Processing is wrapping up and it's time to think about a final proposal. A part of me wants to discover new horizons beside my obsession of drawing tools but my heart is telling me to stick with my first love and continue on doing something interesting with a drawing palette. I've been fascinated by the brush strokes of the great impressionists , Monet, Rembrandt, Van Gogh.. I would like to continue investigating a way to mimic their greatness in a program. This time around I would like to play with the idea of SELF PORTRAITS in art. It is one thing to be able to paint like Van Gogh but wouldn't it be great if you could make your own "self portrait" in Van Gogh's brush strokes?
My proposal is to create a program that would mimic Van Gogh's brush strokes that would let the user paint their own face on the canvas.
This project will be consisting of multiple steps. First of all the processing sketch that will be working with a webcam to record the user's portrait. Once the picture is taken the user can start with a blank canvas and by moving his/her tool on the canvas, the portrait will become visible to the eye, Voila! You have your self portrait done by Van Gogh :)
Another step that I am thinking of is to actually use a canvas on the wall and by using video mapping and projection, make the portrait look like it's on an actual painting hang on the wall. This can be done in real time by the user actually painting on the canvas or by a remotely projected surface other than the location that is created. I have to figure that one out for now but first and for most I have to figure out how to make the palette work.
For the processing sketch probably what I would need is to come up with a way to recognize the facial traits. So the end product becomes more of a professional work rather than taking all of the pixels and making them go in one direction.
If I can manage to create couple of different palettes to work, that way I can control where I want them to be generated. For example using spiral strokes around the eyes, linear strokes around the shoulders and maybe random strokes for the hair?
This will be my first step towards the project, coming up with the processing sketch that will be creating these strokes. I have couple of ideas on that, we'll see how it goes.