Tessellation

 

Continuing with design elements and concepts, we were taught about pattern, rhythm and tessellation.

Pattern means repetition of objects or combination of objects in a recurring or regular arrangement.
Rhythm means repetition of objects but with some gaps and variations. it gives a sense of harmony among the objects.
Tessellation is a special kind of pattern where there are multiple objects combined to form a single tile and then the tile is repeated to form the pattern. Importantly, tessellation has no gaps or overlaps between the tiles. Also, the combination of objects, often, tries to show harmony or juxtaposition to send out a message. Below is one famous example of a tessellation. it is a repeating pattern of 2 birds of different colors flying in opposite directions.

                                                                Bird Tessellation, ca. 1938, M.C. Escher                              

As part of understanding this concept, we were supposed to create a tessellation of our own. To start, I needed to come up with a concept/story to depict through the art. I chose 'Disney Fantasy animals' as my theme. I wanted my art to look vibrant and fun. I chose 2 animals - donkey and ostrich and tried to give them my own look. This is how they looked where I also tried to shape them in a way they would fit into each other.

Next I created single tile out of the 2 objects, where I had to do minor editing in both the objects to follow the rule of tessellation where I could not have any gaps or overlaps. This is how my single tile looked like.

Next I tried to add more colours to my art, so I extended the single tile to include a copy of my combination of 2 objects with a change in colour/tone.

All that was left post this was to create a pattern out of this tile by repeating it again and again.

This was the final result that I achieved which looked really good. Even better than I thought when I first created my tile. This even taught me the beauty of tessellation. This is the kind of pattern used in a lot of fashion art and fabrics and was an important and interesting concept to learn going ahead with my fashion designing course study.