Butterfly Tessellation

There are a number of great butterfly tessellations out there. I really like Escher's No. 12 and No. 38 and No. 70 and especially his Circle Limit with Butterflies (1950). Alain Nicolas has an excellent example of a type 2S butterfly motif. I am sure there are many other examples out there as well. The following example is of another butterfly tessellation I created and left in my sketchbook for many years because I was not happy with the design. The Figure 1 below depicts the butterfly motif with two styles that were rejected. As you can see the difference is slight between the tessellation motifs but the sketch allows no overlap and the black and white does not overlap. The problem with this design is that the wings are too narrow in my view. The final design allows overlap and the wings are wider. I chose to include this second design recently within a Mobius strip since it allows the figure to evolve into a colorful butterfly that flies off the page. This concept is similar to several other Mobius strip designs (three other examples are shown on the tessellation-art-gallery pages). Figure 2 depicts the final design of the Butterfly tessellation.

Figure 1 - Sketchbook Design of Butterfly Tessellation (Yes it really is from 2001)

Figure 2- Butterflies (2017)