James Dalessandro

🌀 Filling the entire page with a single space-filling curve. 🌀 This is a generalized Hilbert curve, split every ~3500 mm to re-dip the marker so each segment fades out as it draws. Shout out to my friend @jimyuan_chen for the idea! Those fades start to reveal patterns in the curve that would otherwise be hidden. Can you follow the path through the piece? ------------------------------ Expansive Haunted Sea Of Sand 19" x 24" 🖋️ @tombowusa colorless marker ✒️ @rotringofficial ink 📝 Drawn with @idrawpenplotter @genmediaclub #generativeart #digitalart #penplotter #oddlysatisfying #inkdrawing

〰️ A system of quantized simplex noise. 〰️ This piece begins with simplex noise displacement, forced into a discrete vector field so the curvature resolves into stepped directional changes. Points that fall below a minimum displacement threshold are re-projected onto the original curves, which keeps some areas constrained while still allowing large scale deformation. The largest white spaces by area are colored. How much of the underlying algorithm feels visible in the final piece? ------------------------------ Great Gluttonous Fertile Land 19" x 24" 🖋️ @rotringofficial & @tombowusa ✒️ @robertostersignature ink 📝 Drawn with @idrawpenplotter @genmediaclub #generativeart #digitalart #penplotter #oddlysatisfying #inkdrawing

🟨🟩🩷 Circle packing under pressure starts to look a lot like crystalline metal structures! 🩷🟩🟨 Usually with circle packing, the goal is to make circles tangent to each other. But if you keep increasing the radius of each circle while constraining everything inside a boundary, different pattern phases start to emerge when you visualize the circle centers as a voronoi diagram. The circles slide and stick against each other under pressure, forming regions that shift between hexagonal arrangements, square grids, pentagonal strips, triangular clusters, and back again. The results look surprisingly similar to metal grain boundaries or crystal growth, with local structures forming and reorganizing as the system is compressed and relaxed. What’s especially interesting is that a simple pressure-based circle packing system can begin to visually echo metallurgical processes like quenching. If we advance the system into a new phase, then relax it slightly, larger chunks of ordered structure are able to form. This was simulated with Kangaroo physics in Grasshopper, building off work by Riccardo Majewski. Each cell was drawn as a tiny spiral, which left those little dots in the centers (which I love). Part of me thinks it looked better before the outlines were added, though. Can you see all the different cell types by color? There might be more than you think! ------------------------------ Compression Artifacts 19" x 24" 🖋️ @tombowusa markers ✒️ @rotringofficial ink 📝 Drawn with @idrawpenplotter @genmediaclub #generativeart #digitalart #plotterart #oddlysatisfying #inkdrawing

Automated Automata V1.0 by @jaymezd past webinar now FREE on YouTube! - ‼️Comment “More Webinars!” Below if you would like us to keep adding free webinars! - SOFTWARE USED: Rhino + Grasshopper - VIDEO LINK: https://youtu.be/cXSM0-D85A8 - Make sure to subscribe to our YouTube to stay notified when new videos drop: /DesignMorphine - #rhino3d #grasshopper3d #3dmodel #parametricdesign #cellularautomata

🟥🟪🟦 When two pixels overlap, a third image appears... 🔴🟣🔵 Another piece stemming from the same grains algorithm, but this time as a two-layer plot. The reddish pink layer runs horizontally, and the sky blue layer runs vertically, with each one driven by a different pixel configuration/simulation. Both simulations were paused and exported after 10 frames, and unlike the earlier checkerboard-based versions, these started from concentric circles. As the two plotted layers overlap, different regions build up different amounts of ink, producing shifts between pink, purple, and blue across the piece. This one depends a lot on overlap and density. ------------------------------ Upfront Advice’s Footsteps 19" x 24" 🖋️ @tombowusa markers 📝 Drawn with @idrawpenplotter @genmediaclub #generativeart #digitalart #penplotter #oddlysatisfying #inkdrawing

[Artist of the week #30] @jaymezd Meet James Dalessandro, a computational artist whose work is defined by the systems that create it. He designs rule-based algorithms for generative digital & physical art, often pen plotted. As he puts it: "The system is more important than the output." Explore his unique process! Read more: Link in Bio

