Repeating Patterns
Draw in one tile, and watch your pattern repeat across the entire canvas. Tessellations are patterns of shapes that fit together without gaps or overlaps. Think bathroom tiles, honeycombs, or the art of M.C. Escher.
The brush uses the same eased drawing style as the Symmetry Painter. There's a gentle lag that smooths out your strokes, and the line width changes with speed. Draw slowly for thick lines, fast for thin ones. It gives everything a natural, flowing feel without you having to think about it.
Tile Shapes
There are three tile shapes to play with. Squares are the classic, and they come with three tiling modes: grid (straight repeat), brick (offset rows, like a wall), and mirror (alternating tiles flip to create kaleidoscope-like symmetry). Triangles interlock up and down across the plane. Hexagons give you that honeycomb tiling, which is naturally beautiful and surprisingly satisfying to draw in.
The Controls
There's a lot of little buttons down there, so here's what they do:
The three color circles are your palette. Click to select, click the circle itself to change the color. Keys 1, 2, 3 switch between them. The BG circle changes the background color (this does reset your drawing, fair warning).
The grid button toggles the tile edges on and off. Edges are helpful while drawing so you can see where the tiles are, but turning them off shows you the pure pattern. The loop button toggles seamless wrapping. With it on, your strokes continue smoothly across tile boundaries. Turn it off and strokes break at the edges, which actually creates a cool fragmented effect worth trying.
The density button cycles between three tile sizes: dense (lots of tiny tiles), medium, and sparse (fewer large tiles). Your existing drawing scales to fit the new size. And the shape buttons switch between squares, triangles, and hexagons. When you're on squares, the extra button on the right cycles through grid, brick, and mirror modes.
Your settings are saved in your browser, so everything will be how you left it next time you come back.
About Tessellations
The word comes from the Latin tessella, a small square tile used in Roman mosaics. Tessellations show up all over the place in nature and art, from crystal structures to Islamic geometric patterns to Escher's impossible creatures. The simple constraint of "fill the plane" leads to endlessly creative results.
Made as part of Paint Toys, a collection of creative canvas toys.