#Fish tessellation

[rkherman]

Flow, with updated colours. The blue just felt like it didn’t fit anymore, and I like this version better. All of my products have also been updated to this version.

[thenativetank]

My Tesselated Darter is getting big! I took a moment to check and he's around the 3.5 or 3.75 inch mark. Pretty hefty for this species!

[arthistoryanimalia]

#FishFriday / #FrogFriday mashup:

Maurits Cornelis Escher (Dutch, 1898-1972)

Fish and Frogs, 1949

Wood engraving

Catalogue raisonné: Bool #364

image © The M.C. Escher Company B.V. - Baarn-Holland. [educational use]

This print was owned by Rachel Carson (a personal hero of mine), and Escher was inspired by her work as well; see link below for the story!

M.C. Escher on Loneliness, Creativity, and How Rachel Carson Inspired His Art, with a Side of Bach

[jeanneius]

New tessellation, new stamp, with cameo appearance from my cat

[beatriceportinari]

Swallow tessellation, origami, my first original model!

Now with instructions here !!!!

[elderwisp]

an unedited still, i will be posting a room tour™ of dan's room now that it's all finished :)

[raspberry-beret]

Art Weekend - Flying Fish by M. C. Escher

Despite being known for the strong mathematical components to his work, M. C. Escher was said to not excell in his early years. He did not finish his high school education but his travels through Europe and his observations of art and architecture fueled his work. Escher's work began featuring complicated interlocked designs and his tesselations gained interest in both the fields of science and art.

[fatpunkstudio]

Fishes repeat pattern by Fat Punk Studio. A stunning tessellation of cascading red, black and cream fish presented here in a custom FPS tube. Repeat patterns are perfect space fillers making them ideal for vehicle wraps, wall murals and so much more. Get in touch about FPS artwork usage. Discover more via link below. 

[blueiscoool]

Archaeologists Unearth Ancient Mosaic of Winged Medusa in Spain

The stunningly preserved Ancient Roman mosaic floor was found at the Huerta de Otero site in the city of Mérida.

In both ancient and modern interpretations, Medusa is often known as a monster — a Gorgon with tresses of serpents whose stare turned men to stone. This version typically appears in children’s movies and fantasy thrillers, but her image hasn’t always been so awe-inspiring. In late June, archaeologists in Western Spain uncovered an Ancient Roman mosaic floor that depicts Medusa with tiny wings and flowing locks of hair, thought to have been used as a protective symbol.

The mosaic was found in the city of Mérida’s Huerta de Otero archaeological site. Ancient Romans established a colony there in 25 BCE named Augusta Emerita. Traces of its former inhabitants — including an amphitheater and a bridge — can be found throughout the modern-day city. “[The site] is of an exceptional nature due to the level of conservation of the ruins and, above all, the ornamental elements that decorate the well-preserved house: not only the mosaic of the Medusa but also paintings and sculptural motifs,” said archaeologist Félix Palma in a statement.

The Huerta de Otero location was excavated in 1976 but lay untouched for decades. Research picked back up in 2019, when the city employed professional archaeologists and students from its Barraeca II Professional School to explore the ruins. Since then, the team has uncovered an Ancient Roman defensive wall, a road, and the home of a wealthy family.

The Medusa mosaic adorned the floor of this home. Depictions of fish, peacocks, and carefully tessellated patterns surround the artwork’s central figure: a human-like Medusa, her gaze turned to one side.

Although this image diverges from some contemporary renditions of the mythological figure, the mosaic’s winged version was common in Ancient portrayals of Medusa. While early Greek depictions of the mortal-turned-monster, cruelly punished for being raped by the god Poseidon, show her as grotesque, Medusa’s image softened by the time of the Ancient Romans. Beginning in the Classical Greek period, her face acquired more human attributes. It started to be rendered with symmetry and youthful beauty in the following centuries.

