Ceramic 21 - Escher plate (beth's plate)

This plate came about when I was searching for medieval ceramics with a fox motif. Oddly enough, the image below popped up in the google search and I thought it'd look great as a plate. So, I printed it and the image sat in my stack for a while. Right before I moved house, I wanted a non-blue project and thought it was time I started on this image.

I started by using a 6B pencil in a compass. I quartered the plate, and tried to draw circles of the appropriate sizes. I then sketched in some of the fish and got to painting. Getting the balance right on the fins was the biggest challenge on this plate (and I still didn't quite manage it). I kept having to switch between colours so I could see how the fish fit together. Because I didn't consider the complex mathematical background to this piece, I ended up getting the diameter of some of the circles wrong. This caused the potential for colour overlap in some small places. It wasn't until I was almost finished that I found THIS paper, which discusses the geometrical construction of this image... ah well, I'm still pleased with the plate even though it isn't medieval.

This one will be gifted to my sister for the occasion of her 27th birthday which is why this post is out of sequence with the rest. I've scheduled it to self post on Christmas day.

An angled view shows the wrap of the fish motif up the curve of the plate better.