Tessellations and Scaling

Artist Spotlight: M. C. Escher

● Maurits Cornelis Escher created unique
and fascinating works of art that explore
and exhibit a wide range of
mathematical ideas.
● Escher was born in Holland in 1898,
and always had a love of the arts. This
eventually led him to a career in
printmaking.
● Escher is best known for his
tessellations, which are arrangements
of closed shapes that completely cover
the plane without overlapping and
without leaving gaps.
M.C. Escher, Sky and Water I, June 1938, woodcut
M.C. Escher Continued
Escher used these
basic patterns in
his tessellations,
applying
reflections, glide
reflections,
translations,
rotations and
principles of
symmetry to
obtain a greater
variety of patterns.
Scaling in Art
● Scale refers to the size of a
whole object in relation to
another whole object.
● Artists can scale up or scale
down objects in their drawing
to fit specific dimensions.
● For example, muralists might
create a small sketch and
then scale it up to cover an
entire wall.

Mural in Downtown Harrisonburg, Summer 2023

How to Scale
1. Measure the object you want to scale.

2. In order to scale an object, you multiply

We have a scale factor of 2.
your original measurements by your scale
factor.

3. When your scale factor is bigger than

1, your object will get bigger. When your
scale factor is between 0 and 1, your
object will get smaller.
THMS Dilation Practice
Original Ordered Pairs:
(0, 0), (4, 0), (4, 5), and (0, 5)

If we have a scale factor of 2, we

would multiply each number by 2.

Our new ordered pairs would

be:
(0, 0), (8, 0), (8, 10), and (0, 10)

In order to scale the entire letter,

we would also need to find the
ordered pairs for the inner part of
the letter.