Tessellations
This eighth grade project began with a presentation about the artist, M.C. Escher and his style of drawing with tessellations. The students were intrigued by his designs, but intimidated to create their own version. I broke the project down into small steps in order to help each student successfully create their very own tessellation.
We used 3X3 squares of tagboard and each student used the rotation technique of tessellating a shape. We drew, cut, and taped until one of the shapes started to look like something recognizable. I emphasized to the students that with some details, they could make their shape look like practically anything!
Students traced their shape across their paper and added details to create their recognizable object. Then, contrasting warm and cool colors were used to color in the objects and decorate the details. We practiced shading and incorporated that as well to give the objects a more 3-dimensional appearance.
In the end, some creativity and a few details meant that a 3x3 square could be turned in to just about anything.
