#Tessellation art squares how to#

When lecturing later in life, Escher used to ask the audience if they knew of any tessellations done by other artists in the past. His tessellations hardly ever left them out! One of Escher's biggest contributions to tessellation art was to make designs with people and animals instead of stiff geometric shapes like squares and triangles. The Alhambra artists made many beautiful tessellations long before Escher was born, but Escher made tessellation art much more popular.Įscher noted that the Alhambra tilings never included animals or plants. It can be flat or cover a 3D object like a lampshade, shoebox, donut, baseball, or soccer ball. That surface can be square like a page or round like a CD. At, we use a similar definition: 'Repeating shapes or patterns that cover a surface without gaps or overlaps.' In our opinion, the shapes in a tessellation can be geometric like squares and triangles, or shaped like animals and people. (For examples, see 'China Boy' 1936 and 'Strong Men' 1936.)Įscher defined 'tessellation' as 'the regular division of a plane'. They inspired the young M.C Escher, who copied these geometric tessellations into his notebooks and later tweaked some into tessellations that resembled animals or people. However, many of the Alhambra's patterns were true tessellations, like the three shown here. Some were not tessellations because they didn't cover a surface with a repetitive design without gaps or overlaps. They are made of coloured tiles forming patterns, many truly symmetrical, geometrical and beautiful. The tilings in the Alhambra in Spain were laid out by the Moors and by Christian artisans inspired by the Moors' style in the 14th century.

However, in this website, and generally in the art world, we stick to the Alhambra and Escher styles. There are other kinds of tessellation, of course: natural tessellations like bee honeycombs, and architects' tessellations like brickwork and kitchen floors. of each tile is enough to tell the audience 'this tile is shaped like a rabbit.'.or a duck, or a goldfish.

Also, instead of being square or other geometric shapes (octagons, triangles, hexagons.), each tile looks like something: maybe a bird, a Toyota, a toaster, a dancer, a fish.whatever. In the second kind, Escher style tessellation, the tiles are as big as the picture. Look at the first picture on this page, an Alhambra tessellation. They give us a feeling of awe about their geometry. They're geometric-looking abstract shapes, not merely squares or bricks. In the first kind, Alhambra style tessellation, the tiles aren't merely squares. There are two main kinds of tessellation art that we like to talk about and look at, here. Today, on this website, 'tessellation' means something a little different. Basically, this is also what happens with the colored dots on your computer screen: they're lined up and colored to create a bigger picture. In ancient Rome, 'tessella' were small squarish tiles that artists covered floors and walls with, to make bigger pictures.

#Tessellation art squares how to#

How to Make an Asian Chop (stone stamp).