Harmony Through a Repeating Art Element in a Drawing

Repetition, Rhythm and Pattern.

Repeating art elements in regular or cyclical manner to create interest, movement, and/or harmony and unity. Rhythms tin be random, regular, alternating, flowing, and progressive. Classes of pattern include mosaics, lattices, spirals, meanders, waves, symmetry and fractals, amidst others.

Motifs

Motifs can exist thought of as units of pattern. In visual arts, they are bounded areas or volumes that contain designs or whatever desired combination of art elements: stamps, tiles, building blocks, modules, etc. Motifs can be copied and arranged in multiple instances to create a desired issue, such equally repetition, rhythm and design.

Repetition

Repeated utilize of a shape, color, or other art element or design in a piece of work can assistance unify dissimilar parts into a whole. The repetition might be express to simply an instance or two: non enough to create a design or rhythm, just plenty to crusade a visual echo and reinforce or emphasis certain aspects of the work.

Rhythm

When motifs or elements are repeated, alternated, or otherwise bundled, the intervals between them or how they overlap can create rhythm and a sense of movement. In visual rhythm, design motifs become the beats. Rhythms tin can be broadly categorized equally random, regular, alternating, flowing, and progressive.

Random Rhythm - Groupings of similar motifs or elements that repeat with no regularity create a random rhythm. Pebble beaches, the fall of snowfall, fields of clover, herds of cattle, and traffic jams all demonstrate random rhythms. What may seem random at ane scale, however, may exhibit purpose and order at another scale.

René Magritte - Golconde, 1953, oil on sheet, 81 x 100 cm

Tom Turner - Oval Basin Lipped Bottle Vase, 2011, porcelain with oilspot glazes, 8.125 x 5.125 in.

Chuck Close - Cocky Portrait 2007 Screenprint, 2007, Screenprint in 187 colors, 74.5 x 57.viii in.

Regular Rhythm - Like a heart or song with a steady beat, regular rhythm is created by a series of elements, often identical or like, that are placed at regular or similar intervals, such as in grids. Simple regular rhythms, if overused, can exist monotonous.

Jasper Johns - Three Flags, 1958, encaustic on sail, xxx 7/8 × 45 ane/2 × v in. The flag stripes have alternating rhythm, but the stars and flags themselves accept regular rhythm.

Alternating Rhythm - 2 or more than different motifs may be alternated, such as the black and reddish squares in a checkerboard; a single motif might be flipped, mirrored or rotated every so many iterations; or the placement or spacing between motifs can be alternated. This is essentially a regular rhythm that has more than complex motifs, or meta-motifs. The added diversity can aid lessen the monotony of a regular rhythm.

M.C. Escher - Lizard, 1942

Flowing Rhythm - Flowing rhythm is created by undulating elements and intervals, bending and curving motifs and spaces. Natural flowing rhythm tin can be seen in streams and waterways, beaches and waves, sand dunes and glaciers, rolling hills and wind-blown grasses.

Gloria Petyarre - Bush Medicine Dreaming, 2008, acrylic on canvas, 152 x 91 cm

Steven Hill - Melon Pitcher, 2010, 10.5 ten ix x 7.five in.

Progressive Rhythm - In progressive rhythm, each fourth dimension a motif repeats it changes a niggling, transforming and translating in a steady sequence - the motif progresses from one thing to another.

Marcel Duchamp - Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2), 1912, oil on canvas, 147 x 89.ii cm

Design

Patterns are groups of elements or motifs that repeat in a predictable mode. Artlex lists ten dissimilar classes of pattern, given below. I'm not sure where they pulled this out of, but it'southward enough to become yous thinking.

Spheres

Wayne Mah - ball bearings, 2005

ART+COM - kinetic sculpture, 2008

My showtime estimate every bit to what is meant past spheres being called a course of pattern is how spheres fit or pack together in two and three dimensions. Merely hey - spheres: they're absurd, and you can do a zillion things on their surface or by arranging them in dissimilar ways.
Mosaics or Nests

Mosaics create patterns from tesserae, pocket-sized pebbles or cutting pieces of rock or glass (traditionally) in unlike colors. Like to pixels, these dots or units of colour are arranged to create areas of colour that grade a desired image. Tesserae tin be laid in strict grids, but often their arrangement follows the contours of the edges of the color areas they make up. The lines betwixt tesserae, and small areas of a limerick, may form random patterns, only viewed from a distance, their arrangement unites to form an image.

Particular, The Empress Theodora and Retinue, The Basilica of St. Vitale, dedicated in 547 A.D.

Zac Freeman - Garrett, 2009, Assemblage on board, 26.25 10 33 in.
Lattices

Lattices have various definitions in math, science and art. In the main, they tin be said to be based effectually the idea of a two or three-dimensional array of regularly spaced points. Lattices can be classified by the shapes formed between their points: in math these are square, rectangular, parallelgrammatic, rhombic, or hexagonal. Crystal structures and their arrangement of atoms or molecules form lattices in science; in art and architecture, one class of lattices are (or resemble) screens of sparse woven or carved materials that commonly display a regular structure.

Siddi Sayyed Jali

Jali, Humayun'due south Tomb, Delhi
Polyhedra

Polyhedra are three-dimensional objects whose surfaces are defined by polygonal faces or facets, whose edges are in turn divers by straight line segments. These directly line edges meet at points called vertices; each edge joins only two faces and ii vertices. Many polyhedra are very symmetrical, but symmetry is non necessary.

