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The Painter’s Model

Like Quartz, Cocoa drawing uses the painter’s model for imaging. In the painter’s model, each successive drawing operation applies a layer of “paint” to an output “canvas.” As new layers of paint are added, previously painted elements may be obscured (either partially or totally) or modified by the new paint. This model allows you to construct extremely sophisticated images from a small number of powerful primitives.

Figure 1-1 shows how the painter’s model works and demonstrates how important drawing order can be when rendering content. In the first result, the wireframe shape on the left is drawn first, followed by the solid shape, obscuring all but the perimeter of the wireframe shape. When the shapes are drawn in the opposite order, the results are very different. Because the wireframe shape has more holes in it, parts of the solid shape show through those holes.

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