[Note: This was first published as a Facebook Note on January 3, 2016. I'm making it available here to add to the Inkscape pattern tutorials collection. Here's Part 2 and Part 1.]
I must have been bitten by the pattern bug because I’m at it again (and it took more than a year for me to make a
second post on repeating Chinese patterns and here I am, days later, with a third).
I’ve been wanting to try, for some time now, to make a repeating tile for this lattice pattern from the set of The Legend of Zhen Huan (aka Empresses in the Palace). (Thanks to
My Drama Tea for the screen capture)
It’s a very distinct styling for the Palace of Broken Jade (where earlier scenes of the story took place – gorgeous, gorgeous costumes, by the way). Broken, shattered, ... very appropriate. There appears to be no repeating tile pattern to it. I just found out, a few days ago (while making
Part 2), that this Chinese lattice style is called a Type II “
ice-ray” (click here for more
types of ice-rays).
 |
| From 'Shape Grammars of Ice-ray Chinese Lattice Designs' by Haldane Liew (2001) |
And, yes, there is no repeating tile for a Type II ice-ray – just
rules. Each lattice depends on the original space you have so, no dice. I’ll just have to content myself with a similar looking one (looks like a Type I or Type III ice-ray lattice)
posted on Pinterest by Shufen Peng.
Called a “Chinese geometric pinwheel pattern” (it does look somewhat like a pinwheel), I thought the basic unit was just a 3×3 square with one square in between. Boy, was I wrong. The first grid I constructed didn’t look anything near like it:
I had to backtrack on the original picture. I tried the
Rule of Thirds:
Nope, the ‘struts’ don’t line up and the ‘small’ squares are not the same size:
Next, I tried the Golden Ratio:
Still wrong:
Finally, the answer was simple: Make four arrow-head shapes using just two squares:
This allowed me to recreate the pattern for tracing later to create the repeating tile:
I can see at least three tile possibilities – all square:
Let’s try the asymmetrical one – looking almost like a Chinese character:
Not bad: ;-)
Note: I didn’t include screenshots of Inkscape tools and methods here – you might have a different favorite vector drawing tool – but they are included in
Part 1 and
Part 2.
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