Repeat scale · Drift · Reach
Flowing line art
Lines that follow a field, an attractor or a curve. Each drawing is a family of paths traced through a mathematical rule, so a small change to the rule sends every line somewhere new.
Flowing lines
20
Flow shape · Folding · Ropes
Reynolds number · View · Dye streaks
Text · A–Z, 0–9 · Letterform · Legibility
Trace length · Start along trace · Turn
Line density · Curvature · Depth
Cells · Line density · Curvature
Cells · Line density · Curvature
Domain · Separation
Order · Weight · Rotation
Growth · Spacing · Wander
Twist · Lines · Turns
Columns · Rows · Rounding
Folds · Weight · Corner
Cells · Weight · Phase
Grid · Strands · Band width
Field · Dots · Level
Figure · Stitches · Arms
Laid out · n (top of k) · d (bottom of k)
Formula · Shape · a
What each one draws
Tile Drift
A field of ornamental tiles gathers into a fluid swirl, then settles back into symmetry. Move its centre to pull the geometry across the page.
Lava Folds
Ropes of cooling lava buckle into overlapping folds. A travelling compression wave moves through a broad tongue, a narrow stream or a branching fan.
Vortex Wake
A current flows past a cylinder and sheds a Kármán vortex street, simulated with vortex particles. Dye rolls up into the spirals of a smoke tunnel; drag the cylinder to move the wake.
Liquid Type
A word drawn in fine ribbons softens into a flowing sheet. Letters shear, ripple and pull apart, hovering between readable type and abstract linework.
Lorenz Attractor
The butterfly of chaos: one trajectory turns between two lobes without repeating. A selected stretch of its path and a little depth fading reveal an airy, folded structure.
Flow Field
Long, evenly seeded currents gather into folds of silk. A smooth noise displacement bends each strand while leaving room for the drawing to breathe.
Voronoi Flow
A cellular engraving: continuous currents pass through irregular Voronoi islands, separated by fine channels of open space.
Quadtree Flow
Nested rooms hold quarter-circle currents. Changing scales and orientations turn a recursive grid into a rhythmic architectural engraving.
Streamlines
A seed is followed through the field until it leaves the sheet or nears an existing line. Finished lines propose new seeds at a fixed offset: even spacing, not clumps.
Gosper Curve
A single line that fills a hexagon and never crosses itself. Far away it is a texture; up close it is one continuous path you can follow end to end.
Differential Growth
A closed loop that gains length faster than its enclosure allows, so it has to fold. The same rule shapes lettuce edges, coral rims and the cortex.
Conformal Spiral
A square grid pushed through the exponential map. Angles survive the journey intact, so every crossing stays square while the whole sheet winds into a spiral that never quite arrives.
Kolam
A line that threads a field of dots, never crossing a dot and never leaving a loose end. Drawn at dawn on doorsteps across South India, and closed by arithmetic rather than by eye.
Dragon Curve
One strip of paper folded in half the same way over and over, then opened out to right angles. It never crosses itself.
Lissajous Grid
A plate of figures, one for every pair of whole-number frequencies. The ratio is legible from the shape alone.
Parallel Curves
A bundle of strands that runs straight, turns a tight corner, and runs on, every strand the same distance from its neighbours the whole way round.
Flipdot
A board of flip discs turned over by a fluid field moving beneath it. Fast edges leave discs caught mid-flip, squashed to slivers.
Curve Stitching
Every thread is straight, and yet the curves appear. Join points along two arms, first to last, and the threads wrap a parabola; stitch a star and they bloom.
Polar Roses
Plot r = cos(kθ). Whole numbers give flowers of petals; fractions wind round and round into lace. Laid out as a table, n down and d across.
Strange Attractors
Two lines of sines and cosines, applied to a point a few hundred thousand times. It never repeats, yet it keeps to one folded, smoky shape, and four numbers choose which.