Freehand

The work and its context

Freehand makes a drawn line carry two kinds of information at once. Its route describes a curve, a plane or the edge of a volume; its wavering thickness and imperfect alignment suggest the pressure and hesitation of a hand. Neither reading quite defeats the other. In the five works examined here, a precise arrangement supports marks that range from thin black tracery to softly coloured surfaces. The image can look like a collection of objects, then flatten into a pattern of strokes. ¹²³⁴⁵

WAWAA released Freehand through Art Blocks Factory on 2 December 2021. It is project 211 on the V2 contract, with 222 minted works in the current record. The artist's project description identifies a small vocabulary of lines and arcs, extended into forms through three drawing treatments. This restricted starting point makes the diversity of the results worth examining: the series changes not only the arrangement but also the apparent material of the marks. The WAWAA dossier situates the project within the wider practice. ⁶

A particular strength is the independence of geometry and handling. The same general shape can appear as an airy cage, a coloured wall or a hesitant contour. A viewer does not need to reconstruct the algorithm to notice that difference. Looking across outputs reveals that the kind of mark is itself a compositional decision, capable of changing the weight and coherence of the thing it depicts. ¹²³⁴⁵

Conception and development

The artist's official description is the series-specific account recovered for this review. It presents the project as algorithmic drawing whose limited elements and stroke treatments can evoke either spaces or objects. That statement establishes an interest in ambiguous spatial reading. It does not establish an undocumented studio chronology or identify physical drawings from which this exact program developed. ⁶

The title makes a productive claim without requiring a literal hand-drawn source. The inspected program builds deviations into the marks rather than simply placing a rough texture over a geometrically finished image. Its means of drawing therefore belong to the construction of the form. The slight instability is not just decoration added after the important decisions have been made. ⁷

The examples suggest two related routes through that proposition. In #0, separated coloured forms can be read one at a time, and the repeated hatching gives each a local surface. In #92, painted regions and black grids interleave until it becomes difficult to decide whether they describe the same structures. These readings concern the visible works, not an attributed intention beyond the artist's published description. ¹⁵

How the work was constructed

The full indexed program is 13,225 bytes and uses p5.js 1.0.0. Four words extracted from the token hash initialise an unsigned-integer state array. The function R shifts that state through bitwise operations and returns a fractional value used throughout setup and drawing. Helpers convert those values into integer choices, ranges and weighted selections. The token input thus informs the configuration and the sequence of smaller decisions made while marks are drawn. ⁷

Setup selects a palette, arrangement, stroke combination, extrusion height, direction and wobble behaviour. Several choices alter the conditions for later ones. For example, a particular composition branch changes the available grid values and can adjust how drawing treatments are mixed. These dependencies matter because the system is more constrained than an unrestricted combination of independent trait labels. A feature list is an index to some decisions, not a complete explanation of how they interact. ⁷

The aF routine lays out the working field. It advances through rows and columns, assigns orientations, optionally staggers positions and can add doubled elements. The aLi helper stores coordinates, radii, angular spans and drawing selections in arrays. The grid is therefore a scaffold for assembling a composition rather than a set of boxes that must remain visible in the finished work. Doubling, offsets and extrusion can make neighbouring marks overlap or combine into larger apparent objects. ⁷

The central Extr routine extends a starting element through space on the page. One branch samples positions along an arc or line and draws along the extrusion direction. Another advances along that direction and traces the element at successive positions. Their different families of strokes can suggest the length of a surface or its cross-sections. When both are present, a curved form can acquire a mesh-like structure even though the program is making a two-dimensional drawing. ⁷

The drawing function implements three distinct treatments. One joins successive positions with line segments whose weights vary. A second uses curve vertices within a shape, producing a continuous stroked path. A third accumulates ellipses, adjusting their size and transparency. These are different procedures for depositing marks, not simply three widths assigned to one identical line routine. Their interaction explains why some passages look finely ruled while others become soft, dense or visibly dabbed. ⁷

Noise perturbs the sampled positions. The n helper consults the current coordinates together with offsets that change between strokes; its amplitude and scale are supplied by the selected treatment. Other parameters affect the amount of extension and the separation between traces. The resulting irregularity remains tied to the route being drawn. A curve can wobble without abandoning its larger direction, allowing the geometry to stay legible through an apparently less controlled surface. ⁷

Colour is organised in hue, saturation and brightness, with palette endpoints interpolated for individual marks. Some branches offer two pairs of endpoints. Alpha values also vary, making accumulated strokes important to the final appearance. Darker or more saturated passages can consequently emerge from the local handling and overlap of marks rather than from a separately shaded solid model. The soft colour transitions in #1 and the black mesh beside bright washes in #20 show how differently those drawing choices can distribute attention. ⁷²⁴

The visible canvas is square. The program uses a larger working coordinate scale and scales its drawing into the window-sized canvas; it does not simply load a stored picture. It calls noLoop, and no custom keyboard, pointer or audio handler was found in the complete script. The five original renderers were inspected after drawing finished. Their finished state is static; this review did not measure the time taken to draw each output. ⁷¹²³⁴⁵

