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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Tag Archives: Interlocking shapes
Environmental Barometer — The Frog!
A tessellation created inside a box of four different mirrors. I guess I like to challenge myself, if you take into account my distaste of symmetry methods that use multiple mirrors.
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KaleidoPaint 2022: Previous and New Interface
Quite a revamp of the KaleidoPaint app. Here you will find side by side comparisons, for a quick review of the new features. Menus have changed, as well as their location. And we finally have folders! And. And.
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KaleidoPaint iPad App Help
A new version of KaleidoPaint has arrived. Here you will find:
- A link to the side by side comparison of the new features vs. previous
- Jeff’s List of upgrades for V3.0
- Many youtube videos about tessellations
- Skillshare classes on the different symmetry groups
- Help files on previous versions
- Drawing a tessellation in each symmetry group
Hiking Season, hiker tessellations
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.
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A Quickie Louis Cube
Some tessellations are super simple. Especially if you use the free KaleidoPaint App from professor Jeff Weeks. This one took 60 seconds!
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Playing catch-up, many tessellations since the Duckies
It’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.
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The Complete Rubber Ducky Collection — 18 tessellations!
The 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.
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Re-Creating M.C. Escher’s Lizard #Tessellation
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.
Pentagonal tiling #tessellations, Part 3
Apprenticeship
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
Yes, another Dog #tessellation (taking a break from pentagons)
Dog Tessellation
There are three of them living under this ruff. They own the place. Yahoos when they are not gate guardians. Named this one Bibi, possibly for bierbelly. It is based in symmetry group P3 and the pentagons of Type 3, a hexagon split three ways. It’s a stretch from its original lines, but that is indeed where I started. Quite a simple tessellation with only a few lines. And a favourite tail twirl around a three-way rotation point – I’ve done that one quite a few times. Continue reading
Pentagonal tiling #tessellations, Part 2
My Pentagon Challenge is keeping me busy. I am plowing my way through all of the pentagonal tiling types. Quite a few of them are built within either a perfect hexagon, or one that has been distorted beyond recognition. I am finding some interesting rules of symmetry I had not yet encountered. Wrapping my noggin around new concepts. Many of these symmetry types are skew-able, not only scale-able. Also, many of the anchor point for division lines inside hexagons are variable in their location, as long as the variable is kept constant for each pentagonal unit. Continue reading
Pentagonal tiling #tessellations, Part 1
Another challenge showing up on my desk, compliments of Woodpecker Carving. Hussein posted a beautiful Islamic geometric design, displaying the use of pentagons. But wait I thought, aren’t pentagons impossible to tile using the original seventeen symmetry groups? Or so I thought. I had seen intriguing examples of pentagonal tiles over the years, but I was still obsessed with M.C. Escher type nested shapes – and will always be. Continue reading
Carlos’ Thesis Dissertation on Symmetries
I was approached by a student a few months ago — he was writing his dissertation and needed examples to illustrate the seventeen symmetry groups: Continue reading
A Dozen Cat #tessellations
Lots of reasons to celebrate!
- A dozen cat tessellations, created between 1988—2018.
- Post #150 on my tessellation blog.
- A new year, 2018, year of the dog. Let’s entertain them. What better way to entertain a dog, than dangle a cat in front of it. Just kidding.
- 10,000 hits on this site, just a few weeks ago.
- My first tessellation ever, was drawn by hand 30 years past, January 1988.
Tessellations by Francine Champagne 