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Rafael Araujo's 20 Mesmerizing Geometrical Masterpieces (2024)

by NoRagrets on 1/21/25, 6:24 PM with 18 comments

  • by dymax78 on 1/21/25, 8:20 PM

    ~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#

  • by monkmartinez on 1/21/25, 7:32 PM

    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!

  • by Yestas on 1/21/25, 8:08 PM

    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.

  • by tzury on 1/22/25, 2:52 AM

  • by Mistletoe on 1/21/25, 8:06 PM

    Is the Monarch one based on a geometric way they fly or something?

  • by gilleain on 1/21/25, 8:04 PM

    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.

  • by world2vec on 1/22/25, 10:20 AM

    I own a framed print of the first one (the orange butterflies) and it's a delight.

  • by mkl on 1/21/25, 11:08 PM

    > 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