M.C. Escher - Blogging Through the Alphabet

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As I continue Blogging Through the Alphabet, I'm sharing about another artist we featured during Artist Study August a couple years ago. It just happens that M.C. Escher is also Dutch, like Piet Mondrian, but his style is quite different. Escher (1898-1972) was a graphic artist best known for his art tessellations, optical illusion drawings, and perspective artwork. His illusion drawings were often created using tessellations. His "impossible structures" like the lithograph "Relativity" (See it here: Relativity lattice on WikiArt) are quite recognizable. 

Escher's work features black-and-white interlocking figures, mirror images, and interlocking grids; and the images often portray mathematical components and relationship among the shapes and spaces. However, he really didn't have training in mathematics, just a visual and intuitive understanding.

Escher was very interested in tesselations - images created by repeating a shape over and over again, without any gaps or overlaps. He was inspired by his visit to the Alhambra and other sites in Spain that featured tessellated mosaic tiles.

tiles in Alhambra

example of a tesselation

When we worked on our projects for Artist Study August, Kennady tried her hand at tesselation, and at sketching a close-up of an eye. You can see the entire study and her projects at: Virtual Refrigerator - M.C. Escher

We found these step-by-step instructions for making a tesselation, and made this cat design. The shapes are exactly the same, and line up perfectly, top to bottom and left to right. The details of each cat's face and expression were added individually.

Tessellated Cats by KAT, 2015

M.C. Escher's close-up study of an eye is also well-known (see it here: Eye on WikiArt). Kennady did a pencil study of an eye, somewhat simplified. Escher did several pieces showing reflections in a sphere, including some self-portraits (like this one: Hand with Reflecting Sphere on WikiArt), which would also make a great art project to try.

Eye by KAT, 2015

The ideas that are basic to [my work] often bear witness to my amazement and wonder at the laws of nature which operate in the world around us. He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder. ~M.C. Escher

If you want to check out more of M.C. Escher's art, you can see it at the M.C. Escher website gallery, or at WikiArt, and see some related artwork and we collected on our M.C. Escher Pinterest board.  You'll also find two lesson sets on M.C. Escher in Everyday Easels at SchoolhouseTeachers.com, along with lots of other lesson resources.

This post is linked at Blogging Through the Alphabet hosted by A Net In Time and Hopkins Homeschool. Join in to see what others are sharing related to this week's letter!

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