Techniques
90 ways of making a picture. Each piece on the Drip layers one or more of them, and the Studio lets you change every setting.
Fields (52)
- Nebula and starsWarped fractal clouds, dark dust lanes and a star field with diffraction spikes.
- LiquidFlowing paint, marbling, glossy resin and glass swells, lit like a wet surface.
- DropletsGlassy liquid domes with lens glow, dark rims, highlights and contact shadows.
- NetworkConstellation and plexus graphs: glowing nodes joined by fine lines, with depth of field, haze and glow blobs.
- Terrain and mapsGenerative landmasses as terraced contour maps, with liquid folding and Voronoi territories.
- NeuronA nerve cell with branching dendrites, an axon, travelling signals and a blurred crowd behind it.
- Order to chaosA sheet of outlined shapes, perfectly regular at the top and increasingly scattered toward the bottom.
- Fractal treeA dense branching tree drawn by folding space: thousands of branches from a dozen iterations.
- Radiolarian shellA Voronoi-tiled sphere that dissolves into shards, with radiating spikes, in white ink on black.
- Plasma and lightningWandering, forking strands of light, white-hot at the core: a plasma globe or a bolt between two poles.
- Spiral mosaicA vortex of flat-coloured tiles: log-polar rings cut into random tiles, tiny at the centre and large at the…
- Paper-cut layersStacked sheets of coloured paper cut to noise outlines, with soft drop shadows, lit edges and punched dots.
- FacesInvented faces from a few proportions, lit like a portrait: randomize for a new person, mutate for…
- Banded agateFlowing ribbons of stone, bubble foam, amber, green and pale glass, traced with fine loops and bevelled like…
- Low-poly forestA faceted landscape of triangular mountains and trees with crystal, diamond-scaled, pom-pom and bare crowns…
- Watercolour leaf emblemLeaves glazed in watercolour along a spiral around a shell-like eye, with a warm glow, vines and splatter.
- Botanical plateA naturalist's page of flowers, leaves, buds and seed pods on paper, in watercolour, coloured pencil or…
- Natural-history plateSpecimens on black drawn as fine engraving: nets, ribbed spindles, spotted spheres, rosettes and geodesic…
- Julia and Mandelbrot laceThe escape-time fractal z squared plus c, bevelled and lit like carved enamel, with orbit-trap colour in the…
- Pour cellsThe cells and gold lacing of an acrylic pour: ringed, glossy cells of two colour families, dark walls and…
- Jellyfish driftHalf-disc jellyfish with speckled bells and swaying tentacles over a current of flowing blue strokes.
- Lattice shellA translucent crystal made from a gyroid sheet cut by an octahedron, tinted red to violet, with contour…
- Linked ringsA tangle of pentagonal frames of square bars in rainbow colours, linked through one another and tumbling…
- Mirror smokeWisps of smoke curling into looped, mirror-symmetrical figures on a dark ground, grey-green with a warm…
- Wave packetsTranslucent rainbow wave packets with elliptical orbits, travelling beads, a spiral of dots and warm bokeh…
- Atom modelA glossy nucleus of packed spheres circled by thin elliptical wire orbits and shiny electrons, in soft focus…
- Organic lattice sculptureA glossy white form of curved struts and thin webbed sheets pierced by oval holes, on a black mirror…
- Rainbow strataA landscape of thin layers lit like cut paper, felted wool or impasto, in colours that slide along each layer.
- Halftone tunnelAn op-art corridor of crescent-shaped dots running to a bright window with a small figure standing in it.
- Moon jelliesTranslucent white jellyfish at different tilts drifting through black water, with glowing rims, radial…
- Light ribbonsLong-exposure light trails: bundles of glowing strands that sweep, braid and fan out across a deep violet…
- Filament webA glowing tangle of fine straight filaments in drifting regions of pink, orange and blue, with white-hot…
- BokehOut-of-focus lights: glowing discs strung along curves, laid on a slanted grid or scattered, in warm and…
- Wave layersStacked bands of cut paper with wavy edges, lit from crest to foot and shadowing the layer behind, in shades…
- Chladni plateSand on a vibrating metal plate, gathered along the lines where the plate stays still; the figure re-forms…
- Quasicrystal wavesPlane waves in five, seven or more directions added together: patterns with rotational symmetry that never…
- Ripple interferenceCircular waves from several sources adding up on water, with the flat fans where crest meets trough.
- Truchet tilesSquare tiles with quarter-circle arcs, each turning by a quarter at its own random times, so winding paths…
- MetaballsSoft blobs that merge and pinch apart like wax in a lava lamp, shaded as lava, glass or ink.
- FerrofluidBlack magnetic liquid pulled into a hexagonal lattice of glossy spikes that rise and fall with the field.