Other Ancient Roman mosaics featuring the head of Medusa have been discovered throughout Spain. Medusa again comprises the focal point of an Ancient Roman mosaic in a 115–150 CE work found in Rome, where she can be seen sporting human curls and a snake around her neck. A 1st-to-2nd-century ornament from a chariot pole shows a young woman with curly locks (although a couple of snakes still peer through her tangle of hair).

In Ancient Greek mythology, Perseus killed Medusa to avoid being turned to stone. Medusa, in her early terrifying form, was used as a protective symbol — “an image of evil to repel evil,” Madeleine Glennon writes in a 2017 essay for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The goddess Athena famously included a representation of Medusa’s severed head on her protective cloak or aegis. In Ancient Rome, her beautified image was still employed as a protective symbol, although the depiction shifted into a form more similar to a woman than a monster.

By Elaine Velie.

[ikemenomegas]

The first time Suguru and Shoko kiss, it's on a beach. The beach of a lake to be sure, but still a beach, sand between the grasses, cool breeze off the water, a patterned blanket on the shore.

You and Satoru have been talking, laughing quietly, lounging, distantly aware of Suguru and Shoko walking slowly where the water laps against their sandals.

And then Satoru looks up, half frozen, almost unsure. You're looking at him from the side, his glimmering lamplight eyes a little wide behind his sunglasses. You follow his gaze, and you think Suguru has done this on purpose, angling himself so he's basically three-quarters profile and Shoko's face is just hidden enough all you can read is her body language.

Suguru is taller than her, taller than almost everyone you meet, but Shoko doesn't lean back as Suguru tilts his head towards her, speaking softly. One hand is in his pocket and that's the only sign to you, from this distance, that he might be nervous, and you smile automatically, imagining him turning the lining out because it's sticking to his knuckles and ruining that carefully cultivated image of perfection.

You're sure Satoru hasn't moved and you haven't breathed, torn between an odd kind of jealousy and a vaguely energetic anticipation that reminds you of being seventeen again. You want Shoko to be happy. And... even though you've skirted the edge of this for years, will this make her happy?

You startle when Satoru grabs your hand, his fingers crushing the bones. "Ouch," you hiss out, involuntary, but also because you're pretty sure he's not aware he's doing this.

"Sorry," he mutters, but he doesn't release your hand, just crushes it somewhat more comfortably, the blanket bunched between the edges of your palms. You can feel the shifting coarseness of sand under the weave and his nails digging in between the gaps of your fingers. You'd glance down at his hand clasped so tight around yours but you don't want to miss the show, morbid and suspenseful as it is.

The way Satoru's fingers tug in so they're curled towards your palm almost tells you the same. It reminds you of the way you'd clung to one another the last time Suguru and Shoko played Resident Evil.

Shoko isn't the kind of person who chases after others. So it means something, that Suguru has finally come to her. He had been the one it seems to gather all of your disparate souls together and bundle you into one.

When Shoko tilts her head up in acceptance it is with the faintest visible smile as Suguru yields to her, half bowing. Your breath catches as she cups his elbow, the same arm apparently trapped by pride in his pocket.

There's little fanfare as their lips meet. Everything is entirely silent - they're too far away for any noise to make it this far without them shouting, and Satoru has stopped breathing too.

They pull apart, lips moving in words just between them, and when they kiss again, that's when you and Satoru start cheering nearly at once. Whooping and hollering and generally making a truly embarrassing amount of ruckus. Even without a lot of change in expression, Shoko looks exasperated, although Suguru finally fidgets enough to get a hand to wave with, his other still on Shoko's waist.

She allows it and that's enough to make something flip in your stomach like the fish that had evaded all of you earlier this morning. Things might be different from now on, things left unsaid finally spoken, all your orbits altering just a little, but she's letting that hand stay, and when they walk back and you meet her eyes, she tilts her head, like she's saying yes. All your threads tied together, all your tethers anchored as one.

