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Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Fun with drawings

Sometimes it's fun to see what a design element will look like with different points of symmetry. The following images have been drawn individually, using the Kaleidoscope Drawing Pad app on my iPad.

Here is the same idea, done with four, five, six, and eight sides:
Can you see the repeating elements?

Once I have a basic drawing, I will often need to go back and alter portions of it to increase the chance that it will be tat-able. Just glancing at the image above, I can see that the angle of the long outer chains in the square motif would be difficult to maintain. The same might go for the five sided motif. The hexagon would probably be okay to make a simple snowflake. Lastly, the octagon would need to have some alterations to enlarge the outer rings.

Let's look more closely at the octagonal drawing. As points of symmetry increase, the spacing between the outer rings gets smaller, causing them to eventually become scrunched and out of proportion with the inner rings:
To remedy this, I can redraw the motif, extending the chains outward to make the piece larger:
This looks pretty good, but I can still see that the roundness of the outer chains might cause problems. So, I changed the direction of some of the chains to come up with this:
I think that gives a better visual effect overall. Let's add a second round to continue with the theme of lots of rings:
This might make a nice coaster. For now, drawings like this get put into a "Things to Tat" folder on my iPad. I've accumulated quite a few ideas that are waiting to become tatted designs. I will have to wait a while as I am currently putting my efforts into continuing progress on the Stawasz Mega Doily.

8 comments:

Madtatter80 said...

The second one down looks like one from a book I gots, this program is fun to watch you work on and one of these days I will get around to trying my own thing with it but for now watching you create is very fun love the bright colors :) This mega doily really looks fun from what I can see of it on Foxes blog! take care from Carollyn

Tally Tatty said...

This is a very interesting technique and i will try it, but it obviously has its limits.it is up to the tatter to correct and increase the feasability.
Thank you!!

muskaan said...

Lovely Transformation !!
I love how you are playing with the program & creating such cute potential patterns !
Nice post :-)

I've tried the program & had a blast - I got some good shapes, but no details as yet ;-)

Robin Perfetti said...

Making these drawings is a lot of fun, but someday I want to learn to use pencil and paper too. That way I can expand and make designs that aren't symmetrical. Butterflies and hearts are also really difficult to draw with this program, so pencil and paper would come in handy in many situations.

God's Kid said...

What an awesome and unique talent to be able to design!!! :) I like the designs you have here and I really like the square, and several others!! :)

muskaan said...

Dear Robin, you could start off by drawing on graph paper or grid paper ! This gives you many options - both of regular & irregular shapes , of symmetry, freehand, of easily gauging the measurements, .....
Just something I tend to do at times .... :-)

Robin Perfetti said...

Thank you!

Robin Perfetti said...

Yes, I was thinking of getting some graph paper, both standard and polar graphs. I wonder if I could make a magnet board too :)