1984 graphics sorcery

QuickDraw Workshop

Jon noticed that Bill Atkinson's QuickDraw source is full of elegant graphics tricks, so this page turns that curiosity into a little black-and-white toy box. Draw, flood-fill, stamp dithers, and boot up a demo scene like you're squinting at a very smug beige Macintosh.

Why this one?

“According to the interview with Donald Knuth in the book Coders at Work, Bill Atkinson's work is ‘well-documented code with lots of pioneering graphics algorithms in it.’”

Try this Tap Fill, choose a pattern, and seal a shape. If the paint leaks everywhere, congratulations, you have rediscovered why regions matter.

Little thrill Your sketch saves to this browser automatically, because starting over from scratch every time is a cruel hobby.

Macintosh graphics desk

512 x 342

Tools

Patterns

Scene helpers

Pencil ready

Pattern: Solid Ink

Tip: draw a loop, then try Fill.

Atkinson tricks

Three tiny explanations to make the playground feel like a cheerful museum exhibit instead of “a canvas with ambition.”

Regions tame the chaos

QuickDraw got famous for making shapes, clipping, and fills feel magical on very limited hardware. Closed boundaries are your friends.

Closed outline + fill seed -> controlled paint instead of glorious soup

Rounded rectangles have charisma

The original Mac look is half algorithm, half manners. Use the Round Rect tool and suddenly the whole page becomes more polite.

Dither is tiny drama

Without color, patterns do the heavy lifting. Checker, dots, and hatch give you fake grayscale the same way old UIs did: with stubborn charm.

Saved in this browser

Your drawing autosaves locally, so if you accidentally build the world's grumpiest pixel cat, it can haunt this device indefinitely.