Raw Silk Blue 44

Nothing in this print was drawn by hand. A grid of directions covers the page, one bearing for every point, made from Perlin noise. Thousands of simple particles are released into it. Each one follows the direction under it, takes a step and looks again. The particles have no memory, no goal and no awareness of one another.

Each particle leaves a trace too faint to see on its own, so every tone in the image is a count of how many times something passed through that spot. The dark threads are where the flow crowded together and the pale washes are where it thinned out. Layer by layer it builds up like a watercolour wash, until it looks like brushed silk or a river seen from the air.

No two compositions in the series are the same. Each one comes from its own seed, and the field's long channels and eddies decide where the threads gather, fold and cross.