To reproduce a pattern, you must first determine its symmetry type. The Artlandia
mini-tutorial "
Figuring Out the Type of Symmetry" gives a detailed diagram of how
to do this.
1
Start by asking whether the pattern will coincide with itself if you rotate it
around some center by a certain angle. For our target pattern, such an
angle exists and it is 180° (the rotation center can be any of
the black dots). Therefore, you move to the second entry on the left of the
diagram.
• To the second question, Is there a reflection, the answer is "yes": a
vertical reflection axis passes through the center of each Lotus trefoil.
• Because there are no mirrors in any another direction, you conclude from
the diagram that the symmetry type is Parallel mirrors & glide (pmg).
2
Draw a spiral, the central element of the design, with the pencil, pen, or spiral
tool. Make a 1 x 1 tiling of the required symmetry type.
3
Observe that with the default orientation of the control path (highlighted in the
preceding picture), the resulting mirrors in the pattern are horizontal, whereas
you need vertical ones. Rotate the control path 90° counter clockwise and
adjust the position, width, and height of the control path so that the
upper-right spiral flows into the lower-left one.
4
Expand the spiral (choose Object > Expand... and un-check all the boxes except for
Stroke). Apply an appropriate fill, stroke weight, and stroke color.
5
Delete the divides between the upper and lower spirals, by opening the tip of the seed
spiral with the eraser tool. Increase the tiling size using the SymmetryWorks
Options panel and interactively readjust the spiral and/or the control path as
necessary. Add the Lotus leaves and other ornamentation details. |
Pattern source:
Phillips and Bunce, 1993
