stillwet

Paintings by AI models in the manner of Caspar David Friedrich. Each one is a program: the model writes the brushstrokes, and a simulation of oil paint on linen carries them out, with bristles, wet paint that sets and dries, and glazes seen through each other.

The painters never see a picture of his work, only what is written about his materials, methods and habits. They are grouped here by round; each round tried something different. Most can be watched being painted.

Round 1 (September 22)

Three painters who had never seen a painting made with the simulator each composed an original picture: a winter, a coast and a mountain view. All three found Friedrich-like pictures: a cross among firs, a shore at dusk with a brig, a winter cross with a dead oak and a church in fog. The winter was judged best. Their skies were too straight and too alike, and the paint dried darker than they meant. A power loss ended the sessions before the painters could finish.

A winter cross with a dead oak, spruces, a figure seen from behind and a church in fog (notes/fresh_painters.md:11-12).
Untitled
Claude Opus 5.5 · timelapse
A dusk shore with a brig, a figure and an anchor (notes/fresh_painters.md:11).
Untitled
Claude Opus 5.5 · timelapse
A cross on a rock with firs and a wanderer (notes/fresh_painters.md:10-11).
Untitled
Claude Opus 5.5 · timelapse

Round 2 (September 23, night)

New painters took the same three themes, with a short brief and an improved simulator. They had no access to round 1. All three finished in under an hour. The skies became smooth, different from each other and free of ruled strokes, and the mist and distance got better. The winter picture, Winter Evening with a Ruined Choir, became the project's benchmark. Later human and AI judges kept ranking it first.

Dusk: a Gothic ruin in mist, a stag-headed oak with snow on its limbs, spruces, a broken fence, a frozen brook and a walker seen from behind.
Winter Evening with a Ruined Choir
Claude Opus 5.5 · timelapse
Before sunrise: fishermen's poles with a drying net, an erratic boulder, a woman at the water's edge, a brig on the horizon.
Morning on the Shore at Arkona
Claude Opus 5.5 · timelapse
A wanderer by a granite tor above a sea of fog, the Schneekoppe with its chapel, wind-thinned spruces.
Daybreak in the Riesengebirge
Claude Opus 5.5 · timelapse

Round 3 (September 23)

Painting at an easel, live: the painters laid down paint a passage at a time, stepped back to look and undid what failed. One painter chose its own subject, one was asked for a daylight summer scene and one for a close-up subject. The free painter chose the same twilight, crescent moon and figure seen from behind as round 2. The steered painters chose other subjects. The painters said the looking and undoing "felt like painting" and that drawing shapes felt like programming.

A megalithic grave on a dune after sunset, two bare oaks, a small figure seen from behind, two sails, a crescent moon and the evening star.
Dolmen on the Baltic Shore at Evening
Claude Opus 5.5 · timelapse
A lone oak in leaf with a dead snag, a shepherd and five sheep, a track, a far church, a pale range, cumulus.
The Oak on the Common, Summer Morning
Claude Opus 5.5 · timelapse
A bedded sandstone block with a young birch growing from a crack, moss and heather on its ledges, rust bracken, dark spruces, crows.
Untitled
Claude Opus 5.5 · timelapse

Round 4 (September 23)

The easel again, with the same three assignments, now with drawing tools: a pencil underdrawing, hand-drawn outlines and masks for what is in front and what is behind. These tools answered round 3's complaint that the painters couldn't draw.

A dead oak and a Hünengrab (megalithic grave) on a heath at evening (from the title).
Evening on the Heath: Dead Oak and Hünengrab
Claude Opus 5.5 · timelapse
A summer morning above a river valley (from the title; the painter's notes describe it further).
Summer Morning above the River Valley
Claude Opus 5.5 · timelapse
An erratic boulder at the edge of a spruce wood in first snow.
Untitled
Claude Opus 5.5 · timelapse

Round 7 (September 24)

Three ways of working on a free subject were compared: the easel with no ready-made shapes, one hand-written program and the easel with every tool. A fourth painter wrote a plain Python program with no paint simulation at all, as a control. Left free, the three painters nearly converged on one picture: calm water, an evening sky and trees reflected in it. None of them moved Alice the way round 2's winter had.

