What's a great way to transform a complicated signal into its basic components? Fourier series! Scientists have been using Fourier series for centuries, but now artists can apply the same idea to complicated signals of their own: line drawings.

Introducing: Draw Anything, an iOS app that harnesses the computational power of the Wolfram Programming Cloud to automatically create step-by-step drawing guides.

Using Wolfram Language and Wolfram Programming Cloud, our fabulous new iOS App takes any input image, converts it into a line drawing and computes its Fourier series expansion using the fast Fourier transform (FFT). Draw Anything creates step by step drawing guides by truncating the Fourier series at different lengths.

Unlike other many other mathematical approximation techniques Fourier series reconstruct signals using global rather than local information. As a result low order approximations capture the basic shape of a picture while the higher order terms add in the more minute details. This allows Draw Anything to produce step-by-step guides that break down images into the basics and gradually get more complicated; a hallmark of art instruction.

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