Symmetry and colouring - 1

Many a time, I commented about symmetry and colouring on this site. In fact, it is possible that a few people might have got irritated with me and for the sake of politeness kept quiet. Today, I want to give some examples for keeping symmetry in tact while colouring. You can see in the accompanying picture four smaller pictures.

Lesson 1 - Let us take first the top left. I took a circle and surrounded it with circles identical in area. If you ignore the central circle, there are three more layers of circles. If you count them in each layer, you'll see there is 1 circle in the centre, 6 circles in the first layer, 12 circles in the second and 18 circles in the third layer. This is very important. When you surround identical objects around a central object, this rule must be obeyed for keeping harmony.

Lesson 2 - I have coloured these circles in various ways. In the same picture as above, you will see that there are 6 dark lines which are vertical mirrors. The whole picture has six-fold symmetry. That is if you rotate the picture by 60 degrees, you'll get an identical motif. In the same way, if you reflect the object in the mirrors, you will get an identical motif. The angle between the dark lines is 30 degrees. So this picture has the highest symmetry possible for this arrangement including colour.

Lesson 3 - I took out the outer layer from the above picture in the bottom left. If you ignore colour and the green line, this picture too has the same symmetry like the above. But if you take into account the colour too, the this has only a six-fold symmetry (rotation by 60 deg), but no mirror symmetry like the above one.

Lesson 4 - Take the top right picture. Once again if tyou ignore the colour, it has the same symmetry like the first. But if you include the colour too, then its symmetry is a three-fold rotation (120 degrees) and three mirrors at 60 deg. If you colour it in any other way randomly, this symmetry is destroyed.

Lesson 5 - take the bottom right picture. If you ignore the colour, it too has the same symmetry like the top one (six-fold and 6 mirrors). But if you take the colour also into consideration, the symmetry is only three-fold (120 degree rotation and no mirrors).

We generally want to keep the highest symmetry which is pleasing to the eyes. Therefore one must take proper care in colouring the objects to keep the pattern eye catching and create a feeling of happiness and pleasure to the viewer.

Hope the members will benefit from this little tutorial.

Regards! - mOhana