A few of the Louis Cubes I’ve put together over the past 10 years. It seems to be a recurring theme. A design I like to fall back on, when getting back into the tessellation groove. I seem to go Zen at this point.
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A few of the Louis Cubes I’ve put together over the past 10 years. It seems to be a recurring theme. A design I like to fall back on, when getting back into the tessellation groove. I seem to go Zen at this point.
Continue readingA new version of KaleidoPaint has arrived. Here you will find:
From initial first lines to final print, with a funny twist at the end. A video, a short one, showing you the first two lines required to draw a most simple nested shape tessellation. It’s easy to draw tessellations if you have an iPad, the free KaleidoPaint App from the iTunes store and the magic sentence to get you started, one simple trick for each symmetry method.
Continue readingSome tessellations are super simple. Especially if you use the free KaleidoPaint App from professor Jeff Weeks. This one took 60 seconds!
Continue readingIt’s been a very productive summer for my artwork. Garden might have suffered a bit, but the Garden Gnome tessellation told me it was all ok.
Continue readingThe Complete Rubber Ducky Collection: a series of tessellations, eighteen of them, covering the complete range of classic tessellation symmetry groups, plus Elvis! All of these rubber ducky tessellations, all eighteen, were crafted and refined, in the space of fourteen days, from May 24, 2021, to the sixth of June. Quite a feat for me. When creativity is in the air sprinkled with intuition, follow the flow and take advantage of it, good things can happen. Where does this topic originate you ask? I have a rubber ducky on the handlebar of my bike. It squeaks and has flashy disco lights.
Continue readingM.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.
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
Hey, nice fish. Do you catch and release? Bit of exageration going on in the drawing as well as in reel life. All bent over and stretched out, imitating the size of his catch, same as stretching reality. Elvis hairdoo. All in good fun. Would be cool to have a long sleeve t-shirt with a measuring tape printed from hand to outstretched hand! Continue reading
All this talk about sharing space between characters in a tessellation has made me think of the word “symétruc”, which I coined a few years ago in a discussion with Jeff Weeks, American mathematician and KaleidoPaint app programmer. My original intention was for a word better than the French “pavages”, or “dallages”, which to me aludes to floor tiles, patio stones or asphalt pavement, rather than graphic art. Tessellation can be used in French, I’ve since found out. Continue reading
On the theme of ‘multiple sharing’ (as with ‘Mountain Biker’), are you familiar with the work of Raoul Raba in Zoo Mathématique? He has occasional examples. As a concept, there are not too many artists using this idea in their tessellation work. The premise of ‘economy’ is a pleasing one. Continue reading
I will be showing some tessellation prints at the Board Game House in Nanaimo, for the next two months. Hanging of the artwork is October 28, 2017 – the show concludes at the end of December. Come see. Widen your perception of the fine line between art and math. Stretch your imagination with a bit of geometry, symmetry. Humor and funny characters too. Continue reading
Below is the original OmegaBoy sketch, drawn four and a half years ago already. Since I found the KaleidoPaint app, I’ve come up with about one nested shape a week, that’s over 250 tessellations, fully interlocking designs. It must be an obsession! Still much to learn. Never stop learning. Continue reading
My print “Fifi at the Salon” shows up in this video by Acerca Comunicación, photos by Jésus Varillas. The show is on in Madrid, till June 25th, 2017.
Updated 2023-01-20:
Since M.C. Escher started popularizing “nested shape” tessellations, many artist have dabbled in the field. Some show a passing interest, yet still create with a very deep understanding of the rules of symmetry. Others can’t get enough and create constantly in this art form.
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