Q&A: How to draw crack patterns

Time for a quick Q&A again today!

Some time ago, I received the following question:

Congratulations Eva!
I would like to ask you what method are you using to reproduce the crack pattern (see Fig. 12 in your paper)

The answer is quite easy:

Old school: taking the photograph, stretching it out so that it looks kinda flat in Illustrator, then drawing all the cracks by hand/mouse in Illustrator, then deleting the photograph and I’m left with the cracking pattern.

It is terribly tedious… If somebody knows an automated way to do this, please let me know!