What happens when you combine vivid sources of color with spring-loaded brushes that chase after gestures?

The concept for this work began with the desire to combine previous vivid abstract images I generated as the color source for a new semi-autonomous brush, with brushstrokes created via an attraction to gestures. I started with a list of ingredients and recipes, the DNA and RNA, written in my moleskin. I wanted the paintbrush to chase the user gestures, for the bristles, connected via an invisible spring-loaded mechanism. The bristle tips are a combination of different graphics that collectively represent a relevant form.

From the notebook, the ideas change into the code that are the brains of my custom color (Squirrel, ColorPicker, and ImagePaletteRemapper) and painting application (Ribbons). The former is the image source of the vivid color palette. The latter, the painting application, spawns semi-autonomous brushes when the application begins. Each paintbrush watches and chases the hand gestures of the user, the painter. As the brushstroke moves, the sampled colors come from the image source.

Inspiration for this experiment comes from Emily Noyes Vanderpoel's book Color Problems, Kenneth Noland's Color field paintings, Jackson Pollock's gestural abstraction painting method, and Daniel Shiffman's Nature of Code.