Simili

Program, Krita and MyPaint brush engines, gestures generated or recorded with a stylus – digital images, variable dimensions
2026– (ongoing)

Simili is ongoing research into the painter’s gesture. A program holds the brush: it decides on the path of a stroke, but also on its speed, the pressure and the tilt of the stylus. These gestures are then handed to the brush engines of painting software such as Krita, built to respond to a hand.

Some gestures are built from scratch, after a model of handwriting. Others are my own, recorded with a stylus, then replayed identically by hundreds of brushes. As with an unfamiliar instrument, I practise scales: test cards, where the same sheet passes from one brush to the next, colour tests, watercolours where pressure alone makes the grey.