The mint

The current index records the first mint on 16 November 2021 at 06:16:56 and the second on 19 November at 21:35:19. Activation is recorded on 24 November at 01:25:14. The scheduled start is 2 December at 17:00:00, matching the calendar date on the public collection page. Completion is recorded on 15 May 2022 at 23:05:47, considerably later. These observations establish a sequence of separately named events; an early token alone does not establish an artist or reserved allocation. ⁶

The current record reports 222 invocations and a maximum of 222, with a configured price of 0.12 ETH. It does not establish here the originally announced maximum, the opening public price or any subsequent configuration changes. Nor does the completion timestamp prove that every work was purchased through one unchanged public sale. Those questions require historical announcements or transaction-level evidence beyond the current fields. Full timestamps and the exact retrieval query are retained in the source record. ⁶

Copyright and licensing

The current artwork label is CC BY-NC 4.0. The named Creative Commons deed provides for sharing and adaptation with attribution, an indication of changes and a noncommercial condition. The project field contains no terms URL, so the corresponding deed is linked separately. This is the observed label, not a reconstructed history of every earlier term. ⁶⁸

The p5.js 1.0.0 dependency has an LGPL 2.1 licence record. That library licence does not establish a separate grant for the artist's program, for which no distinct permission was identified in the inspected record. The program is analysed here without redistribution. The original prose is CC0; artwork, artist software and dependency permissions remain distinct. ⁷⁹

Close reading of examples

The comparison uses editions 0, 1, 10 and 20, selected before inspection, together with AB5D's verified #92. All five original renderers were viewed at their finished state. This small sample supports close comparison, not a claim about the frequency of a particular appearance across the edition. ¹²³⁴⁵

Freehand #0 arranges eight elongated coloured forms in three staggered rows, with two in the middle and three above and below. Orange, peach and pale blue alternate inside and around the forms. Fine, nearly vertical strokes lean slightly across their rounded bodies and extend beyond them, so the hatch never becomes a perfectly sealed outline. The large pale intervals allow each form to retain a separate identity. ¹

The distinction between the soft body and its surrounding lines is the source of its spatial ambiguity. Some rounded ends resemble the visible face of a cylinder; others appear as translucent patches laid across a flatter capsule. Following the lines from one end to the other does not settle the matter. Their imperfect parallelism keeps the forms active without destroying the regularity of the arrangement. The composition feels calm at a distance and less mechanically settled when inspected locally. ¹

In #1, peach and yellow surfaces gather into a more continuous central assembly. Broad curved walls surround conspicuous white openings. Parallel curved lines expose one side of a form while dense colour fills another; a smaller isolated capsule sits near the upper right. The work alternates between something that might be walked around and something assembled from overlapping painted strips. ²

The empty centres are especially important. They allow the pale ground to enter what otherwise looks like a volume, keeping the drawing open. At the lower edge, curved walls and angular faces approach one another without producing a single consistent floor or base. The wavering marks temper that geometric uncertainty with a sense of touch. Compared with #0, the individual elements are less easily separated, and the viewer spends more time deciding which edges belong together. ²

In #10, thin black lines occupy almost the whole field. Curves, diagonals and upright runs cross without the coloured fills that help distinguish surfaces elsewhere. Small bundles of close parallel lines create local density, particularly toward the lower left, while large open contours remain transparent. The image resembles a construction sketch that preserves competing possibilities instead of resolving them into one solid arrangement. ³

In #20, black meshes meet luminous green, cyan and yellow-orange passages. Some lines remain comparatively straight while others ripple insistently. A dark curved lattice near the upper centre has much more visual authority than the soft coloured marks beside it. The lower field separates into smaller suspended groups. The effect is not simply more colour than #10: different kinds of stroke now compete to define the space. ⁴

AB5D's #92 places dense black grids beside peach and yellow surfaces and loose clusters of rounded marks. Several curved enclosures retain bright white centres. Across the upper left, a broad gridded strip establishes a strong lateral movement, while the lower part breaks into curved and angled compartments. The black lines can look like a framework, but their separation from the soft painted passages makes that reading provisional. The work keeps switching between a diagram of surfaces and an accumulation of marks. ⁵

Significance and limitations

Freehand's distinction is the way it makes drawing treatment inseparable from spatial interpretation. A repeated geometric vocabulary supports radically different degrees of solidity. Colour and density can turn a contour into a wall; a sparse black line can expose how provisional that wall was. The five examples make this visible without requiring a claim that they exhaust the system's range. ⁷¹²³⁴⁵

The title is most convincing when understood as a question about the behaviour of marks. The program does not need to conceal its regular scaffold in order to suggest a less regular act of drawing. Instead, it lets those two qualities remain visible together. Its strongest moments occur when the eye recognises the rule and still cannot quite decide what kind of object the marks have made. ⁷¹²⁵

Unresolved research questions:

• Recover the original public price and edition announcements, including any later changes.
• Establish the allocation and purchase history behind the early mints and later completion field.
• Locate further series-specific development documentation and any separate artist-code licence.
• Compare the indexed program with a pinned chain retrieval and test rendering across supported environments.