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Case Study: Mildred Mosaic Portrait
Artist Mary Spadaro’s mosaic portrait Mildred is a reproduction of a mosaic she saw on Pinterest. I am reluctant to show the model image because I think the photo may be somewhat muted and blurred to enhance its verisimilitude:
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Having “Wrong” Colors Available for Mosaic Art
What Impressionist painting teaches us is that using the exact colors of the model is much more important than exact rendering. We can draw sloppily, but if we get the colors right, the mind of the viewer can do most of the work and perceive an image easily. That critical need for exact colors seems…
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Aspen Glen Mosaic as Semi-Abstract Art
Artist Michael Hayes recently completed a mosaic based on a photo he took of an aspen glen in Colorado several years ago. I wanted to share this mosaic for several reasons and not merely because it is a strong work by someone just starting out with mosaic.
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Original Mosaic Designs by School Children
Art teacher Bailey Smith has done something truly amazing. Instead of having her seventh-grade students work on one large mosaic mural to impress parents and administrators, she allowed her students to make their own designs. This gave her students a real art experience that allowed them to be expressive instead of merely being worker bees…
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Semi-Abstract Mosaic As a Learning Exercise
Mosaic as a medium has several intrinsic strengths and weaknesses. The main weakness it has as a selling point is that it takes significantly more time than drawing or painting for an image of similar complexity. The intrinsic strengths of the mosaic medium far outweigh the time commitment. For starters, mosaic is a “gateway” medium…
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Finishing Touches and Revising Mosaics
I had previously written about Lisa Sunshine’s Eyes Mosaic in my blog article The Importance of Context in Figurative Mosaic Art. In the article, I addressed the problem of the mosaic not being instantly recognizable as eyes, and I recommended extending the bridge of the nose slightly to provide context. Lisa took me up on…
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Azerbaijan Mosaic Artist
Samir İmamverdiyev is the son of the accomplished Azerbaijan mosaicist Musa İmamverdiyev, and he is currently in Iceland and looking for opportunities. I get the impression that Samir would consider opportunities anywhere in North America or the E.U., particularly in Iceland. Samir’s mosaics are impressive architectural murals. His subjects are portraits of medieval poets of…
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Mosaic Glass Color and Lighting
As we know from high school science, the color of an object is only the light it is reflecting while absorbing all the other frequencies (colors) that make up white sunlight. What this means is that a blue object won’t appear very blue if there isn’t much blue light to reflect, such as the warm-tone…
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Building a Mosaic Portfolio
Artist Jacqueline Spohnholtz is building a mosaic portfolio to solicit commissioned work, and she is doing it in an intelligent way in my opinion. Of course the portfolio needs to be uploaded to an online platform such as the artist’s website or Instagram, and it needs to be built from catalogue-quality photographs (full spectrum white…
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White Grout Case Study
Artist Mark Eibes‘ hummingbird mosaic is figurative art made from (mostly) whole tile, and it makes a great case study for deciding if you should use white grout for your mosaic artwork. Mark wasn’t satisfied with the white grout, and so I explained how the grout of dry indoor mosaics can be stained by with…
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Mosaic Garden Art: Fun Group Projects
Artist Donna Stern recently completed a series of abstract mosaics that are exactly what I think of when someone emails asking for fun project ideas for a group day in the studio. Series of Smalls The first thing is that it is a series. More importantly, each element in the series is the same size…
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Nested Found-Object Mosaic Art
I sometimes make found-object sculptures and surfaces with many different types of objects but without conventional tile or with conventional tile used only for a particular element. All of these found objects are made from durable materials such as glass, porcelain, and hard varieties of stones If the mosaic is indoors, I will also make…