Fun with Turtle

Creating pictures using the Turtle library in Python

Turtle is a library in Python which can be used as drawing board, to create designs and pictures. If you have used Logo as a kid, Turtle is more or less similar to it and quite easy to pick up. It is thought of as the perfect way to introduce kids to programming, by designing fun and cool pictures. Nevertheless, it’s quite fun for adults to try out too, maybe on your break or just to get in touch with your creative side. As for me, I feel oddly satisfied seeing the pictures get created on the Python Turtle Graphics Screen.

Three of the pictures I created using Turtle have given me this weird sense of satisfaction.

Pookalam

Pookalam, or a floral carpet, is part of a tradition associated with Onam, a popular festival in Kerala. One of the competitions I came across during Onam was Code A Pookalam, conducted by the FOSS Cell of Model Engineering College. This was when I first used Turtle, and I was quite satisfied with what I ended up creating. A basic figure created using a few circles of different colours, a few octagons and triangles.

Mandala Design

It's probably the similarity between a Pookalam and a Mandala Design, that gave me an idea to try and code a Mandala Design using Turtle too.

Mandala designs, (mandala is Sanskrit for circle), is an abstract design of geometrical shapes in a circular form. It’s fun to experiment with this in Turtle and come up with different types of such designs. Here’s the Mandala Design I coded.

Media and Society

So, this was the third picture I coded for a competition, for which the topic was Media and Society. This was slightly more challenging, as it was more of an abstract topic. The sketch I had in mind is drastically different from what I ended up creating. Still, it was fun coding that too.

This was meant to be a reflection of the media coverage on different issues, printed on a newspaper titled Corona Times. You can check out the code and see the video of it getting created here.

So, if you read this and want to give it a try, don't hesitate and go right ahead, and refer the documentation for any doubts.