GENERATIVE ART · 2026
Mithila
Tree of Life
A seed becomes a tree, an inhabited canopy and a painting that gently moves.
A browser-based drawing experiment inspired by Madhubani painting. Curved branches, intricate motifs and ornamental borders emerge from a shared set of growth and composition rules.
ONE INPUT, DIFFERENT PAINTINGS
Each seed has its own character.
The seed determines the composition, palette, branching architecture, motif families, border and wind. These choices are coordinated: a dark ground changes the linework, a broad crown changes where ornaments can sit, and a flower’s scale depends on its place in the tree.
Completed drawings from the current generator. Enter a seed in the studio to draw it again.
DEVELOPING THE SYSTEM
Structure first.
Ornament grows from it.
I developed the project through repeated visual comparisons, directing changes to the growth rules, motif construction and composition. The challenge was to keep the illustration rich while giving every element somewhere to belong.
The skeleton combines lateral, forked, fan and tiered branching. Secondary shoots develop from established branches; taper, curvature and attachment points give the canopy a continuous structure.
Early spacing rules reduced collisions but also made the tree sparse and diagrammatic. The revised system allows deliberate layering while protecting branch junctions, focal motifs and pockets of negative space.
Paired contours, hatching, veins and patterned panels carry detail into the leaves, flowers, birds and border. Lotus, peacock and fish forms are constructed from parameters, so their silhouettes and internal drawings can change between seeds.
THE WORKING APPLICATION
Watch a painting develop.
Choose a seed or shuffle for a new one. Branches extend from their origins, followed by outlines and internal marks. The drawing completes in about 10–15 seconds, then settles into subtle wind: boughs bend slowly, leaves flutter, and animals make small movements.
Loaded only when requested. The original application keeps its own controls and visual identity.
Replay, pause, save seeds and export SVG or PNG from the studio. A Raspberry Pi 4 rendering mode is available in the source; performance on physical Pi hardware remains unverified.
INFLUENCES & AUTHORSHIP
A generative interpretation.
This project draws on the living painting traditions of Mithila and the work of its artists. It is a contemporary software experiment, with its own rules for growth, placement and color.
Visual references include Ranjan Paswan’s Tree of life with Krishna (2015) and D’source’s documentation of Madhubani techniques. Lingdong Huang’s {Shan, Shui}* informed the approach to modular procedural drawing. A branching diagram by Sun, Niklas, Fang, Xiang, Wu and Yang (2010) informed the structural grammars.
Concept, art direction, interaction decisions and iterative evaluation by Mansi. Implementation developed with Codex. The application source is released under MIT, with algorithm credits and third-party notices retained.
Full references, credits & source ↗