A number of the images in my fractal adult coloring book came from looking at objects around me. This is a set of shelves in my parent’s kitchen:
Understanding and creating new fractals means breaking shapes down to their most essential features. For L-Systems, which make up the majority of the images in my book, we call these essential features the axiom, or base image. The shelves are made up of five sections, a larger center section, and four small squares connected on each side. You might think the most essential feature is the whole shelf, but actually the most basic shape is a single square:
For simplicity, I made the shelves equal on all sides, rather than using rectangles of different widths, but the basic principle is the same. The above square is the axiom of our L-System. With each iteration (stage), we add four squares to each side of the square(s) from the previous stage. If we add a smaller square to each side of this base image, we get something resembling the kitchen shelves:
Not a bad model, but not very interesting to color yet. So let’s add four new smaller squares to each side of the four squares we added:
This is getting better. Already we can see how adding smaller squares creates interesting overlapping sections. At this stage we added 16 new squares, so let’s add 64 new squares to the next level (four on each side of the 16 squares we added):
And so on:
The level of intricacy used for a final image has to balance the expected medium (colored pencils and gel pens) with the ability to create many different types of patterns. The above stage is the one used in the book, but when using a computer to color, we can go to even higher levels of detail:
The above image was colored by my wife, who consulted with me on the best images to select for the book, and suggested their level of difficulty.
Creating new fractals is about seeing the potential for art all around you, even in the most basic and mundane parts of our lives. Simple patterns can be expanded into something intricate and beautiful. And deciding how to color these new patterns adds an even greater level of artistic expression. A simple object can be transformed into a universe of variations. That’s what I enjoy most about creating the coloring book, seeing how others take a pattern and make it their own.
If you enjoyed this post and would like to learn more about fractals, check out my Adult Coloring Book: Fractals available on Amazon.
[BTW] : Ben Trube, Writer 