For this month’s videos (and there are three!) I’ve ben working on some patterns inspired by dutch artist M.C. Escher. He was very interested in tiling patterns and turned his tiles into birds, beasts and people. 

In the first video for Pattern Lovers this month, I share my deconstruction of one of Escher’s famous patterns – of reptiles covering a page. I show how you can take a regular shape and turn it into an irregular one that still tiles and fills a plane without gaps.

The second video shares two patterns I’ve made using this technique: one the image of birds that you can see in the preview images, and another of daffodils.

The third video is the process of painting those birds, which I did in this case using Neocolour ii water soluble crayons on watercolour paper.

If you’re a Community tier member, check below for your monthly downloadable files. You’ll find a basic hexagon you can use as a starting point, traceable outlines of the bird and flower motifs I created in the second video and a whole page of repeating birds made as a print and paint download.