Rafael Araujo's 20 Mesmerizing Geometrical Masterpieces (2024)
14 comments
·January 21, 2025monkmartinez
At first glance the "masterpieces" looked like a crap ton of lines and circles around a sketched shell or butterfly. You know, the kind you see when you tell Stable Diffusion to "sketch". Then I watched the video for a sec... WOAH!!! He is talking about a "formula" quite a bit... ctrl-f "formula" == 0 results.
Google: Rafael Araujo artist formula. Ahhhh! https://www.rafael-araujo.com/calculation
Now we are getting somewhere... and another that shows the process a bit better: https://hazelhomeartandantiques.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-cal...
Now I am trawling github to see if I can find some processing or similar libraries that I can play around with. Golden Ratio sketches, defining physical objects and shapes from purely mathematical constructions... I love rabbit holes!
sixtyj
This is a deep rabbit hole indeed :)
Does Donald Knuth have any metaprogramming for golden section/ratio?
About golden section in the universe there is a nice book by Scott Olsen - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/316282.The_Golden_Sectio...
nequals30
Inigo Quilez has some good videos generating art and scenes with just mathematical constructions:
Yestas
I believe that we still know so little about nature and its laws. Sometimes it seems that we are moving in the direction of technological development instead of developing our knowledge about nature and aligning ourselves with it.
dcreater
Hi, id like to introduce you to eastern philosophy
gilleain
Technically amazing - such fine detail, and of course precision. However ...
I recently heard the saying "a great artist knows when to stop" (it was Ben Afflek talking about AI art - I guess he was quoting someone?). I feel like in the case of these drawings, less detail would actually be better. More readable, perhaps.
Still, an impressive amount of effort for each one, given only straightedge and compass.
BLKNSLVR
I think the detail IS the art, or at least the strongest element that the artist wishes to demonstrate.
Removing the details removes the reference to the formula(e), which is the soul around which the beatiful pictures are created. In this case, the art is the process, more-so than the end result - which is a by-product.
mkl
> he unfolds the significance of the Golden Ratio, showcasing its spiritual depth and presence within the natural order.
Yikes. The golden ratio has limited significance, nothing to do with spirituality, and little presence in nature [1]. Araujo's pictures look great, but in almost any of them you could replace the golden ratio with 1.6, 1.7, or 1.5, and get something no less beautiful.
The Wikipedia page is fairly good on this, especially the "Disputed observations" section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio#Disputed_observat...
As a mathematician, fetishisation of the golden ratio bugs me.
[1] The main place is spiral arrangements of leaves, petals, etc. Vi Hart explains why (watch all three parts): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahXIMUkSXX0
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~10 years ago I had a renewed interested in perspective drawing, and was struggling with an 'exercise' that utilized curvilinear perspective & oblique angles. Anyways, I stumbled on some of Rafael's drawings and found their inclusion of the guide lines / measuring lines invaluable, but for the hell of it, I emailed him some questions. He promptly responded and then dumped images and reference material on dropbox for me - very nice guy.
Personal fav is "Dürer" that demonstrates Albrecht Dürers method of projecting a spiral.
https://www.rafael-araujo.com/product-page/d%C3%BCrer#