How do I do it?
Several people asked me the question "How do you do it"? How do you make those Escher like pictures? Well, it is easy and difficult the same time. It is easy because the computer program "Spiegelkunstenaar" does all the tough work. You just draw a line on the monitor screen. The computer draws, instantly, all the other rotated, mirrored and translated lines, belonging to the selected symmetry system. So quick that it is like looking at fire works.That is the easy part.
It is difficult because one has to draw a figure which means something. But, if you lay down in the grass, on your back, looking at the moving clouds. And you have enough fantasy to recognize figures in the clouds. If you see ships, dragons, dogs, dwarfs, then you can make your own Escher drawings. Just start to draw some lines. At random. Try to recognize the figure you just drawed. Just as you recognize the figures in the clouds. Then change your figure little by little. You need some patience for that. But, there is an annoying extra difficulty: if you draw a little dent in your figure, somewhere else at the figure arises a little bump! The surface of the figure has a constant value: the surface of the tile. You change as long as you are satisfied. Doing so, it gives a magic feeling. It feels just as if someone else is guiding your hand.
This is how Doris Schattschneider describes my type of program in her new [2004] book "M.C. Escher :Visions of Symmetry": "For the casual user, rare instances of serendipity may produce a beautiful or intriguing pattern; the program acts like an electronic kaleidoscope, multiplying a motif (...) according to strict geometric rules."
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