Art at Hosmer: Radial Symmetry Name Designs

To start off the year, 5th grade artists created designs using their name! To begin, we learned about radial symmetry, which is symmetry around a central point. We actually learned about this concept in 3rd grade when we made our color wheel snowflakes.

Next, students folded a square piece of paper into triangles before creating a name design, stretching their letters to fit the triangular shaped space. Some students used block or bubble letters and other students wrote their name using lines. The most important part was making the letters stretch to touch the edges of the triangle, since that helps the letters connect together as they are repeated.

Students then traced over their design with a Sharpie marker and by flipping parts of the paper over each other, were able to trace their original design to repeat it in all the remaining triangles. The large windows in the connector hallway acted as a giant light box!

After they completed this step, students unfolded their paper to see their radially symmetrical name design repeated all the way around. Students then added color to their design using colored pencil.

Students used a technique called gradation, which is the visual technique of gradually transitioning from one color to another. Blending is key to this technique. Students also learned about analogous colors, which are three colors that are next to each other on the color wheel.

Students utilized analogous colors when using gradation to better demonstrate the transition between colors. They also worked hard to cover all of the paper and apply even pressure to their colored pencils to get bright, bold colors. Some examples of our finished radial symmetry name designs are below -- can you see the name of each artist in their design?