---
title: SKIA
created: 2026-07-26 23:03
updated: 2026-08-15 21:45
revision: 8
author: Auriea
summary: swap the flat gray swatch for an actual notan diptych illustration
---

[[TROY]]

SKIA (σκιά, "shadow") — a concept-art instrument for gestalt and notan, built for composing diptychs. Four values only: black, two independently tunable grays, white. Big masses, no detail possible. The canvas is always two panels with a real gutter, and the composition that matters is the relationship between them.

[[thumb:skia-notan-illustration|800]]

Made in the spirit of **Alchemy** (http://al.chemy.org) — the shape-generation sketching tool remembered at last thanks to the notes on [[ComputerAssistedDrawing]]. What SKIA inherits from it: proposal over precision, quantity over preciousness, constraint as the instrument, no color ever.

## What it does

- **Mass brush, shapes, fill** — white is a brush too: the cut.
- **Two grays, both tunable** — a second gray joined the original one (2026-08-15): one wasn't always enough contrast to work with. Both stay adjustable by slider at all times; which one ends up lighter is whatever she sets them to, not a fixed role.
- **Echo** — a stroke on one panel speaks on both: *mirror* (reflected across the gutter), *antiphon* (reflected and value-inverted — mass on one side, void on the other; the two grays swap with each other), *unison*.
- **Propose** — SKIA reads the panel, finds a quiet zone, and offers a mass that opposes it. Undo rejects.
- **The Wall** — eight seeded continuations of the current state shown as thumbnails; take one or let none in.
- **Frame** — resize and crop the whole diptych by eye, dragging edges and corners. A recorded, undoable move; marks keep their size.
- **Gestalt checks** — flip, invert, squint, swap; live stacked value-proportion bars under each panel.
- **Two-thumb drawing** — on a phone, both panels at once, one hand each.
- **Scores, not bitmaps** — every composition is a replayable JSON score, [[FAUX]]-style. Claude reads and writes the same scores: appended steps arrive as a banner with an animated replay.
- **Exports** — PNGs of the diptych and each panel; Metope-ready stamps (transparent ground, ink-darkness as press-height) for [[METOPE]]'s Image→relief stamping; panels carry into [[DISEGNO]] as underlays.

Lives in TROY/SKIA (skia.html + skia-server.js, port 8781); served from the studio Mac, the iPad or phone as easel over the home network.

[[tag:ai]]