MC Escher Party

MC-Escher-Party

My 16-year-old son has always loved MC Escher, so this year we decided to throw him an MC Escher party for his birthday. MC Escher is a modern artist who depicts surreal scenes like stairs impossibly going up and down, or water flowing up and down at the same time. He uses a lot of salamanders and fish in his designs, and he makes tesselations (rotating shapes), which you will see below in our art projects.

MC Escher Party Invitation

First we printed this coloring page, and we pasted the colored fish (we used colored pencils) onto light blue card stock paper. We outlined the fish to make them stand out, and we wrote the party information inside the card.

MC-Escher-invitation

MC Escher 3D Shapes

I found {aff} this book with perforated MC Escher 3D shapes. The pages are colorful and thick, and you fold each shape according to the instructions, gluing or taping the shapes together. The patterns on the shapes are from the artist’s famous paintings.

MC-Escher-shapes

We used these 3D shapes to decorate the center of the table. I used little fish crackers as confetti. I also gathered the art supplies that we needed for our tesselations.

MC-Escher-3D-shapes

MC Escher Cake

I had to think long and hard about the cake, because the thought of making stairs go up and down on a cake seemed impossible. I toyed with many other ideas until I settled on this one. I found gummy fish at the store, and at that moment I knew what I wanted to do.

cake-waves

First I baked a rectangular chocolate cake, and I tinted the frosting blue. I used a fork to make waves. Then I placed the fish coming and going, as they would in an MC Escher painting. It came out great!

MC-Escher-cake

MC Escher Art Project

Here is a fun art project you can do with tessellation, where a shape is repeated over and over again, covering the entire paper:

We made modified shapes based on an equilateral triangle. We rotated the shape, using it as a stencil over and over on our paper.

tesselation-drawing

Here are some of the finished tesselations:

MC-Escher-tesselation

drawing-a-tesselation

MC-Escher-tesselations

Didn’t they come out great? My son thoroughly enjoyed his party!

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10 Responses to “MC Escher Party”

  1. An Escher cake? What a cool idea!

  2. I’d never heard of this artist but this is such a cool idea. What a unique birthday party!!!

    • Susan says:

      My son Bryan has always loved this artist, ever since he saw the painting with the stairs going both up and down at the same time. It’s surreal!

  3. Amy says:

    This is so cool. I have seen these patterns but didn’t realize it was from one artist! Looks like a great birthday party!

  4. This was so well done, and thanks! I did not know who MC Escher was, I love the card and the cake 🙂 My artist daughter will be checking this out for sure.

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