A pattern generator to kickstart my paintings

I built a tiny tool to help me stop staring at blank canvases

Okay, small confession: before I paint any of my big abstract pieces, I go through this ritual where I doodle geometric shapes on paper for way too long trying to find a composition I actually like. It's slow, it's messy, and half the time I give up before I find anything good.

So a while back I wrote myself a little Python script that generates random geometric patterns — think tiled quarter-circles in two colors, flipping and rotating in a grid — and I'd just keep hitting "generate" until something clicked. I've been using it privately on my laptop for a bit now as a painting reference tool, and it's genuinely changed how I start new pieces.

This week I finally turned it into something you can use too — no install, no Python, just a webpage.

Try the pattern generator →

How it works:

• Every tile is a two-color quarter-circle, randomly rotated and flipped
• Hit Shuffle to regenerate the whole grid
• Found a tile you love? Tap it to lock it — it'll stay put while everything else keeps shuffling around it
• Play with the Flow slider to make neighboring tiles nudge each other toward matching orientations, which creates these nice curvy, connected patterns instead of pure chaos
• Adjust the grid size and colors to whatever fits your mood
• Hit Save as PNG when you find something worth painting

I use it almost like a sketchbook now — I'll generate dozens of patterns, save the ones with good bones, and then loosely reinterpret them in paint (never a 1:1 copy, just a jumping-off point for color and composition).

If you make anything using it — art, a mood board, a tattoo idea, whatever — tag me, I'd love to see it. And if you're a fellow tinkerer: yes, it's just vanilla JS and canvas, no frameworks, so it loads instantly even on a phone on bad wifi.

More tools like this coming as I keep building out this corner of the internet. 🎨