Drawing Islamic Patterns with a Ruler and Compass

Friday, October 11 • 3–6 p.m.

Example artwork based on a twelvefold rosette pattern made with ruler and compass. It is the process of being completed. The tessellated pattern radiates outward but is ultimately contained by a vertical, rectangular border.
Example Diagram

In this workshop, we will investigate the symbolic and technical significance of mathematics to the tradition of Islamic Art. Reserve your free place!

  • Focusing on Islamic geometric design, we will draw a twelvefold rosette pattern using the traditional tools of ruler and compass.
  • Participants will apply basic ruler-and-compass construction techniques to establish a twelvefold grid structure and create a tessellating pattern.
  • We will then examine the core symmetries of the pattern revealing the method for expanding it across a theoretically infinite plane.
A close-up of an intricate Islamic geometric pattern carved into a stone wall.
A rectangular wooden panel with ivory inlay which features an intricate Islamic geometric pattern, with a central star motif that tessellates outward.
A workshop focused on Islamic art, with teacher Gillian Turnham demonstrating the use of drawing tools to create tessellated designs for multiple students. The photo is taken from above to show the artwork in process and no one’s face is visible.
A workshop focused on Islamic art, with teacher Gillian Turnham demonstrating the use of drawing tools to create tessellated designs for multiple students. The photo is taken from above to show the artwork in process and no one’s face is visible.
A workshop focused on Islamic art, with teacher Gillian Turnham demonstrating the use of drawing tools to create tessellated designs. Gillian wears a bright orange coat and gray hat. The student she is helping wears a striped red and white sweater and has short brown hair that is pulled back.
Teacher Gillian Turnham giving a lecture on Islamic design and euclidean geometry, within the context of a workshop teaching students to create tessellated Islamic patterns. Students sit in rows with long wooden tables in a classroom-like environment, while Turnham stand at the front next to a projection with a geometric diagram and text reading “Book I, Proposition 2: From a given point, draw a straight line equal to a given straight line”.
Gillian Turnham is a light-skinned woman in a medium gray brimmed cap and a gray coat with rounded collar. She has short brown hair and glasses. She wears a silver lip ring in the center of her bottom lip. She is smiling, and has a friendly look on her face.
Photo: Joe Petrik

Gillian Turnham is an Ontario-based artist whose artwork explores the tessellating geometric patterns of Islamic art traditions. She has received training and mentorship from some of the world’s premiere educators in Islamic geometric design, including in pattern analysis and ruler-and-compass construction techniques. Her recent work fuses traditional geometry and illumination techniques with contemporary fine art practice, resulting in watercolor paintings of traditional patterns building from and giving way to their underlying mathematical structures.

Alongside exhibitions and commissioned works, Turnham is a regular teacher for the King’s Foundation School of Traditional Arts and has developed outreach initiatives to enhance awareness and understanding of traditional arts in the community.