GOING AROUND IN CIRCLES

  The art element of PATTERN is richly embedded in line, texture, color and shape repetitions of unending configurations. I have always enjoyed the illusions of parabolic line in both linear line and 3-dimensional form . These sections deal exclusively with simple circles and some parabolic connections which create innumerable ways to extract and define patterns within them.

  We began by marking circle "points" along its circumferance. We used both 36 and 72 points (finer lines) for our constructions. Since we did not have protractors, we used a compass and our best "gestimates" to divide the spaces as equally as possible. The diagram below shows our method.

Our practices were with 3" circles, 4 of them arranged on a 12"X18" drawing paper. The first step, marking off the 6 divisions, is defined with the original compass setting. From there, students used their best judgments (optical spacing) to subdivide the areas as equally as they could.