Geometry of 12

A five-day course at Princes School of Traditional Arts, tutor Ameet Hindocha, who aimed to teach us how to look at the pattern and see what's going on, rather than give us instructions to follow. He demonstrated the construction of 12 patterns, and guided us through combining two into "our own" pattern, and gave us handouts for them all. 

I'll start with "my own" pattern, which looks unfunished  - that's deliberate. The finished section can be "rubbed off" onto watercolour paper and painted, and the unfinished section (at top) shows some basic structure. 

However the main structure is on the sheet underneath, and it's derived from a design exercise using square and triangular tiles, with sides of the same length so they can be combined. My own design is utterly useless for this (too much white space!) but I enjoyed seeing how different shapes of white space emerged

Here's another that I got to a "finished" state -

Over the five days, time, effort, and concentration produced at least 12 patterns. The square versions laid out for overview -

First and last patterns, hexagonal and square format -

Short slide shows summed up key concepts -

I was sitting a long way from the ongoing demonstation and had to zoom the phone camera to the max to see what was going on. It didn't help that the green used for construction lines wasn't high contrast (sometimes a pale blue was used as well, indistinguishable to me), and when small-scale operations were carried out ("draw the next line from here to here") I was totally lost. But eventually all became clear, and I benefited from quite a few one-to-one instructions.

If you think this looks complicated - it is!

Several finished works were dotted around the room - beautiful work -

I itched to do some painting, however simple, and on the weekend I traced some sections of pattern, transferred them to strips of leftover paper, and tried out a few colourways -

Cafe culture

Sidewalk seating, Mayfair, London. 

Might these areas outside cafes qualify as parterres? A posh term for a posh part of town.
 

Geometry

During lockdown I happened on an online course taught by Tom Bree via West Dean. Loved it, and have been doing other online, and in-person, courses at the Prince's School of Traditional Arts, and following a few tutorials available on youtube and via websites. 

Most recent was a week-long course on five-fold geometry, taught by Mohammed Aziz. For four days we followed instructions to make ever more difficult patterns, and on the fifth daydid a less complicated one, and had time to add colour to the pattern. Ten-pointed stars are built up from a circle divided into five - using just compass and ruler, no numbers of any kind -

Colouring in -

Drawing a section of the pattern, which was then traced and transferred ten times to make the entire pattern -

Here are some I prepared earlier - the first is based on a pattern known as "pajaritos", little birds -

My workspace in Cheltenham is very like my workspace in London

An experiment in painting

Basic pattern (with stars instead of hexagons)

Inspiration - a tiled wall in the Alhambra

Variations on a starry theme -

Something a little more complicated

Finished

Evolving

Trying out colour schemes on patterns -

From a series of online lessons taught by Lisa DeLong

From the eight-fold symmetry online course taught by Tom Bree

Also from Tom Bree's course

Another early course was based on the windows of Ibn Tulun mosque, taught by Katya Nosyreva. These are works-in-progress from that series -

Some patterns have found their way into (onto?) woodblocks -

Some of these "flowers" received stitching to bring out the pattern

More marbling

Day 3 of the course at City Lit started with a bit of inspiration - one of the students works with leather and had tried marbling it -

First, testing the spread of each of the three inks so as to use the one with the least flow (smallest spread) first -

  Demos of different techniques for different patterns throughout the day...

French curl (aka snail and nightingale's nest) -

 Using combs - start with a feather pattern...

 ... then hold the comb steady as you draw it -

 Spanish moire is best on thinner paper - the idea is that you wobble the paper as you lay it down -

 Our set-up (working in threes) -

Lots of papers hanging to dry -

 ... and being dried with a hairdryer, so that we could take them home with us -

This, made by Royston and shown as a detail, is the one I would have liked to take home -

 Instead I have these, A3 sized -

 ... and some skimming strips ... little landscapes ...

... surprising and inspirational -