Lai Tsi was an Eckankar Master from ancient China. He is easily recognized by his pointy little red hat. That is exactly what happened while I was sketching, tweaking a line in KaleidoPaint. Once I see a possibility, I run with it. Go with the flow, follow the hints and I will eventually find a way. A long process of give and take so that both sides are happy.
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Sounds line a shady drug-addicted character in a questionable part of town. But no, LOL. It’s a tessellation pattern accomplished with just one line!
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Once in a while, a design pops up in my field of view. Eyebrows rise and I immediately try to figure out how it is built. Which symmetry group? How many lines? I spotted this vase from Paula Diaz-Sylvester on Facebook. A beautiful mesh that intertwines across the surface, entirely made up of circles.
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Originally designed this Canada Geese tessellation in the 90s. No giclée prints back then, it was complex screen printing. Multiple layers of ink over many days allowing drying time in between. The original print was huge, my biggest sheet of archival paper ever. The frames that stretched the fine mesh and stencils were big and cumbersome. But that was not my biggest problem.
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Pentagonal Derivative #Tessellations: just a short fancy way of saying that I used a grid built up of pentagons to come up with these two designs. It was quite a blast and a struggle last year (it’s not yet a complete project) to re-create all of the ways that a surface (plane) can be equally divided using pentagons. Continue reading
Sometimes just a quick tessellation exercise is required to limber up the creative force. A favourite one is Louis Cubes. This pattern was created with KaleidoPaint and Pixelmator, both, great apps on a tablet.
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Hard to believe that this tessellation used a pattern of pentagons as its base of origin. A pentagon type 12, built using Pgg, P2 symmetry. This is the simple outline of the mesh, and below, the coloured version, which was posted a few months ago, in pentagon blog post 3.
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M.C. Escher’s Lizards are by far the most popular of Escher’s tessellations. It can be seen gracing many multitudes of surfaces, legally or illegally. From tattoos, puzzles, belt buckles, car wraps, flooring or landscaping stones… My initial introduction to tessellations was through redrawing this lizard in its nested shape during a class on crystallography at Carleton U. That was a few decades ago, in 1988. But, as I keep on repeating (no pun), to draw a tessellation or to truly understand the structure behind it are two different things.
Sketched this Manta Rays tessellation five years ago. Love its simplicity. One single line connecting the center of an equilateral triangle, repeated in 60 degree increments to the three corners of the shape. This tessellations falls into symmetry system P3. I have many more articles about wood carving on my other blog, www.champagnedesign.com. It is a fascinating field to explore.
Most of us learn the easy/best way. Look at the masters, follow their path and learn all that we can from them. Replicate their artwork. It is a long process, especially without any direction or assistance from a teacher. This is where I’m at right now — copying / learning from the pentagon symmetry system seekers: Reinhardt, Kershner, James, Rice, Stein, Mann, McLoud, and Von Derau. As I did for a while, copying M.C. Escher’s tessellations, decades ago, although I no longer need MCE inspiration to create a tessellation. Continue reading
The original tessellation, with Arjen Robben as the “diver” was done in 2016, titled Gelbe Karte, or yellow card in German. I’ve modified it in view of the trend on the net, cats, dogs, mice rolling when they hear the word “Neymar”, even the kids getting in on the action when their soccer coach yells “Neymar”! Continue reading
There are so many nicknames I could repeat. So many comments. It did not take me long to modify my Darwin Award Nominee tessellation from a few years ago, to reflect this new #tradewar character. Continue reading
Directed by Robin Lutz, an 85 minute documentary about M.C. Escher. Could be interesting! Keep you posted. Coming out April 12, 2018. Watch the trailer.
This list is to help you get started in creating your own nested shape tessellations. I’m not showing you how to create wallpaper patterns with lots of free space in between, but the true, à la M.C. Escher designs. A tessellation of a flat surface is the tiling of a plane using one or more fluid shapes, called tiles, with no overlaps and no gaps. Continue reading