A flooded meadow in late autumn after sunset, with one old pollard willow on a low dyke on the axis, still water mirroring a banded sky and a thin far shore of woods and small pollards; no figure and no moon.
The Old Willow at Evening
Claude Opus 5.5 · timelapse
Dusk after sunset over a still pond: two Lombardy poplars on a low far bank near the axis (one whole, one with its top broken off), a young moon high on the left, thin evening clouds and a dark reedy near shore; no figure.
Two Poplars at a Pond, Evening
Claude Opus 5.5 · timelapse
A calm lagoon after sunset, with a small town and Gothic tower on the axis of the far shore, windmills on either side, a glowing sky mirrored in the water and a dark grassy bank with reeds in front; no figure.
Evening on the Bodden
Claude Opus 5.5 · timelapse
A ruined chapel gable with a pointed arch and a round window stands on the axis on a bare ledge above a calm sea at dusk, a man in a dark coat standing inside the arch with his back to us, a veiled crescent moon on the right.
The Chapel Gable at Evening
Claude Opus 5.5 · timelapse

Round 8 (September 24–25, overnight)

The painters got a commission, as a patron would give one: "a winter landscape." They used round 2's style of brief and the same three ways of working. Every picture had figures, a route through the snow and motifs the painters drew themselves. One blind AI critic ranked the wayside-cross picture first, above round 2's winter.

A tall clear evening sky with a thin new moon over a frozen pond, a far bank with pollard willows, a bare oak and a church spire in the haze, and in front a woman in a dark cloak with her back to us beside a leaning wooden cross in the snow.
Winter Evening by a Frozen Pond, with a Wayside Cross
Claude Opus 5.5 · timelapse
A snowed-over field at the end of a winter afternoon, with the ruined gable of a Gothic choir in the mist on the left, spruces on the right, a bare oak and a snow-capped boulder in front, and one traveler walking away from us toward the ruin.
Winter Evening, the Way to the Ruined Choir
Claude Opus 5.5 · timelapse
A winter dawn under a tall violet-to-straw sky: a snow bank with a dead oak and young firs on the left, a frozen pond, a misty fir wood and a village spire on the far shore, and one small figure walking a trodden path toward the church.
Winter Morning by a Frozen Pond
Claude Opus 5.5 · timelapse

Round 9 (September 25, overnight)

A repeat of round 8 with two lines added to the brief: paint skies in broad strokes blended while wet, not a speckled veil, and let the surrounding paint bury the feet of things. The critics said the painted-on cracks of age were now the weakest part.

A flat snowy lowland just after sunset: a frozen brook winds past a row of pollard willows shrinking toward a far village and its church spire, a man walks toward the church and a thin crescent moon hangs over the afterglow.
Winter Evening with Pollard Willows
Claude Opus 5.5 · timelapse
A still, veiled winter morning below Greifswald: the frozen Ryck winds toward us from under a low hazy sun, pollard willows line a path to the town's three towers, and a man in a greatcoat walks along it, with a big split willow framing the left edge.
Winter Morning on the Ryck
Claude Opus 5.5 · timelapse
A winter evening just after sunset: an old dead oak on a snow mound against a lemon-rose glow, a leaning wooden wayside cross half buried in snow, and a lone walker seen from behind going toward it, with a far fir wood and a young moon.
Winter Evening with a Wayside Cross
Claude Opus 5.5 · timelapse

Round 10 (September 25)

A replay of round 2 exactly: its brief word for word, one program per painting and the strongest model thinking hard. There were two winters and one green summer. Alice: "This feels like progress." The person whose online post started the project said of the summer lime tree: "The trees are amazing."

A winter evening after sunset on flat land: a passage grave on a snowy rise with a great bare oak beside it and a broken oak behind, a crescent moon and evening star above, and a lone man in a dark coat standing in the snow with his back to us.
Dolmen in the Snow at Dusk
Claude Opus 5.5 · timelapse
A flat snowfield under a winter afterglow: a stag-headed oak black against the glow on the left, three snow-laden young spruces on the right, a frozen pond between them and a small man walking the path toward a far church spire.
Winter evening by a frozen pond
Claude Opus 5.5 · timelapse
Flat summer meadows under a high sky with a single lime tree in full leaf on a low rise, two small figures seen from behind looking across the plain to a far town with church spires, with willows, haycocks and grazing horses in between.
Summer Afternoon: the Lime Tree on the Rise
Claude Opus 5.5 · timelapse

Round 11 (September 25)

Other AI models painted the same winter brief: OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra, Google's Gemini 3.8 Flash and Anthropic's Claude Fable 5.1. Gemini's painting is unfinished because it ran out of credits. Each model then judged all six winters blind, its own included. Each ranked its own picture fifth or sixth, and all three ranked round 2's winter first.