Satoru practically tackles Suguru, although not hard enough for either of them to hit the ground and Shoko actually smiles even as the configuration of limbs and hands and attention tessellates.

Magic can spin something from nothing.

The tension in your forehead and jaw fade a little as she settles by your hip, practiced at getting out of the way of the other two's flailing limbs.

May this be the worst magic you ever know.

[fernscare]

Painting using my photos of a satinfin shiner (Cyprinella analostana) and a tessellated darter (Etheostoma olmstedi) as references. I've been obsessed with photographing freshwater critters lately.

[ID: a watercolor, colored pencil, and acrylic illustration of two colorful fish facing opposite directions. The upper fish has a red face and fins, and two horn-like protrusions. The lower fish is blue with purple fins. The fish are framed at the top and bottom by river oats (a grass) and threadfoot (an aquatic plant). There is a katydid sitting on top of the grass, and two freshwater mussels with pink, purple, and blue bands at the bottom right. Below the illustration are two photos of the real life fish used as references. These fish are silver and tan, and don't have horns.]

[harrowharks-iliac-crest]

The Nine Houses

Worldbuilding/Lore

<< Previous: Masterpost

-

The Nine Houses refer to planets, named, presumably, in order of colonisation. I'm befuddled as to which one is which planet, if we're going on the assumption that this is the solar system. This is what I've extrapolated from reading:

First is Earth.

Second is most likely Mars - gathered from the fighting energy of its house, proximity to Earth and viability for terraforming, and also this:

"[...]Each Beast is different. I have fought numerous now, and each Beast is quite unlike any other … Number Two spewed quicksilver and remade itself into hundred-foot spikes. Number Six kept sucking us into enormous sphincters and spraying us with worms. I cannot even remember what it looked like. I remember Number Four … it was a humanoid creature with a beautiful face who held me under the water, and it spoke in a lovely voice but it only repeated, die, die—and I recall Number One as a great and incoherent machine … when I saw it I thought it had a great tail, and a thousand broken pillars on its back, but Cassiopeia saw it as a mechanical monster with swords for wings, and great horns of myelin, tessellated over with graves.” It was the Saint of Duty who said, restlessly: “Number Eight was a giant head.” “Finned like a fish,” said Augustine, lost in reverie. “Its ribs were bloody bandages, and its teeth protruded through its own skull, tangled about its face like a nest. It was red, and it had a single eye of green that moved all about the body …"

Metal-related appearance, from the planet notoriously rusty.

Actually, this passage describing the Resurrection Beasts - revenants of the planets - was the thing that got me into trying to assign planets to Houses based on, mostly, vibes.

Forth could be Venus, based on this passage alone. I could easily be wrong.

Sixth is Mercury I reckon. In the epilogue of HtN the setting is described as very hot - close to Dominicus. I reread it now and I don't think it's ever mentioned to be set on the Sixth, in fact parts of it actively contradict that assumption, but somehow I seem to have gotten that into my head anyway? But even so, Sixth is described as the one closest to Dominicus - notably this passage:

The Emperor dropped to his haunches and eased the white robe off Mercy’s dead shoulders. He shrugged his naked body into it—coyly pulling it closed—and he stretched his jaw in his mouth, and wriggled the tip of his newly grown nose. “Right,” he said, and closed his eyes briefly. Then he said, “The sun has stabilized. Hope the Sixth House didn’t get cooked in the flare.”

This to me pretty much confirmed the Sixth as Mercury.

Eighth, in the above passage about the Resurrection Beasts, is described in ways that immediately make me picture Jupiter. Red, a single eye of green moving all over the body? Ribs were bloody bandages? A "giant head" - Jupiter, in Roman mythology was the king of the gods? Am I way off the mark here?

And Ninth is Pluto, furthest from the sun, cold and desolate. And solid. (How are they pulling off living on gas giants?)

