Islamic Inspired Block Prints

Lately I have been looking at tile patterns from Islamic art and combining them with my star anise motif to create these lino cuts.

You can see that the triangle block is designed to be repeated 6 times to make these hexagons.

The square block can be repeated 4 times to make a shape with a flower-like centre or a cross centre. These combine together again to give the repeat pattern at the top left of the page.

Just because the blocks were designed to go together in a particular way doesn't mean they have to! I experimented with different repeats to make these patterns.

There are many other ways these blocks can be repeated, coloured and combined. Watch this space to see what I come up with.