Marcelo Paiva

All illustrations

A person wearing headphones, seen from behind, faces a woman holding a small frame beside an ornate mirror.

Draws this one again — same subject and the same people, a new palette and a new angle on it, described afresh. It replaces the drawing on this page for everyone, until somebody draws another. Costs the site about eight cents, and a few seconds.

Or press the left arrow and the right arrow.

Who writes the alt text for a picture nobody drew?

Writing — read the piece

Meant to show
A blind colleague listening to the description of a picture nobody drew, written by someone who still had to look at it first.
Asked for
A woman studying a framed picture and writing a description on a card while a man listens through headphones beside her
Drawn with (complementary)
#a8a25a#263298#64ac48

Why these three

Two hues opposite each other, the strongest contrast available, with the third supporting the first.

  1. SeedSHA-256 of who-writes-the-alt-text-for-a-picture-nobody-drew, which is the same every time and different for every piece.
  2. Base hueThe first two bytes as a fraction of 65,535, times 360 = 54°.
  3. GeometryThe third byte modulo 4 picks complementary, which adds 0°, 180°, 40°.
  4. WobbleThree more bytes shift each by up to ±12° — +1.6°, +0.0°, +9.4° — so two pieces that draw the same geometry are still not the same shape on the wheel.
  5. Result#a8a25a55° at 47% saturation, 66% value#263298234° at 75% saturation, 60% value#64ac48103° at 58% saturation, 67% value

Saturation never drops below 72% and value never below 78%, which is what keeps a hue reading as the color it was chosen to be rather than as a dark. More on how these are made.

A drawing

This is a museum label beside a picture. The drawing comes first, and everything about it comes after.

From top to bottom

  1. At the top, the site header: my name, which goes home, then links to Writing, Work, Signal, Tools and Resume, then Settings, where you choose the drawings, light or dark, and movement.
  2. A link back to all the illustrations.
  3. The drawing, large.
  4. Links to the previous and next drawing, and where this one falls among them. The left and right arrow keys go there too.
  5. The title of the piece the drawing belongs to, with a link to read it. On this page the heading comes after the drawing.
  6. What the drawing was meant to show, what was asked for, and its three colors.
  7. Why these three: how the colors were picked, with a color wheel and the steps.
  8. At the bottom, the footer: a note on how this site is built, links to Illustrations, Pens, Concepts and Accessibility, this Describe this page button, then GitHub, LinkedIn and email.

What you can do here

Read about how this drawing was made, or step through the others.