Tessellation Project Fall 2009 - Bart
Due Date: Friday October 30
Your assignment consists of 3 parts:
- 10-15 sketches
- One tessellation worked out in detail and presented as a finished artwork.
- A short paper
Use techniques from this course, or some other method of Escher’s to create a tessellation with recognizable figures. Some suggested techniques:
- Use a parallelogram lattice and translations to produce a tessellation with p1 symmetry.
- Alter a parallelogram, kite, or dart tiling to produce a tessellation with pg symmetry.
- Alter a quadrilateral, so that it will still tile by rotating around midpoints of its edges.
- Start with the tessellation on Visions of Symmetry page 18 and follow Escher's lead.
- Start with the tessellation on Visions of Symmetry page 106, as in Polygonal_Tessellation_Exercises#pentagon_tessellation.
- Split a tile in half to make a two-motif tessellation.
Sketches
Create 10-15 rough tessellation sketches. These should demonstrate your understanding of multiple techniques. There should be enough reasonable attempts so that the one you choose compares favorably to the others. You may use sketches you have created in class in previous explorations! Sketches showing you encountered problems are fine (but no more than 5 of these). They may help write a better paper.
Detailed Artwork
From your rough sketches, choose one to develop into a finished artwork. Create more versions of your chosen motif, to improve its outline and design. Create a test sketch of one or more copies of the finished motif at full size. You may also want to do a colored test sketch. It's also advisable to do small trial version using the art supplies you'll use for the finished artwork.
Short paper
Outline what techniques you used to create your sketches. What isometries did you use? Which ones were easiest? Hardest? How did you pick your final design? Describe in a short paragraph how you made your final tessellation. Identify the symmetry group of your finished artwork. Compare your tessellation to Escher's work. Does it follow in his footsteps? Did you try something different?
Grading
I use this Tessellation Art Project Grading Rubric to compute your grades. Take a careful look to see where you can win / loose points.