Fra Giovanni da Verona - Intarsia Panel From The Church Of Santa Maria In Organo, Verona, circa 1520

One thousand.C. Escher - Stars, 1948, wood engraving

Jon Barlow Hudson - Double Helix: Flowing Balance, 2008, stainless steel, 9 x 9 x 22 ft.
Spirals - Helices and Volutes
- Volutes
  
  Volutes are a fancy name for flat spirals - what y'all doodle on your grade notes, a slice of nautilus shell, wind-up springs, fiddlehead ferns, our galaxy, etc.
  
  Entrance Stone, Newgrange, County Meath, Ireland - photo by Laurie Young
  
  Terracotta jar with iii handles - Minoan, 1600-1500 B.C., 13.5 in.
  
  Gustav Klimt - The Tree Of Life, 1909, mural
- Helices
  
  Helices and double-helices are three-dimensional spirals - remember screws, roll springs, Dna, some types of sea/snail shells, and of form, the ever-popular spiral staircase.
  
  Olafur Eliasson - Umschreibung, 2004, steel, 9m high. Photograph by Philipp Klinger
  
  terrain:loenhart&mayr - Observation Belfry on the River Mur, 2020, steel and aluminum, 27m high
  
  Andy Goldsworthy, 1997
Meanders

Meanders are the sinuous bends that streams and rivers sometimes make, which lend the name to anything with a snaking, winding, convoluted path. Meanders can be thought of as irregular waveforms, equally opposed to regular sine waves.

NASA/USGS - Meandering Wadis, Southeastern Jordan, 2001

Andy Goldsworthy - Cow dung on glass, 2007

p.s. - Andy Goldswotrhy is the king of meanders.
Branching and Circulation

Natalie Blake - Fiddlehead, big, porcelain, 15 x five.5 in.

Kris Pixton - Large Green Plate

Sabine+Jones - Ars Electronica exhibition, 2009

Sea Surface Currents Map
Waves

Ocean waves, sine waves, sound waves, ripples, etc., and all the designs they inspire.

Akira Satake - kohiki teapot, 8.five x v x four.v in.
Symmetry

Yard.C. Escher is the Male monarch of Symmetry.

If y'all've lived your artistic life happily with bilateral and radial symmetry and symmetric, asymmetric and radial remainder, you may wish to skip to the pretty pretty fractals beneath and alive happily e'er after. If you discover patterns and Escher's work fascinating and want to investigate more than, read on. I am going to run screaming through symmetry and tiling, and point you to some more info, or I will be working on this for the residual of my life. Like One thousand.C. Escher.

Tessellation and Tiling - Tessellation and tiling are created when motifs - units of pattern contained within the purlieus of some shape - repeat on a plane without whatsoever gaps betwixt the motifs (tiles), and also without overlapping. Common ceramic tiles are a perfect instance.

Symmetries of Planar Patterns - Imagine continuing in front of a wall covered with patterned wallpaper, and you take an actress sample of the wallpaper in your hand. You lot can place your sample against the wall and line information technology up so it perfectly fits in with the rest of the pattern. Once you have done that, in that location are four possible means y'all can once again move (transform) the sample to go it to fit in with the rest of the pattern. These ways depend upon what type of symmetry the pattern has. The four types of planar symmetries, or isometries (transformations that preserve altitude) are translation, reflection, rotation, and glide reflection symmetry. In other words, depending upon the pattern's isometry, you lot might exist merely able to slide (translate) the wallpaper sample over in a couple directions to get it to fit in once more. Perhaps rotating the sample would also cause it to line up with the residuum of the wall. If the blueprint were printed on both sides of the sample and y'all could flip it over in some direction (like a mirror's reflection) and get it to fit, the pattern would have reflective isometry. Glide reflection isometry involves flipping the sample along an axis then sliding it forth the axis into place.

Information technology turns out that if you classify planar patterns by all their isometries, you come upwardly with 17 different plane design symmetry groups. And if y'all actually like to break things down, y'all can farther subdivide these into 51 periodic patterns.

One thousand.C. Escher - Bird Fish, 1938. This pattern has only translational symmetry. It can exist slid forth two centrality, which is the minimum for the blueprint to fill a plane. (If the pattern only slid in ane direction, it would form a strip.)

Chiliad.C. Escher - Study of Regular Partition of the Plane With Angels and Devils. This pattern has both reflective and rotational symmetry.

G.C. Escher - Horseman, 1946. This pattern demonstrates glide reflection. In that location is no pure reflectional symmetry or rotational symmetry.

Further Reading and Examples:
- Fine art and Science - by Linda Pearce of Cal State Northridge. Check out her Math in Art page.
- Wallpaper Groups by David E. Joyce, Clark University - includes skillful examples of plane symmetry groups.
- Wallpaper Groups on Wikepedia
- One thousand.C. Escher'south Symmetry Drawings - click on "Movie Gallery", so "Symmetry; most of Grand.C. Escher'southward Symmetry Drawings".
- Tessellations.org
Fractals

Fractals are shapes or forms that divide into smaller-calibration copies of the themselves, so that they appear similar at any level of magnification. Snowfall flakes, river systems, and cauliflower are some things that gauge fractals in nature.

Mandelbrot ready

Mandelbrot fix

Jock Cooper - Limited Palette Fractal