Abstract: A method and system for drawing and designing highly complex and subtly-colored images with a very small amount of user input. By choosing this input, the graphic designer has full control over the shape and its colorization. The shape and its colorization are created independently. In this way, the graphic designer can easily create stylized geometric and natural forms. One embodiment is as a software program on a digital computer. The input can be given by direct manipulation. With this invention, the designer can create shapes with great detail that would be impractical to draw with existing tools. The method grows a complex image in steps. Starting with an initial template consisting of a number of components, the template is transformed by replacing one component by a transformed version of the same or another template. The replaced component is colorized. The colorization is a function of the original color of the component and the color path associated with the replacement template.