Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Discovering the art of M.C.Escher

M.C. Escher

Students of CM2 and 6e have recently discovered the art of M.C Escher. Maurits Cornelis Escher was a Dutch graphic artist. He is known for his mathematically inspired woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints. These feature impossible constructions, explorations of infinity, architecture, and tessellations. After a brief biography and a few videos that demonstrated the different printing techniques used by Escher students were asked to do three different projects in connection to his work.

1. Using the method of an envelope students had to design a tessellation. A tessellation is the tiling of a plane using one or more geometric shapes, called tiles, with no overlaps and no gaps.

 
2. Students created beautiful, artistic engravings by slowly revealing the creatures using an easy scratch board technique. They used a pre-drawn copper, silver or multicolored background, etching it.

3. Inspired by Escher's woodcuts, students had to engrave a piece of styro-foam to create black and white prints. We used woodcutting tools, a brayer (a roller), and printing ink to create these beautiful "xylographic" prints.