- Hyperbolic tilingA tiling of the hyperbolic plane in the Poincare disk, tiles shrinking toward the edge, slowly sliding…
- Moire patternsTwo or three fine gratings of lines, rings, dots or spokes laid over one another and slowly turned, making…
- ImpastoThick paint in two kinds: broad scraped blocks of colour, or a storm of palette-knife strokes, lit so every…
- Quilled forestA landscape of coiled strips: spiralling clouds and round tree crowns, each a coil of one colour with a thin…
- Neurographic cellsRounded black ink lines dividing the page into organic cells, each filled with a watercolour wash or a…
- Deco facetsA collage of gilded and brown shapes, fans, rings, crescents and slanted bands, ruled in stripes, with…
- Soap filmThe swirling rainbow of a soap bubble or oil slick: interference colours from a film of changing thickness…
- Quantum orbitalsThe electron cloud of a hydrogen atom, from the real wave functions: lobes, rings and shells in two signs…
- LavaThe slow, merging, stretching movement of lava-lamp wax, rising, wandering or swirling, drawn in different…
- Scales, petals and conesOverlapping scales and petals lit as relief: fish scales, peacock-feather eyes, rings of pointed petals, a…
- Cells and natural surfacesNatural surfaces made of cells and cell-like parts: a honeycomb, a tortoise shell, soap foam, lily pads, a…
- Leaf veinsThe vein network of a leaf seen close up, with a midrib, curling side veins, cross veins and a fine net lit…
Simulations (12)
- Reaction-diffusionTwo chemicals that feed and spread grow spots, stripes, mazes and coral. Poke the surface to plant new growth.
- Cellular automataLife, Brian's Brain, cyclic spirals and excitable-medium waves: a grid of cells updated by a rule that looks…
- SandpileThe abelian sandpile: a huge pile collapses into a fractal of nested patterns, then a drip keeps setting off…
- Grain growthSoap-foam or crystal grains swallowing one another in the Potts model, melting and regrowing in cycles.
- Slime mouldThousands of agents that follow and leave trails grow a network of glowing veins that keeps reorganising…
- Flocking boidsBoids steering by separation, alignment and cohesion, drawn as a long exposure of streams, braids and swirls.
- Attractor cloudClifford and de Jong attractors: orbits that never repeat, built up as a glowing cloud whose threads flow as…
- Elementary automatonOne row of cells computing the next by a rule numbered 0 to 255 (30, 90, 110 ...), scrolling as it grows.
- SynchronyA grid of coupled oscillators falling into step: marching patches, spreading phase waves and spinning…
- Fractal flameA chaos-game flame: points moved by swirling, spherical and horseshoe-shaped transforms light a feathery…
- Fluid inkDye released by wandering jets and swirled by an incompressible fluid solver: roll-ups, mushrooms and…
- Ant trailsA colony of ants lays scent on the way home with food and follows the scent of others, so busy roads grow…
Geometry (25)
- L-systemPlants, ferns, seaweed and fractal curves drawn by rewriting rules, with chance, jitter and a pull toward…
- Space colonisationBranches grow toward scattered attractors and fill a shape: a root ball, a canopy, leaf veins, or crowds of…
- Diffusion-limited aggregationRandom walkers stick where they touch and grow a branching fractal: coral, frost, lichen and lightning.
- Flow ribbonsParallel strands that curl through a smoke-like flow: bundles of lines or dotted lines spiralling into…
- RidgelinesStacked profile lines that hide the ones behind them: a pulsar plot, mountains, or interfering waves.
- Curve familiesOne curve repeated with a little shrink, turn and drift each time: spirograph envelopes, shells, bow-ties…
- StreamlinesEvenly spaced flow lines that fill the frame like a hand-drawn contour map of a fluid, with vortices.
- Paint strokesThousands of brush strokes laid along a swirling flow, in clumps of paint with thick-paint shadows and…
- Stipple and Delaunay portraitRedraws the layers below as evenly spaced dots, a Delaunay triangle mesh, or both: darkness becomes density.
- Abstract portraitReads the picture beneath it for where it is dark and light and draws that without copying it: line-scan…
- Curl-stroke portraitRedraws the layers below as thousands of small curls, rings or dashes that follow the contours: a portrait…
- Nautilus and sprigA chambered nautilus shell in single-weight line art, a logarithmic spiral with bowed chamber walls, beside…
- Filigree spiralsA dense tangle of spiral curls with trailing tails, drawn as glowing fibres on black and coloured in slow…
- Orbit sketchesFine white lines on black: nested rings round dark cores that lean toward each other, lens-shaped field…
- Ink jellyfishA pen-and-ink jellyfish: a ribbed, hatched bell with a scalloped rim, frilled oral arms and long hair-fine…
- Medusa plateAn engraved page of jellyfish in dark ink on cream: ribbed gourd bells, a ringed top view, club-tipped…
- PhyllotaxisSeeds placed at the golden angle, as in a sunflower head; the angle swings slowly so the spirals form…
- Penrose tilingThe non-repeating Penrose tiling of fat and thin rhombi, built by repeated subdivision, slowly turning.
- HarmonographThe drawing of a pen pushed by swinging pendulums, spiralling inward as friction slows them; the phases…
- Strange attractorThe never-repeating paths of the Lorenz, Rossler, Thomas, Aizawa and Halvorsen equations, drawn as glowing…
- FlocksBoids drawn as individual arrows and silhouettes: a classic flock with predators, an epidemic spreading…
- Gravity orbitsBodies pulling on each other by Newton's law, drawn as the glowing trails they leave: a figure-eight of…
- MazesPerfect mazes grown by seven algorithms, drawn as line art, rounded into curving labyrinths, among Mondrian…
- Star patternsIslamic geometric star patterns drawn by the polygons-in-contact method: lines leave the midpoints of a…
- Seed headsA dandelion clock or a sea urchin: seeds spread over a sphere by the golden angle, each with a bright node…