This leaves the Third, Fifth, Seventh houses to be matched with Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. At a loss, still, for how gas giants are supposed to be colonised. The general infrastructure of the pre- and post-resurrection world/Empire has me asking questions like, where do they get the materials to build starships and feed their officers? Metal and plastic seem abundant. In terms of food we've mostly seen snow leeks, Canaan House and the Mithraeum, all of which are probably exceptional to what a regular House person eats. There is some talk of John's expansion and colonising efforts, so do they just go to random planets - are there aliens in this universe? (Is Alecto one?) So the Empire is expanding, mining colonised planets for ore and oil to turn into plastic - though that would indicate a lot of life on a lot of these planets, so I'm gonna guess that whatever happens to those planets isn't kind to the native flora, fauna and people.

Of course, there's always the option that this isn't meant to be the planets at all, and even if it was, it might be a lot more metaphorical. Or just actually a completely different world to ours, not the solar system at all. (Though there's many explicit and implicit pop culture references which would indicate the First to truly be Earth, so we're sticking with this theory.)

Are they actually on the planets - we haven't seen any planets other than First, and Ninth, arguably big exceptions; the Epilogue seems to be set on a moon of some kind, after a more thorough reread. The Actual Planets are dead, or rather resurrected, with their revenants on the hunt. Could be that the Houses do stand for the planets, and some people might be living on (or near) the actual planets, but a lot of people are actually living away from the solar system entirely - born into "Houses" far from the sun, into the Emperor's war machine. It's hard to tell.

Either way, I'm not gonna assign any more planets now until I know more.

>> Next: The Resurrection

[shirecorn]

Hi! I love your art, especially when I see your Vonder worldbuilding on my feed! I just wanted to ask: what made you start wanting to worldbuild (and/or make Vonder specifically)? And what got you interested in speculative/fantasy biology?

I've been worldbuilding since I could talk! There was never really a start to it. I would make stories with my siblings and populate it with new rules for how magic worked. I have 2187493275893 different variations of "dragons" and what they mean, how they work, how they breed, etc etc. I grew up watching national geographic at every opportunity.

As a kid I was raised homeschool fundamentalist evangelical young-earth creationist and told that evolution was invented by the devil, while celebrating what the world had as wonders created to bring glory to god. Scientists were either misunderstanding creation or evil. I was very spiritual so I felt when I was inventing worlds and creatures in them, that I was communing with God. We were both creators, and I was made in his image.

Then got to college, took my first science class and got blown out of the primordial water by evolution. I thought "there's no way deer became whales lol. thats impossible and there would be in between stages all over the place.

Then I looked up "whale evolution" and guess what? there's in between stages. There's thousands of in between stages. There's a fossil record of the nose hole slowly inching up to the forhead to breathe air when surfacing. there's tessellations of the hips slowly disappearing from one ancestor to the next. So then I had to decide if every photo, specimen, paleontological dig, and diagram was a purposeful lie crafted by evil humans who knew more about god than I did and dedicated their lives to sculpting rocks just to spite him and lead christian astray.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist so I was like damn. Evolution real. What do you know.

Then I exploded

My creative potential was unlocked. Everything became possible. I could create imperfect animals that had quirks and holdovers from previous generations. I could mutate and reform and call back and stretch and bend the possibilities. I could appreciate the true beauty of how every animal is an imperfect attempt at fitting in, just as I am also an imperfect work in progress. I learned that what makes you different can be an advantage in the right environment. I learned about mimicry, about complex symbiotic relationships that evolved alongside each other in a beautiful adaptive dance. I learned about the first ancestors of bilateral animals. I learned to love the forces that turned creatures from one thing to another. I looked at all of the world and I saw it not as a flawless portrait of god, but as an active, breathing, and changing masterpiece created by the paint itself.

I loved it. I love all of it.

