“Who is the painter?” John Klotz wondered upon looking at Impression for a Sunday? The artist is actually a software program called Dynamic Auto Painter developed by Román Cortēs and Roman Voska. You begin with any photograph of a person, an animal, a still life or a landscape. I chose a rather commonplace image of the shroud face from Shroud Scope. You then select a style along with materials such as oils, chalk, watercolor and so forth. I chose oil painting with a Van Gogh brush style and a brownish palette. The software does the rest by interpreting visual elements of the image it was fed and then recreating the image in the desired style. Pour a cup of coffee and sit back and watch. It is fascinating to watch. Yesterday’s picture took about ten minutes. This pencil sketch below – which is truly amazing if you view it from different angles on a laptop or LCD monitor – took about five minutes.
