In the style of M.C. Escher – Tesselation Print

Fifth-graders at the elementary school in which I teach art lessons study M.C. Escher as part of their art curriculum. M.C. Escher, though most famous for his tesselations was particularly notable for his prints. This year I got a little ambitious and decided to combine the two.

Here’s how it went down:

First, I gave each student a 3.5 by 3.5 square of cardstock. One side of the cardstock was textured, which made it easy to tell them apart. This becomes important later in the lesson. (One alternative to textured cardstock is to use a lined index card).

Using the cardstock, they designed a unique shape for their tesselation, using the following steps:

  • Draw a shape on the left edge of the card stock.
  • Cut it out and tape it to the opposite side. Be precise in your alignment.
  • Turn the card 90 degrees to the left, and draw a design on the left side.
  • Cut out and tape on the opposite side.

Once this step was complete, the students traced their tessellation onto a 9X12 sheet of paper as shown below:

Line up the tessellation design at the top left corner of the page and work to the right and down until it goes off the paper.
Color in entire page with colored pencil, lightly enough that the tessellation pencil lines are still visible.

Next, using styrofoam, students created a block print pattern.

  • Trace your tessellation design onto styrofoam.
  • Cut out with scissors.
  • Use a wooden stylus to etch designs onto the side you will use to print.
Warning: make sure you etch the design onto the side that lines up with your tessellation. You will be applying ink to it and pressing it face down onto the tessellation so it must match up. This will make more sense as you begin the next step.
  • Roll out an even layer of ink with a brayer.
  • Apply it to foam.
  • Line it up with every other section of your tessellation and press evenly.

A few recommendations:

  1. Have as many adults helping out as you can recruit. The last step is messy and it will be more successful with adult supervision.
  2. As can be expected in a large classroom (we had 30 students), there was some bottle-necking during the print-making process. To alleviate this, make sure you have several separate stations (with adults helping out at each, ideally). We had 5 brayers, 5 cookie sheets, and 5 tubes of ink. We only had one adult, though, which guaranteed complete chaos. Lesson learned – recruit more help! The kids will feel more successful when they are carefully guided through the print-making process.

Materials used: Speedball Block Printing ink, soft rubber brayers, Scratch Art scratch foam, Scratch Art wooden stylus, colored pencils, cardstock.

Difficulty: Moderate to hard for 5th graders. But totally doable with enough help in the classroom.

Below is the Powerpoint I used to instruct the students visually. Feel free to use as needed.

MC-Escher-Block-Print-TessellationDownload