A16 finding maths elements in paintings
- 1. Finding Math Elements in Paintings In this progectwe looked at some paintings of three European artists: Paul Klee, Piet Mondrian and M.C. Escher. We observed the artwork and saw the math elements in them (geometrical elements, shapes, lines, patterns). Then we created our own artwork inspired by these artists’ style. Paul Klee – Castle and Sun We studied the painting «Castle and Sun» by Paul Klee. We discovered geometrical shapes in it (squares, rectangles and a circle). We also looked at the relationσ bstween someshapes. For example, two triangles make a square, or four smaller squares makeone bigger square. Can you find them?
- 2. We filled a piece of paper (10Χ14cm) with geometric shapes (triangles, squares, rectangles) With these shapes we made our own castles. All our castles had the same area. Can you estimate the area of the following castle?
- 3. Finally we completed our artwork by playing with colours, shapes and patterns
- 4. Piet Mondrian We studied Piet Mondrian’s paintings and we saw that they were made of squares and rectangles. We noticed that some characteristics are repeated in many of his works: a. He only used the three basic colours (yellow, blue and red) to paint the shapes and he left a lot of white space. b. The lines that created the shapes wereblack and met in right angles We found out that many artists tried to mimic Mondrian’s styleto make various kinds of objects, furniture, clothes, buildings.
- 5. We tried to make designs like his starting from the shapeof a country or a continent. We used squared paper, we drew veritcal and horisontal black lines and created squares and rectangles. Finally we coloured the shapes within the country with blue, red or yellow colour. This is how we created artwork in the style of Piet Mondrian.
- 6. Can you guess which are the following two Mondrian style countries? Then some of us prepared some math problems based on Mondrian’s painting style: Make a drawing in Mondrian’s style. You can use squared paper for guidance. The squaresor rectanglescan be red, yellow, blue or white with black lines. Leave enough white space. When making your drawingfollow one or more of the following instructions: 1. Make a drawing thatcontains three differentrectangleswith the same perimetre. 2. Your drawing mustinclude a square and a rectangle with double the area of the square. 3. Your drawing mustcontain two differentrectangles. One of them should have an area that is three times bigger than the area of the other one. 4. Your drawing mustinclude two squaresor rectangleswith the same perimetre, butwith differentareas. 5. Make n drawing thatcontainstwo squaresor rectanglesthat have the same areas, buthave differentperimetres.
- 7. When you are done you can then: 1. Describe your artworkand compare itwith Mondrian’spaintings. 2. Explain the mathematicalside of your work. Mauritius Cornelius Escher When looking at M.C. Escher’s artwrk wenoticed that they are made by repeated shapes that made patterns and sometimes are rotated. The shapes are closely fitted together without gaps or overlapping. The sides of one shapehe drew were also sides of the ones next to it. We tried to make drawings thatlooked like Escher’s. For start, wetook a small squarepaper and drew two shapes from the square’s two corners. We cut the two shapes and placed them on a different place on the paper. We then looked at the new shape we created and tried to imagine whatformit looked like. A bird? A fish? A monster?
- 8. Finally we took a bigger piece of paper and drew repeatetly and coloured our new form, trying not to leave any gaps in between. This is how we made artwork like Escher’s.
- 9. Conclusions Through this projectwe discovered that if you look carefully there’s a lot of Math in some artworks in hidden or obvious ways. Wecan use artworks to talk about Math and then use Math to make our own artworks.