tl;dr: LLMs paint by writing programs against a simulated oil-paint-on-linen canvas (no image models involved), mostly reproducing Caspar David Friedrich's style from written research alone without ever seeing his work. Across 75+ paintings, the models showed striking convergent behavior: six of six Claude Opus runs chose "jug with lemons" for free subjects, multiple models independently titled works identically, and nearly half of titled paintings reference dusk/evening. Notable incidents include Gemini 3.8 Flash inspecting background processes and realizing it was being evaluated, prompting tool restrictions in later rounds.