Is It A Tessellation Or Not?
Swans

Defining tessellation through examples
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A kid's escher-style tiling of swans

This is a piece of symmetry art done by a child, Abby V. of Clearwater Middle School, Minnesota.
You can see her whole class's art here, on Tessellations.org.
Can you decide whether this is a tessellation?
Scroll down to the bottom of the page to see webmaster Seth's opinion.













Is This a Tessellation?
Webmaster Seth's Opinion: Yes.

Sure, the birds' necks and chests look a little weird, but that might just be ruffled feathers.
Most importantly, I'm looking at the art and I see a repeating pattern without gaps or overlaps.
Clearly, that pattern could be repeated forever to fill an infinite 2D plane.
I see a little inconsistency close to the center of the picture, where a neck meets a chest,
and small inconsistencies where the beaks meet the tails,
but these're small and easily corrected errors in the drawing, not in the artist's plan.
I do that too. Nobody's perfect.

Is It A Tessellation Or Not?

Defining tessellation through examples
  1 2 3 4 5 6 7