Turtle Art: Designing with Constraints

Our assignment was to make a piece of artwork that only uses the following Turtle Art blocks: FORWARD, RIGHT, ARC, REPEAT, SET COLOR. We were also allowed to create our own blocks.

Project Reflection

Describe in full sentences how your code works.

The way that this code works is through a chain of blocks that I created. The first block is the wave block which was inspired by the technique cards. I have two wave blocks but finally chose to use the wave 2 block because I like that it is smaller than wave block 1 and allows me to repeat the design multiple times within a confined space. The wave box allows me to combine four waves in a box-like shape and the big star combines ten boxes (rotating to the right before each box) in order to create a star or flowerlike shape.

Describe in a few sentences how you approached this assignment. How did you experiment with combinations of blocks? What ideas did you try? What didn't work? What surprised you?

I approached this assignment by allowing myself to be guided by the "Technique Cards". I was especially interested in the designs on the 3rd and 4th page of the PDF. The two ideas that I liked the most were the squiggly lines and the square. I was also interested in the final page of the document where I saw a consistently repeated shape.

Did you find it difficult or easier to design within these strict constraints? Why or why not?

I found it easier to design within these constrains because I didn't need to learn to much about new blocks. However, I also found it difficult to do everything that I wanted to do with the blocks at my disposal. I wanted to use random color selection but couldn't do this within the constraints. Designing with these constraints led me to create more of my own blocks which was fun.