Fractal Dreams
A branching L-system tree swaying toward ever finer depth.
About this piece
Fractal Dreams grows a recursive tree. Start with one trunk; at its tip, split into two branches angled left and right; shorten each by about a third; then do the same thing again at every new tip. Repeat eight levels deep and a single line becomes a full canopy — the essence of an L-system, the grammar botanists use to model plants.
The rule is only a few lines of code, but because it calls itself the detail multiplies with every level: 2 branches, then 4, then 8, all the way to hundreds of twigs. That is self-similarity — zoom into any branch and it looks like a small copy of the whole tree.
What to look for
A single global sway value, driven by a slow sine, bends every branch angle at once, so the whole tree breathes like it’s caught in a light wind.
Ink and line-width are keyed to depth — thick cobalt near the trunk fading to thin coral at the tips — which reads as distance and makes the canopy feel three-dimensional.
Curious how the loop and canvas fit together? Read how it works →
More from the gallery
- Plate 09 Truchet Tiles Quarter-arc tiles re-rolling into one continuous meander.
- Plate 10 Lissajous Ribbon A Lissajous curve traced as a tapering ribbon, phase adrift.
- Plate 11 Chladni Figures Grains settling on the nodal lines of a vibrating plate.
- Plate 12 Strange Attractor One de Jong orbit, drawn until its dust becomes a shape.
- Plate 13 Apollonian Gasket Tangent circles packed into every gap, turning slowly.
- Plate 14 Frost Dendrites Wandering particles freezing onto a growing crystal.