math art - Fractal Kitty

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math art

A collection of 63 posts

A squirrel sketch with cute eye lies sprawled out belly down in the shadow of a tree.

Splooters gonna sploot…

Indigo bunting on grass with star trail arcs and celestial sphere diagram in the corner.

Indigo Bunting

Indigo buntings are majestically beautiful birds. I had a hard time deciding the direction to go in doodling this one, so I dug up a lot of fun facts: A group of indigo buntings is called a sacrifice, mural, or decoration. Their indigo color comes from the structure within their feathers rather than

a work of art with a stick with 3 draping wires full of paper strips and beads

Serendipitous Oulipo Haiku

I copied, pasted, cut, poked, threaded, beaded, coded, and finished Serendipitous Oulipo Haiku. Four hundred and eighteen haiku when rearranged by first, second, and third lines yield 418 x 418 x 418 poems. That is 73,034,632 haiku that often work, sometimes seem profound, and other times are broken

A folk art design with two birds, and flowers

Spring Folk

Generative folk art in p5.js

hexagonal laser cut tiles arranged in an artistic display

Hexagon Play

I created this design to be in that present moment frame of mind and play with the beauty of hexagons. So many possibilities of artistic compositions exist. I am working on a p5.js generative art piece with this design as well and will post it once it is complete. Here are the SVG files. I […]

a very long image of cats swinging or holding on to wires making catenary curves

Catenary Kitties

I am really enjoying Genuary 2022. For the architecture prompt, I created these catenary kitties. The kitties are drawn in Adobe Fresco and the code is in p5.js. If you go to the code page, clicking the work will randomize the kitties and typing “p” will bring motion to the clouds. Below is one of [

10,000 footprints on a dune in yellow white and blue - art

10,000 Steps of a Sandhill Crane

This is my first year participating in Genuary. There are code prompts for each day of the month of January. I don’t know if I will be able to post every day, but hope to learn from each of the prompts and will share pieces as I complete them. This first piece plays with the […]

a painting with two kissing lunes made of smaller circles that are inside the larger done with a palette knife

Ocean Transformation

This weekend, I reflected on the ocean through my paints. I think of waves, tides, days, seasons and life in iterative cycles. The sun, moon, breath, and wave come as the same and different. Every wave that I hear is a different wave and the same ocean. Life is beautiful. This is a 16x20x1 acrylic [

Mathober 2021

Prompts are at the bottom of this post and the information for Mathober is here. I used ink and code for this daily practice and really enjoyed seeing everyone’s posts on their blogs and twitter. Let’s plan for next year. Prompts will be generated in September of 2022. Ink: Day 1 – Multiplicity Day

pair of sand pipers on parallelepipeds with an ocean in the background and the matrix fro the volume.

Western Sand Parallelepiper

Another Math bird in the series! This one was inspired by my 17yr old discussing her math homework of deriving the volume for a parallelepiped. So of course It spawned the thought of parallelepiped sand castles.

Spiraling Vaux’s Swifts

Spiraling Vaux’s Swifts

Just like solar eclipses, Vaux’s swifts really are a life experience. Watching them funnel into a chimney in a vortex of flitting feathers is just amazing. I had the wonderful experience of watching them funnel into the chimney at dusk in Salem, Oregon (my home). So here is the next math bird in the

a birdhouse with violet green swallow head packed like a gasket and the math written on the house with parents flying

Packing Violet Green Swallows

I enjoyed watching the swallows this summer. I couldn’t help but imagine that they were packing circles in their little birdhouse portal. Life is full of such precious moments.

A pileated woodpecker with morse code and the branches of letters with the waves shown in a forest

Pileated Woodpecker

Another math bird in the series. I am pretty convinced that pileated woodpeckers communicate in their own form of morse code. I wonder what their frequency is when they are excavating?

a western tanager on oranges peeling them to make map projections in the background with drawing tools

Western Tanager

Another math bird in the series. I associate these tanagers with oranges, summer, and warmth. This year I enjoyed seeing them in our woods as I sat on a fallen white oak in the middle of a forest.

Cardinality Cardinal

Cardinality Cardinal

Another math bird in the series. This one I struggled with what to do and include, feel free to send any comments my way. I am still contemplating if it is really done. I miss hearing cardinal calls from when I lived in the east and watching them out on my grandpa’s farm with their […]

Coded Optical Illusions

Coded Optical Illusions

I had a great time this summer doing art and professional development with Twitter peers. On one of the days, Ellen Thomson hosted activities with Optical Illusions. This got me thinking of all the ways this could be done with coding + math groups. There are two approaches I take in coding groups. T

Belted Kingfisher

Belted Kingfisher

The Belted Kingfisher catches Fish Curves on a King Graph. (This image was updated with a fix after the initial post) Sources: https://mathworld.wolfram.com/KingGraph.html [https://mathworld.wolfram.com/KingGraph.html], https://mathworld.wolfram.com/FishCurve.html [https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Fish

A spotted towhee sits on a wooden tau with vines growing on it and a few branches and a son that looks like the unit circle w

Spotted Tau-hee

Happy Tau Day! I have created another math bird piece for today with the inspiration of Spotted Towhees on my morning walk.

“Two-Body” Problem: Barycenter vs Waxwing

“Two-Body” Problem: Barycenter vs Waxwing

After watching the neighborhood waxwings consume their fill of berries prior to moving on, I pondered a different kind of a two-body problem:

Overdue May Update

Miscellaneous - interviews, ideas, and more

Overdue May Update

Well, I am overdue for a post. This year was busy. I taught 11-13 classes per week on top of study halls and homeschooling 3 kiddos. I have found my creative energy slightly depleted. That being said, I got a lot done in May and hope to reset in June. 101 days of code complete! […]

In a Loop

Sometimes you just feel like you are in a loop…

i-bis

i-bis (white faced ibis) on the complex plane.

Heron’s Formula

Heron’s Formula

Maybe we should start naming all math formulas and theorems after birds. This one wouldn’t have to change under this new renaming… I do love being able to find an area of a triangle given the lengths of its sides. Heron’s formula information: https://mathworld.wolfram.com/HeronsFormula.html [https:/

Cantor Set Zine

Zines and Coloring

Cantor Set Zine

This is Fractal Kitty’s first zine! I was inspired by the public math website. Some wonderful zines from @becky_k_warren and @Ayliean are on there. After cutting the Cantor Set with Kirigami to investigate fraction operations, exponents, and patterns this week with my middle school groups I thought

Probability in the Leaves

Probability in the Leaves

I run and see the crows daily. They splash, play, talk, and announce the sunset. I see them in yards flipping leaves together and can’t help but feel that they are calculating probabilities. Of what, I am not sure – maybe the probability of finding a nut, bug, or piece of pizza. No matter what, […]