Sketches For a Universally Perfect Painting

The idea is to give numbers a value based solely on their aesthetic make-up or visual value. The numbers that take more ink to make would have higher values. In a drawing they would appear darker. For instance the number 8 is the darkest looking number and the number 1 the lightest. By filing in squares on graph paper to create numbers, the number 1 takes up the least amount of squares whereas the number 8 takes up the most amount of squares. The number 8 then, has a value of 11. Following 8 is the number 6 with a value of 10.5 followed by the number 5 then the number 0 and so on. The number 8 would then be understood as the heaviest/darkest number or the number with the highest value and the number 1 the least. Consideration of the numbers actual value are ignored, rather their value as it pertains to design.


I am currently in the process of re-working the values of each number based on it's composition in relation to a calculator. I think the number values I worked out here are incorrect.


So a number sequence using only the numbers 99 to one hundred would go something like 88, 86, 85, all the way to 1 (or, with the new values 88, 86 or 89, 85 etc.). I have arranged these a couple of different ways starting with a spiral in an attempt to acknowledge that this painting would only be a thumbnail of the entire piece were the numbers to go on infinitely.


I have also split them into mirrored images of each so that a square is divided into four quadrants and the numbers are represented facing upside down.


What I'm trying to figure out is this. If I could coincide the number sequences I have here with HTML colors I could form a map of numbers represented by color pixels. It would be interesting to see what image was created. The problem however is that HTML colors include letters. Using English letters would be problematic in a universally perfect painting and ignoring them doesn't seem right. Any suggestions?