Dot painting pattern generator

Rows of dots that build into rings and rivers. Choose dotted rings, dotted streams or signs and tracks, how many motifs fit across the tile and how big the dots are, and export a seamless pattern as SVG, PNG or CSS.

Open in the generator How it works

Concentric rings of cream, orange and white dots around gold centers, joined by dotted lines on a very dark brown ground

A note before we start

Dot painting in its best-known form comes from the Central Desert of Australia, where in 1971 men at Papunya began to paint on boards and canvas in acrylic, and the style spread to many communities. The designs in such paintings belong to the artists, their families and their communities, and many carry stories of the Dreaming and of country that are not meant for everyone. The dots themselves were used partly to veil what is sacred.

Ornamatic does not copy or imitate any artist’s painting, story or symbol. This page is a general study of the dotted technique, rings, wavy rows and U-shaped marks, to be used as texture. Please do not present these patterns as the work or the story of any Aboriginal artist or community. If you want that kind of art, buy it from the artists and their art centres.

How the generator builds it

The dotted rings are circles of dots of growing radius around a central disc, with dotted lines running to the neighbors and fine dots in the corners between them. The streams are wavy rows of dots spaced equally along the line, a few cords side by side, with a small ring of dots between the waves. Signs and tracks sets a U-shaped mark, a halo of dots and a pair of footprints in each cell, turned in different ways.

The motifs sit on a grid with a whole number of cells per repeat, so the tile repeats exactly. Richness adds rings, lines or halos.