👾 Somewhere between pixel sorting and compression artifacts... 💾 Another variation built from my Grains algorithm. I started with an 8-color palette and treated each pixel color as its own state, then mapped every state to a unique tile of horizontal lines. Different areas of the pixels were shifted, stretched, and compressed using a mix of 1-layer Moore neighborhood, 16-direction neighborhood, and 2-layer Moore neighborhood rules. After that, adjacent segments were joined into longer continuous paths to make the drawing more efficient for pen plotting. Total plot time was about 5 hours! I like how different regions follow different local rules. Is there an area that stands out to you for whatever reason? ------------------------------ Crying Fortune’s Slacker 19" x 24" 🖋️ @rotringofficial 0.6mm ✒️ @rotringofficial ink 📝 Drawn with @idrawpenplotter @genmediaclub #generativeart #digitalart #penplotter #oddlysatisfying #inkdrawing

🪵 Turning signed distance fields into woodgrain! 🪵 Blocks IV is the fourth piece in this series of generative pen plots built from 3D signed distance fields. Each wood block starts as a rectilinear volume with its own grain axis, and the contour lines come from taking progressive offsets through that field and slicing it against the visible faces. I then project the 3D geometry to an isometric camera plane, map it to the XY plane, and pack the forms across the page for a dense composition. Each face is hatched at a different density to attempt some marker shading, then I swap pens to add the heavier outlines. And these AD markers still smell exactly like I remembered... Terrible! Which one is your favorite wood block? ------------------------------ Blocks IV 19" x 24" 🖋️ @rotringofficial and @admarker_official ✒️ @rotringofficial ink 📝 Drawn with @idrawpenplotter @genmediaclub #generativeart #digitalart #penplotter #oddlysatisfying #inkdrawing

⛓️ Growing chains with an inverse diffusion limited aggregation approach! ⛓️ This work starts with a DLA-like growth process, but in a more inverse form. Rather than sending circles inwards from outside the accretion, I try branching circles off circles that are already part of the structure. Each branching level is scaled down towards a minimum radius, continuing on until all available space is exhausted. Finally, a nearest neighbor search identifies pairwise adjacent circles, which allows me to generate trimming geometry that gives it a chain-like aesthetic. In the plot video you can see that I forgot to join adjacent curves, so the pen had to lift a lot more than it should have, meaning the plot took about 2x as long as it could have. 🤦‍♂️🤷‍♂️ ------------------------------ Chains Again 19" x 24" 🖋️ @rotringofficial isograph 0.6mm pen ✒️ @rotringofficial ink 📝 Drawn with @idrawpenplotter @genmediaclub #generativeart #digitalart #penplotter #oddlysatisfying #inkdrawing

🌸 Layering two 1D cellular automata with fading ink. 💧 This work uses two different CA rules plotted in pink and sky blue, and it also uses a drawing method I’ve been experimenting with lately: colorless markers dipped into ink instead of ink-filled pens. This time, the plotter re-dips every ~1500 mm of total drawing distance, so the ink gradually fades until the distance drawn reaches that threshold, then resets and continues. With two overlaid layers, I think it produces some nice qualities... transparencies, changing saturation, and different color interactions depending on how much ink each marker was carrying at that moment. You can probably track the refill points if you look for where the ink saturation comes back throughout! ------------------------------ Voluptuous Wrath's Treasured Gem 19" x 24" 🖋️ @tombowusa colorless markers ✒️ @robertostersignature and Diamine inks 📝 Drawn with @idrawpenplotter @genmediaclub #generativeart #digitalart #penplotter #oddlysatisfying #inkdrawing

⛰️ Letting the terrain assemble itself. 🌿 Each layer in this piece grows out of the previous one, gradually building a terraced cliff landscape. Grass-like forms are then populated on the flat areas, where they also trim away the curves behind them. The whole composition is fully generative, built through noise, iterative mutations, and hidden line removal. A natural scene, or algorithmic construction? ------------------------------ Grassy Terraces 19" x 24" 🖋️ @rotringofficial & @tombowusa ✒️ @rotringofficial ink 📝 Drawn with @idrawpenplotter @genmediaclub #generativeart #digitalart #penplotter #oddlysatisfying #inkdrawing

🟥 Exploring pixel sorting (sorta) through the slow process of drawing each pixel! 🟥 So much red ink went down on this one that the paper started curling and warping as it plotted. It took around 5 hours of dense, saturated passes to get there. Built with p5.js, C#, and Grasshopper. How much ink is too much ink? ------------------------------ Pixelated Brain Bleed 19" x 24" 🖋️ @pilotpenusa parallel pens ✒️ @robertostersignature ink 📝 Drawn with @idrawpenplotter @genmediaclub #generativeart #digitalart #penplotter #oddlysatisfying #inkdrawing