I started working immediately. My dragons split and split again. My unicorns developed parasites that evolved to feed on their magic. My mermaids started out as fish and turned their swim bladders into resonate cavities with which to sing their siren songs. Hunters hunted and the prey learned to run.

Life cannot be stopped from changing

I cannot be stopped from loving it

I see religion now as something humans created to be a touchstone of community and ritual. It's beneficial to have something to point to for ethics and routine, and an explanation for things we don't yet understand. One day I may find a place that fits and fulfills me.

for now I am free.

[arthistoryanimalia]

M.C. Escher on Loneliness, Creativity, and How Rachel Carson [born #OTD] Inspired His Art, with a Side of Bach:

The above article mentions that Rachel Carson owned two signed prints by M.C. Escher; it's been noted elsewhere that one was Fish and Frogs (1949), but does anyone know what the second one was?

[jeanneius]

Third and final color on my #handdyed #handprinted #rayon - the question now is what clothing item should I make with it? #printmaking #tessellingfish #patterns #linocut #linoprint #reliefprint #blockprint #fabricprinting #handprintedtextiles #tessellatingpattern #tessellation #fish https://www.instagram.com/p/Cqdr1f_JWYW/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[thenativetank]

VA Native Fish Hunting - 26

The wife and I went camping with a few friends in far northern VA over the long weekend. The weather held up pretty well thankfully and I was able to go wading in the stream a few times! We found lots of cool stuff, including a couple of new species to me. Take a look below the cut!

By far the most numerous invertebrates in this river were crayfish - very few snails and no shrimps here, I think the crayfish depressed their numbers. I'm normally not good with identifying them, but these guys could easily be identified as Allegheny Crayfish (Faxonius obscurus) due to the red marks at the end of their claws. Some posed for pictures, most raged at being caught.

Lots of Green Sunfish (Lepomis cyanellus) at this location. I only caught a few of the smaller dudes, but I saw many in the 3 to 6 inch range. They were gorgeous shades of oranges, blues, and greens that compete with the longears you see so often posted. I would love to bring a pole next time and catch one.

I saw more darters on this trip than any other location I've fished at. Most were these Tesselated Darters (Etheostoma olmstedi) - common along the east coast but still fun. There's also a chance these are Johnny Darters (Etheostoma nigrum) as they are very similar and their range overlaps here. I certainly can't tell from the photos I took.

The most common fish were these Blacknose Daces - I think Eastern (Rhinichthys atratulus) but at least one person I talked to thought Westerns (R. obtusus) were more common here. I have no clue, both used to be considered one species due to their similarity. But they are a fun and beautiful species, especially in their breeding dress.

Mixed in with the daces were the occasional Central Stonerollers (Campostoma anomalom). I originally thought these were a Cyprinella spp of some sort, but no the young Stonerollers just look nothing like the adults. Kinda drab at this age but they definitely become unique looking adults.

A first for me! This Northern Hogsucker (Hypentelium nigricans) is the first member of the Sucker family Catostomidae I've ever caught! This species was kind of rare here as I only managed to catch this one - but I'm psyched all the same. There were also White Suckers here but I couldn't catch one. Oh well.

My fave catch though were these Rainbow Shiners (Etheostoma caeruleum) - another first for me! I wish I would have been able to catch a full breeding colored male here - the blue and orange is striking! - but I'm happy nonetheless. If I wasn't 3 hours and change from home, I might have snatched them up.

We found a few Eastern Elliptio (Elliptio complanata) here too, a species of freshwater mussel. Not super exciting animals but always kinda fun to find.

This was a weird find! I had no idea what I was looking at... a plant? I didn't see any roots... so an algae? I found some bits broken off so I took a closer look...

It's a freshwater sponge - a Lake Sponge (Spongilla lacustris)! I am enamored with it... while I knew suckers and darters and minnows could be found here, I had no idea that any sponges could be found in this range. I dunno if I could ever keep them successfully in an aquarium setting but I feel they would be cool tank inhabitants!