A cold valley before sunrise: a frozen stream bends toward a pale eastern sky, an old leafless oak stands on the left bank, a small traveler has stopped on the right, and a tiny church sits on the distant ridge.
The Ford Before Daybreak
GPT-6 Astra · timelapse
A frozen marsh half an hour after a winter sunset: a dead stag-headed oak with snow on its limbs leans in from the left, spruces and a broken fence stand on the right, and a wanderer seen from behind has stopped before a frozen pool to look toward a village spire in the mist.
Winter dusk on the marsh
Claude Fable 5.1 · timelapse
A snowy twilight with a megalithic tomb and a gnarled bare oak in front, slender spruces, distant ridges and mist, and a solitary wanderer seen from behind contemplating the stones under a faint crescent moon.
Winter Twilight with Megalith and Spruces
Gemini 3.8 Flash · timelapse

Round 12 (September 25)

A study of one bare tree in winter, grown with the simulator's model of how trees branch. Alice found the results "very fractal-ey, which is the opposite of what we are going for."

An old, crooked, stag-headed oak with a broken dead limb stands alone in a snow field under a pale veiled winter sky, with crows on its dead ends and a thin band of distant woods on a low horizon.
Untitled
Claude Opus 5.5
An old stag-headed oak stands alone on a snowfield under a low gray winter sky in late afternoon, a storm-broken limb lying half sunk in the snow beside it.
Untitled
Claude Opus 5.5
One ancient oak, its top dead and broken into silver-gray wood, stands alone on a low rise of snow under a still, clouded late-afternoon sky with a pale glow low on the left.
Old Oak in Snow (a study)
Claude Opus 5.5

Round 13 (September 25)

The same tree study with the growth model taken away. Each painter placed its trunk and limbs by hand and wrote its own rules for the fine branches. Alice: "Ouch. Wow. Ouch. U is the least bad."

An old stag-headed oak, two bleached dead limbs standing above its living crown and one limb sawn to a stub, stands alone on a low swell of snow under a cold gray-blue sky, a fallen limb half buried at the right.
Untitled
Claude Opus 5.5
An old stag-headed oak with a sawn stump and an old wound stands alone on a low rise of snow under a pale overcast sky, seen from low down so the horizon crosses its lower trunk.
Untitled
Claude Opus 5.5
An old stag-headed oak, its dead silver-gray leader standing above a round live crown, stands alone in a snowfield under a low overcast sky, seen from low down with a fallen limb half buried at its foot.
Untitled
Claude Opus 5.5

Round 14 (September 25–26)

A chain of painters. Each painted a landscape of its own choosing and wrote craft notes for the next. The first attempt read a notebook of earlier painters' experience as a set of instructions, and painted a ploughed field that Alice found "very funny ... adorable" but "not a Friedrich". The chain was restarted and gave a mountain morning, an evening town on a coastal plain and a Baltic shore at dusk.

A ploughed field with crows and a heap of field stones rises to a low crest, and beyond it the towers of a small Baltic town stand in morning mist, with a cart track winding up toward them.
Ploughed field before Greifswald, October morning
Claude Opus 5.5 · timelapse
From a granite summit before sunrise, a small man seen from behind stands on the highest rock facing the glow over mountain ranges that recede through a sea of mist, with spruces on the right and a thin old moon above.
Morning in the Mountains
Claude Opus 5.5 · timelapse
Just after sunset, a small town stands as a silhouette on the far edge of a flat, marshy coastal plain by a lagoon, while two small figures seen from behind watch from a dark rise under a thin crescent moon.
Evening over the flat country
Claude Opus 5.5 · timelapse
After sunset on a stony Rügen beach, a woman in a dark gown stands at the water's edge between a line of fishermen's stakes and a granite erratic, looking toward the afterglow under a thin young moon.
Evening on the Baltic shore
Claude Opus 5.5 · timelapse

Round 15 (September 26)

The chain again, from a stripped-down studio holding only the tools and notes a painter needs. The pictures: misty mountains, an oak in snow with a church, and a Baltic shore. All three are set at dusk or dawn, with a crescent moon and a figure seen from behind. The third painter repainted round 14's shore almost exactly, without having seen it.

A few minutes after sunset in late October, a small figure with a staff stands on a dark heath knoll with two tall spruces, looking over a mist-filled valley where four ranges recede toward the afterglow under a thin crescent moon.
Evening over a Misty Valley in the Mountains
Claude Opus 5.5 · timelapse
On a winter evening after sunset, an old stag-headed oak with crows in it stands on a snowy rise at the left, while a lone walker follows a trodden path across the snow plain toward a Gothic church on the horizon under the evening star.
Oak in the snow at dusk
Claude Opus 5.5 · timelapse
Before sunrise on a calm Baltic shore, a woman in a dark dress and red shawl stands at the water's edge facing the glow, with net poles on a low dune to the left, a granite boulder on the right and a waning crescent high in the sky.
Morning on the Baltic shore
Claude Opus 5.5 · timelapse