Create Fractals with Recursive Drawing

by Matthew James Taylor on 14 May 2012

I love recursive processes in science and I've been creating art from fractals for a long time. Recently I experimented with a recursive drawing process of building up pixels at different scales to create a tree. Well that was nothing... I've just discovered the best recursive drawing tool ever!

RecursiveDrawing.com

It's a web-based drawing app that works in your browser. Watch the video first, it gives you an excellent introduction to how it all works. This is an amazingly simple tool where anyone can create beautifully complex pieces of art in no time at all. I'm totally hooked!

Here are some of my creations:

$coriander fractal$

A coriander plant

$70s triangle wallpaper fractal$

Some funky 70s triangle wallpaper

$huddle fractal$

A huddle of people

$Tall tree fractal$

A tall tree

$Paisley fractal$

A paisley pattern

$Kidney tree fractal$

A kidney shaped tree

$Art deco grass fractal$

Art deco style grass

$Pubic hair fractal$

Pubic hair?

$Ink splots fractal$

Splots of ink - quite organic.

$Boab tree fractal$

A boab tree.

$Pixel dust fractal$

Pixel dust.

$Pixel bubbles fractal$

Pixel bubbles.

It really is such a versatile tool and it's so fun to use. It does have some drawbacks however. There is no save button (except for taking a screenshot) and there's no undo or delete (if you hit delete you will lose everything), and the pictures are limited to black and white. You can pan by dragging on any white space in your drawing and you can zoom by scrolling your mouse wheel.

The Recursive Drawing tool was built by Toby Schachman for his thesis project. It's also an excellent example of what can be done in the browser with HTML5, JavaScript, and the Canvas element.

Follow me on Twitter @mattjamestaylor