect to see an image form in the dots every time or for every drawing to go well. If you don't like how it is going just restart. I like to spread some dots out loosely then build a few randomly placed clusters up before even trying to see anything. It is much quicker using a computer but you can do this anywhere with just a piece of paper and a pencil or pen. how I got my drawings back into the project: I use a free app (Irfanview) to get a screen shot with my project in Full Screen view, then I crop my screen shot just inside the edges of the stage and save the cropped image. Next I import the image into Scratch and convert it to an svg. Then I hold own Alt while dragging a corner outward to resize the image. It won't fit perfectly, a little will have to hang over the edges but it still works really well! Try an experiment, complete the 1st step of spraying out some dots then get other people to look. When I tried it was funny, everyone saw something very clearly and very different :D If there is really nothing but dots and we are all seeing something different in them where do you think the image you see in the dots comes from? The subconscious? If I really, really want a bowl of ice cream does that increase the chance of seeing ice cream in the picture? Lots to ponder if you are so inclined. If you get enough of a detailed drawing finished a funny thing can happen where you spray dots over an area and it just seems to fill in texture almost like magic. Something tells me this could be useful in other art projects.. hmmm.. Definitions.. Pointillism: is an art technique in which small, distinct dots are applied in patterns to form an image. Pareidolia: is the tendency for incorrect perception of a stimulus as an object, pattern or meaning known to the observer. Common examples are perceived images of animals, faces, or objects in cloud formations, or lunar pareidolia like the Man in the Moon or the Moon rabbit. Ever seen an inkblot test? The concept of pareidolia may extend to include hidden messages in recorded music played in reverse or at higher- or lower-than-normal speeds, and hearing voices (mainly indistinct) or music, in random noise such as that produced by air conditioners or fans. Pareidolia was at one time considered a symptom of psychosis, but it is now seen as a normal human tendency. Scientists have taught computers to use visual clues to "see" faces and other images. (definitions from the Wiki) Here is something interesting I found while making this project. All my life I explained this technique the way it was explained to me, "you start by covering a page with random dots." So when I had the idea to code it, that was what I did, I made a sprite go to random positions and stamp a single dot. Then I noticed something very strange, the technique didn't work!?! No matter ho many times I restarted I never saw any pictures begin to form, it was always just static. Which makes mathematical sense, a sprite that goes to random positions is more or less evenly filling in the entire screen over time. But when you use a pen or pencil to do this you THINK you are placing random dots but in reality the dots are grouped around your hand position. That was the breakthrough, once I edited the code to draw in clusters around the mouse cursor rather than randomly the Pareidolia effect kicked in and I began to see images in the dots. So it turns out the "random" placement of dots was never truly random at all.
